Physically dirty, spiritually clean!

Hey people!

Things are going awesome. This week we had to split the area and pick up our companions from the bus station and send our other companion off to Phnom Penh. I will miss Elder Baird and Elder Miller, we had some fun times. I finally had the chance to do some regular missionary work in a regular companionship and just give it our all. It felt great to be back with no distractions and just being able to focus on the work. Like I said, my new companion is Elder Moore and he is a champion! He is going to play football at BYU after his mission and he went to Lehi High School, so we have a lot to talk about. We get along great and have been hitting the streets hard. 

Here are some things that have been happening:

• We did service for a family and moved dirt for 2 hours straight! Just like every other service project in Cambodia haha. They really need some tractors in this country.

• When Elder Moore and I got back to regular work on Friday we had no new investigators for the week and hardly any potentials and then God just prepared the way. We walked into some guy that had learned before and he said that he has been having some hard times out here, with a few young kids and no job to provide for them. What better way to help them than by teaching him how to pray! It is amazing to see the miracles while sitting on the front row. Grab your popcorn. 

• We had a birthday party for an Elder and ate some good cake! It was green and purple.

The highlight of all was the baptism of Somnang! He is the young kid that I talked about last week! 

It was nothing short of an adventure getting him baptized, to say the least. We show up to church on Sunday and realize that the church has no water. Not for drinking, not for flushing toilets, and definitely not for filling up a baptismal font. So this is Cambodia, right? So why not just bring the hose through the window of the church and fill the font? Yeah, so that is what happened. If I am being honest, it wasn't the clearest or cleanest baptism water or [any water for that matter] that I have ever seen, but it did the job. That was only half of the battle. 

The other half started when they got into the water. The grandfather had practiced saying the baptismal prayer probably 20 plus times with us before. He had it down. But the lights came on and the cameras came out and he choked haha. He could not say it correctly and on top of that, he is pretty much deaf. So we are trying to yell him the baptismal prayer, but he still can't hear it. Somnang is just in the water shivering because he is so cold from the hose water, and everyone is just dying laughing. He takes a break and puts in his hearing aids and STILL could not get it down. Our last resort was me hanging over the banister holding the white handbook in front of his face while he read from it! Legendary hahah. A day that I will never forget. They went in wearing white and left wearing brown. The most important thing is that he is baptized! After the baptism, Somnang spoke about how he has been washed and cleaned from his sins! Amazing! He might not be physically clean after the yellow water, but he was clean spiritually. 

Lastly,  I would like to share one scripture that really stuck out to me this week in my personal study.

From Ether 12:41 And now, I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written, that the grace of God the Father, and also the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of them, may be and abide in you forever. Amen.

All God asks us to do is to seek after Him and we will find! If you feel lost or far from Him, all you have to do is do your best to find Him and He will find you. 

Please also read in Acts 17:27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

I love you all!

Elder Gochnour

The Fresh Fade ?

This week was a great one like always! To start off we got our transfer calls: I will be staying in Siem Riep and my new companion will be Elder Moore from Lehi UT. I am excited to go to work! 

They will be splitting our area which is kinda interesting because the work is a little bit slow right now, but hopefully, we can get it going, and on the bright side we won't have to bike so far now! Only just kinda far. I will be sad to leave the legendary trio, but like they say all good things must come to an end (except eternal happiness because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ). Well anywayyy I will still be zone leader with Elder Baird my former comp and it should be a good transfer! Also, my other former comp Elder Tuft got called as Assistant shout out to the legend!

We got to go to Angkor Wat today which was an amazing experience. Everyone should go there at least once in their life. It is truly a symbol of a nation here, and I am so grateful to serve is this beautiful and unique country. The best in the world.

Missionary work is the best work. We should be having a baptism this upcoming week for a 10-year-old who has gone to church his whole life, but his parents let him live with his grandparents and they didn't baptize him when he was 8. Sadly, a common thing here, but I love connecting with the little kids and seeing how pure their hearts are, even if they don't fully understand the significance of all the doctrine. He knows that God loves him and that he has a prophet who leads and guides this church! What more could you need? We have some other really cool investigators that we have been working with, but we have struggled to find time to meet with them and get them to church. We are doing our best, but kinda just the story of life as a missionary! We have a lot of potentials so hopefully, things start speeding up and our investigators get going!

