Sister Lazy and Sister Crazy Go to the Market

I have decided it's time I send you the FOOD EMAIL. Hooray!!! I've gotten a lot of questions from multiple different people about what the food is like here, where I get the food, shops and stuff, etc. So I thought I'd spend some time on that. The other reason is that nothing super interesting happened this week that I can remember, so I don't have that many stories for you. Hehe. So I've got some pictures of the phsaa (market) where we buy basically everything and some of the food I eat. Here we go.....

A couple weeks ago Mommy emailed me and asked if I was able to find good, clean food. I showed that email to my companion and we had a good laugh about it for a while. Hahahahahahaha NO. Food here is not clean. Or "good" depending on what that means. There's a reason we go to the phsaa. Kampong Cham doesn't have grocery stores. they've got a few in Phnom Penh but outside of that, I'm sure the majority of the provinces here don't have real grocery stores. So we go to the phsaa and literally buy food off of the ground. No joke. it's a doozy. Remember my first email when i told you how bad it smelled to ride past the phsaa? that's because it's hundreds of people selling rotting produce and fish and meat every day and all the garbage piles up for weeks and sits out in Cambodian sun and humidity. So the whole "clean" food thing isn't really a thing at all. the first thing we do on pdays after buying our food is go scrub it and soak it in bleach. 

Okay so the things I eat are as follows: Chaa..........................thats it. Chaa is sort of like a cambodian stir fry but don't be fooled!!!! its SO MUCH BETTER than a stiry fry!!! I can't wait to make it for you guys when i come home. We have chaa for lunch AND dinner on some days. And you can make a chaa from literally anything, that's the best part. For Sister Homer and I, our favorites are tomato chaa, ginger chaa, pineapple chaa, and potato chaa. I also eat a lot of eggs (but don't worry mommy, i take out the yokes every once in a while, though you'd think that my cholesterol should be the last of my worries). I also eat a BUTTLOAD of fruit, at least compared to how much fruit i used to eat at home. my favorite fruit is dragonfruit. Let me tell you a little something about dragonfruit. It's God's gift to the Cambodians because they don't have much else to get excited about in life. At least that's my theory. I hope I can find dragonfruit in the states because I literally eat a dragonfruit every day. It's like a bigger better version of a kiwi to be honest. SO FLIPPIN GOOD. I also eat bananas a couple times a day because they actually cook bananas in different ways. They fry them and grill them and put them in some weird tapioca pudding. My favorite are the grilled bananas called "Ceek aang". they dry out the bananas a little in the sun, then dip them in salt water and then grill them. At first i HATED ceek aang, but now that ive had it a couple times its one of my favorite cambodian foods. which just shows me how much my tastebuds have changed since ive been here. OH ALSO I CANT FORGET.....Cambodian bananas are NOT the same as American bananas. Cambodians have a billion different kinds of bananas, and to make most of the stuff i listed, they use these short, fat bananas that are sweeter and a little juicier than american bananas. I've also tried bananas that are about the size of my pinky and those are delicious, though really hard to peel.  

On the topic of food, I have a freaking HILARIOUS quote from the young women's teacher here. And believe it or not, this comment was NOT directed towards me. We were going around talking about talents and skills that God has blessed us with, yadda yadda, and we get to this one girl and the teacher automatically goes: "you're fat - you must be good at eating!"

Gotta love that awesome Asian blunt-ness. I just about died when she said that. Sister homer and I were actually with an investigator a few days ago and Sister Homer asked her: "Moiseng, do you think we're fat?" and Moiseng responds with "Your bodies are a little fat but your faces are pretty." Sister Homer and I just started cracking up and this woman had no idea what was so funny to us. They are so strange here. 

On that note, I have some classic Sister Homer quotes that I thought you might enjoy, because I know i did: 

"You can spot a nerd in any culture. It's a universal thing."

"Don't hit the monks - that would be rude."

"Getting a papercut on my eyeball is like my biggest fear." 

I could say a million times how much I love this girl and it still wouldn't be enough. I'd be dying without her as my trainer.

So anyway, on a note that's a little more relevant to actual missionary work (like anyone wants to hear that stuff), Sister Homer and I have been discussing how difficult the mission is here. Obviously, everybody has a hard mission. Every single person in the world sits down at the end of the day and thinks to themselves, "I have the hardest mission in the world."

