It's been a great first twelve weeks in the field! Now I'm all grown up! This last week was awesome. We have been praying so hard for more people to teach and more opportunities to share the gospel with Cambodians, and the Lord pulled through of course, after many weeks of consistent and hard work!!
Monday we had an awesome dinner with Sally and her son Sean who is getting ready for a mission, then we went to teach Jonathan! We had a really powerful lesson on the Atonement, it was awesome.
Tuesday we had had district meeting, and we met in this tiny little room in the church because it was getting cleaned in all the big rooms, it was pretty funny. We went to a less active lady's house for dinner, and we met her less-active son who is a really cool interior designer. He asked us to stop by again next time we were close! After that we went back to Oakland to teach Prim! We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and Lyana, one of the recent converts in the branch helped us teach! it was an awesome lesson!
Wednesday was crazy. We had service that morning then drove out to Antioch to help our branch's 1st counselor move a bunch of bricks. we were expecting a ton to do, cause he asked us to drive about 40 minutes to help him, but it only took about 15 minutes haha! he invited us inside to feed us and while we were walking in he said "we will warm up a costco pizza and watch the warriors game!" we laughed and said ok and stuff thinking he was joking, but he did exactly that. He sat us down in his fancy game day chairs, brought out the pizza, had his son say a prayer over the food, then turned the game on! Elder Hibbert and I were a little surprised and just looked at each other for a minute, then told him we had to leave soon to go teach, he was a little surprised and asked if we couldn't stay and watch with him for a few minutes, we told him he could come with us, but the game that day was VERY important! They were playing the hornets!
Anyway, after that, we went to change, and I realized I had forgotten my proselyting shoes, and we were a good hour and a half away from home with traffic! we went to get some shoes for me at ross so we could go to work, and then went to a less-actives house who owns a Donut shop named Jayce! He was happy to see us and said he thought the missionaries had forgotten about him, then he asked his wife if we could stop by at the Donut shop to see her when we finished teaching him! We went to see her in the shop and helped her clean up a little, then she gave us a ton of Donuts! It was awesome. We headed back to oakland after trying to contact a few more people there, then went back to oakland to contact a referral. We went to the house and knocked on the door- no anser. We knocked again, and we heard a bunch of people running around, then this huge cambodian guy opened the door! He just walked away, and his wife was standing there, then all of a sudden, her Daughter Anastasia came to the door and was like "Hi Elders!! What are you doing here??" Anastasia came with a member to a branch family home evening two months before and we were unable to get any information to go visit her, so we were pretty disappointed, but a less active had told us that cambodians live in her house, so we knocked on the door, and now we are set to teach her whole family on Wednesday!!!
Next, we asked for referrals before we left, and they referred us to their uncle close by, and we went to visit right after, he said we could come back, and then referred us to his neighbors! It was amazing!! We got 8 potential investigators in one day!! That is more than we have found every other day put together since I got here!!!
Thursday we had a baptismal interview that for various reasons took three hours, so we didn't get to go teach until around 4:30, and we still had to drive back to go to San Leandro in rush hour, so it was closer to 5:30 when we got there. We went to knock on the door, and the Less-active that we were scheduled to meet was home, but he wouldn't open the door that day, he just ignored us. We were pretty bummed. We went to get dinner really quick, then went to contact the rest of the night.
Friday we had quite an interesting day. All our lessons fell through, so we went through a bunch of old records for investigators and went to contact them. We met one guy who had been a referral for like three months, and he asked us when we could meet with him besides fridays! It was awesome! We have on investigator named Bunthai, and he called us and asked us to come teach him!! It was amazing. He is not the kind of person to do that. He genuinely wanted to learn and we finished the night off with an awesome lesson on the restoration.
Saturday was pretty crazy, in that everyone we were going to meet with managed to get really busy at really inconvenient times. We contacted a lot instead, with not too much success, but the saving grace was we went with Siphal to teach Prim the Plan of Salvation! We left with a new baptismal date for February 28th!
Sunday was pretty good also, we went to teach Bunthai again that night and had Three investigators at church! It was a very successful Week in the Cambodian 10th! All by the grace of God! The Church is so True. I'm pretty sure I say that every week, but it is because it is. I love that we are able to pray to our heavenly father for help with those things we have a desire to accomplish.
I know that the Lord Is ready and willing to help with any and Everything we need, just take the time to ask for his help!! I love being a missionary! I love all of you! I hope everyone stays very focused on the real reason for this Christmas season, and if you haven't yet, go watch the new Christmas videos on the church website!!
With Love,
Elder Cameron Tolman