This week we went on exchanges with the Assistants which meant a 6-hour bus down and back, so that kinda wrecked our week. However, on that bus, I had the chance to read in the book, Jesus the Christ! What an amazing book. I am almost finished and I read a lot about the conviction, trial, and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Some pretty sad stuff. In reading, I became more aware of the injustice that Jesus Christ faced in his life here on earth. I think that we all feel like life is not fair. “Why can't we be cool and popular like them? Why can't I be smarter, funnier, kinder? Why did this hard/bad thing happen to such a good person? Why did God place me in such an unfair circumstance?”  I think that we have all asked ourselves one of those questions before. I know I have. I see it here every day in Cambodia. These amazing Christlike people who face challenges financially and physically that we can't even imagine. Hardships that don't even compare. Why? As of recently, I have thought a lot about the justice and mercy of God. The age-old question all rings in our heads, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" 

This week I found an answer of my own. Take a second to look at Jesus Christ. The kindest of us all. The most humble. Our perfect older brother. He never mistreated or misused another person. He never spoke an ill word. And yet He, the greatest of all, was forced to face betrayal. He who never sinned was condemned on false charges. He who forgave, served and helped, with pure love, was forced to suffer on the cross. Is that fair? Is God an unjust God? No. We will have trials, that is part of this life. But it will never be something we can't handle or that he will leave us alone to handle on our own. This world isn't fair, but that doesn't mean that God isn't perfectly just. He will exalt us and bless us more than we can ever imagine. We must endure with grace and humility. Christ was asked to suffer and He did it willingly. Can't we follow His perfect example and do the same? I invite you all if you have ever felt that your life is unfair, to take a few steps to Calvary and bear His cross. Yes, this life isn't fair, but because of Him, everything will be made right. Every hardship we can push through in this life and everything that felt unfair or unequal will just be a greater blessing bestowed on us in the life to come. I am grateful for Jesus Christ and His perfect example to me. May we all try to be a little bit more like Him this week, and forever. 

Funny story to end this week: Because we went to Angkor this week we wanted to get haircuts so we could look fresh. There is this Elder named Elder Nhiev, who is an absolute legend from Jacksonville Florida. He went to public school in Florida so I thought that of course, he knew how to give me a fresh fade! Welllll..... let's just say that he didn't. I ended up with a pretty comical haircut on the back of my head, but it is all for the experience! Sorry, mom! (he ended up trying to save it with safety scissors....) (I will not be including pictures of the aftermath) 

Until next weeks adventures,

Elder Gochnour

Back to the birthplace, Battambang

This week was one of my favorites on my whole mission! I was able to go back to my first area where I started it all! It was amazing. I learned so much and literally so many miracles there allowed me to meet up with some of the people that I was able to teach and members that I became best friends with. SO many tender mercies. I think that one short weekend trip for exchanges and transfers taught me a plethora of lessons:

• First: the mission is SO SHORT! It feels like yesterday I was biking along the streets in Battambang and serving in that beautiful city. Crazy to think it was almost exactly a year ago! It goes by too fast. 

• Second: Relationships are the most important things in this world. Yes, we all want nice stuff, yummy food, and cool clothes, but meeting with the people that taught me so much and helped me become accustomed to this amazing country tops all of those things. Nothing better than saying hello to friends you made through the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Third: I love Cambodia.

It is hard to put into words the emotions that come from the experience of going back to the area I started. Spending my first four months and then returning one year to see some of the fruits that came from our labors. Not because of what I did (obviously because I couldn't speak the language then), but because of how the Lord used me if I was humble enough to follow Him. Anyway, long story short, life is good!

The work is good and I love doing it. Not every day is perfect and I am definitely human, with all that that entails. I think that is the reason that I love the mission the most though. I am able to see my weakness every single day and try to change that and be better because of it. I know that when I am impatient and tired and short with all those that I come in contact with, I am not nearly as happy as when I just try to keep a smile on my face. What better time to change then here on my mission. 

Anyway kinda just saying words right now so I will wrap it up with something that we shared in Zone Conference this past week! If you read in Alma 57 it says:

 21 Yea, and they did obey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them, and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their mothers had taught them.

