Peanut Butter

Another week another មួយរយ!

What is up people! How are all of you guys doing?

Another VERY interesting week as a missionary in the greater Phnom Penh baby! I saw a few more naked people than I would have liked, but it is all good. 

The highlight of the week was the baptism of my boys លី and យូបិណ (I am getting better at typing lol). It was awesome! I was a little bit scared because they can only meet on Sundays so we literally did not see them for a whole week leading up to the baptism, but everything went as smooth as possible with the lack of planning and preparation that took place haha. 

Pretty miracle like story about how we found him. About nine weeks ago we didn't have much to do and we decided to step aside and offer up a prayer to our Father in Heaven, to ask for guidance. Well, the next person we talked to on the side of the dirt road, ended up entering the waters of baptism yesterday. From a simple conversation and a phone number, there came a new member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You can't make this stuff up. God is a God of miracles and if we take one step back from our busy and sometimes short-sighted lives we will see His holy hand touching the seams of each of our lives and creating true miracles. Anyway, I know that prayer and humility truly do bring miracles! What a joy it is to be a part of this work. My companion and I both talked about how much hope has come into his and his son's life because of the gospel. Another life changed by the infinite grace of God! How grateful I am to be a part of His satisfying work of salvation.

Yesterday at fast and testimony meeting our recent convert shared his testimony of prayer and one of our investigators got up and announced to the whole ward that he agreed to be baptized hahaha so yeah good stuff happening! I don't think he understood the purpose of the meeting quite yet, but he has faith that is for sure! I also went on an exchange with Elder McFarland for like the 1,000,000,000 time which was fun as always. Anyway, no need to ramble! A good week full of missionary work! 

Before I close my companion and I came to a pretty interesting realization this week. In Cambodia, there are two types of peanut butter. There is Skippy, which is the GOOD STUFF, but not very many stores sell it and usually, it is a little more expensive. Then there is another brand called Highway Peanut Butter. Skippy is wayyyyy better than Highway, but sometimes you have no options and you have to settle. My comp said that when he first switched from Skippy to Highway he felt like it was not even good at all and he just missed eating the good peanut butter, but after a while, he said that even Highway tasted delicious to him. I think that is kinda how our life is. Sometimes we get so used to living the good life and enjoying all the luxuries and when we don't have them, or when we have a bad day, it feels like everything is falling apart. But life is still good! We are still eating peanut butter! Just because it isn't skippy and we have had some tough times, doesn't mean that it is all bad. And then when you get used to eating Highway PB every day becomes a good day no matter what happened! When a really good day comes and you get to eat some Skippy PB you have so much more gratitude. I am boring you all talking about this, so make what you want to out of that analogy, and sorry if it didn't make sense. 

Go read the talk Grateful in Any Circumstances by Elder Uchtdorf to understand better. 

To close here is a powerful quote that President shared with me in our interview. 

“Nothing will surprise us more than when we get to heaven and 

see the Father and realize how well we know Him and how 

familiar His face is to us.”- President Ezra Taft Benson

Take some time to think about that this week.

Love you all! Joy in the Journey!

Elder Gochnour

THANK YOU TO THE HOLLADAY SOUTH 18TH WARD PRIMARY! I LOVED THIS!