25 And it came to pass that there were two hundred, out of my two thousand and sixty, who had fainted because of the loss of blood; nevertheless, according to the goodness of God, and to our great astonishment, and also the joy of our whole army, there was not one soul of them who did perish; yea, and neither was there one soul among them who had not received many wounds.

We talked about how obedience brings blessings, however, that doesn't mean that the mission is going to just be a cake walk. Just because you follow the rules in mission or in life, doesn't mean that you will be able to fight this battle and not receive any wounds. We are all going to take hits. We are all going to have hard days, and times where we don't feel any hope. But God doesn't mean for us to lose this battle. God won't ever desert us. God might allow us to get roughed up again and take some wounds, but he will always deliver us. I am so grateful to know that I have a God of mercy and of grace, who is my Loving Father!

If you want to know more about my investigators I can talk about them, but sometimes I feel like that just bores people, so just let me know if you are interested in that. 

Fun things:

We fit 10 people in a minivan from Battambang to Siem Riep

We got the fish massage where they eat off the dead skin on your feet

We went to the COOLEST ANCIENT TEMPLE EVER! We saw a lizard eat a snake

I love you all!

Elder Gochnour

No Subject

I sit down and then I just forget everything that has happened to me in the past month, so I can't really inform you what has happened because I don't know myself. I will do my best.

On New Years we had another ward party! It was awesome! Scope the pics because I was just "Chef Harden" out there cooking! I don't really do anything to help haha, but I got to stir the curry so that was fun. (and P.S. I did find a pig's tooth in my soup so maybe not such a good Chef after all?) 

All the members here are awesome.  One of my favorite things that I have come to appreciate on my mission is the importance of just sitting down with people and having a conversation with them. Just a genuine get to know you chat. We all have stories to tell, and I just missed out on so many family & friend's stories and listening opportunities because I was too lazy or too tied into my phone to talk to people back home!

The missionary work here is pretty good! Kinda slow and a lot of biking, but that is kinda how it always is haha! Never ideal as you want it to be of course, but still the most glorious work of all. The highlight of the week was when we were able to find a family that seems pretty interested in learning about the gospel! Last week or so we decided to contact by the riverside and because we are in a trio, we tried to talk to three different people at once while we were still all by each other. Productivity! It didn't work out too well and we only managed to get one phone number from this nice guy that I talked to. We didn't think much of it but thought we might as well give him a shot. We called and asked him where his house was and he said it is by this place named "Top Town". Directions are kinda hard here because there are no addresses and no smartphones to find things at your fingertips so we just headed in the general direction and started asking around. Every time we asked someone if they knew Top Town was, they always started to act weird and some of the people even laughed. When we got really close we asked another guy and he just started cracking up and so we asked the guy what Top Town was. It turns out that is is a club... hahah. All those people thought we were trying to go to some club/brothel. Funny side story, but anyway we found the family and they were pretty interested and showed some hope! 

I think my favorite part of the week was when we had some free time and so we decided to just swing by this members house. They are a Filipino family so kind! We just felt like we should go over there and give them a visit and it turns out that it was the son's birthday! He came running out and I asked him how his birthday had been and he responded "Not very good." He hadn't had the best B-day because his mom had been sick and his dad was away working. We didn't do much just chatted with him and bought him some treats at the small shop by his house, seemingly insignificant to us. However, after we spent some time with him and asked him to say a prayer before we left, he thanked God for sending us (the missionaries) for making his day better! 

We can take no credit in anything that we did, and even though it was something small it was such a big testimony builder that yes baptisms and numbers and all that stuff is important. But those moments that we spent with Jaquim helped me realize that first God loves and cares for each of His children and that often times we are the means to helping Him accomplish His perfect purposes. And second, you can't measure success and devotion by numbers. That little moment with my man Jaquim is the reason we are here! To simply help, serve and love others! 

Hopefully, I will have some more exciting stories next week! I know that Jesus is the Christ and that He stands at the head of this Church! 

Also, everyone please read the talk called, "A Summer with Great-Aunt Rose" by Elder Uchtdorf. It is so good! My favorite line is this, "Eva was silent, so Great-Aunt Rose continued: “There is enough that doesn’t go right in life so anyone can work themselves into a puddle of pessimism and a mess of melancholy. But I know people who, even when things don’t work out, focus on the wonders and miracles of life. These folks are the happiest people I know.”

I love you all! Joy in the Journey!

Elder Gochnour