No mission is easy, I know that. But you might be surprised to hear that Sis homer and I don't even have as big a problem with the climate or the culture or the third-world-ness here. The problem is the actual missionary work, which is not what I expected. I knew that people in Cambodia are so willing to listen to the missionaries and learn about our church, which is NOT the case in places like Europe and America, so I figured the missionary work would be a piece of cake. BUT IT'S NOT AT ALL. There are tons of people willing to learn and almost no people who are capable of understanding the concepts or actually staying faithful members of the church. I don't know if it's the lack of education here or the culture or what, but they literally don't understand anything you say, and its not because of the language barrier. It is one of the hardest things to teach 10 lessons in a day and know in your heart that maybe ONE of the people actually understood and could apply the things you were talking about. It's incredibly disheartening because you want them to understand so badly, but you can't force them to understand. 97% of the people I teach will not remember Jesus Christ's name by the second lesson, let alone how to pray. Did you know that Cambodia has approximately 10,000 members, but less than 3,000 are active???? THAT'S INSANE. It drives me crazy. I'm determined to fix that. The Church is still so new here so I know I should be patient with the way it's progressing but let's get real, when have i ever been a patient person?? Exactly. Why start now, amiright?

Anyway, I could go on for AGES about this issue, but i would never be able to explain fully what it's like to be a missionary here. Sister homer and I were talking about how nobody will ever understand what it's like to be a missionary in Cambodia. It's just the weirdest place to be. And yet you love it anyway!! At least I do. Hard, crazy, smelly, call it what you want, but Cambodia has to be one of the best missions out there. It's no contest. 

I'm super excited to talk to you guys on Christmas! I'll probably be in a coma of homesickness for the week afterwards, but I know Sister Homer will be too so it's okay. I love you guys and miss you so much!

Love, Sister Davis

PS some scriptures for you guys because I know I havent done that in a while: Jeremiah 29:13, Joshua 1:9, Joshua 24:15 (this is one of my all-time favorites) and in honor of the wonderful christmas season: Luke 2:14. 

PPS sorry for a boring email. Cambodia isn't what you would call "boring" but I think I'm getting used to it so im running out of ideas. dont worry, ill start keeping a list of interesting things that happen to me.

                                                                Welcome to the Phsaa!!!!!

                                                               This is our banana lady.

                                                                     And our egg lady.

And say hello to our meat lady. Do you see the pig head? Good. And also take note of the chicken in front there. the reason we dont eat chicken is because you can only buy it like that. theres no such thing as chicken breasts here. and its not meaty like our chicken. its all bones and flesh. never eat the chicken. stick with the pig head.

 Navigatin your way through the phsaa is a work of sheer genius, especially because people are riding there motos in between everything the whole time. its a total mess.

                                                      MORE DRAGONFRUIT!!!

And here's a real picture. I sent you a picture of Linaa last week. She just got baptized yesterday! And on the left are Srei Maah and Srei Chanaat. They're all from Vial Ksaac and so stinking cute.

The following pictures are all from Wat Han Chey that we went to last week. So cool!

                                              Han Chey is famous for it's gigantic fruit sculptures

                                             And they had dragonfruit!!!!!!! DRAGONFRUIT!!!!

                                    AND CEEK AANG!!!!!!! (though the hand is a little creepy.)

New Philosophy: Victory over Vermin

This week was the week of SERIOUS issues with......lets call them "creatures." I saw ANOTHER cockroach. It was dead, but basically the size of my head. Then there was a frog in our recycling. And THEN...okay heres a story. So Sister Homer and I are eating dinner, munchin on some rice, the usual. And she stops mid sentence and looks up in the corner of the kitchen and just goes dead silent. she doesnt even look scared or anything. And just after a long pause, she just very calmly goes: "A mouse just crawled in through our roof." I turn around and there is legitimately a mouse (though it was NOT a field mouse, it was the size of a rat. probably was a rat) just sitting on a pipe in the top corner of our kitchen. It just came in through a huge hole in our roof. (Have i told you guys that my kitchen just has a tin roof? I don't think I did. My kitchen has a tin roof. Literally. Like the kinds of the houses I've shown you. the rest of our house is fine, but yeah.) So i turn back to her and whisper "what do we do?" And out of NOWHERE she just stands up so quickly freaking out and goes "ITS MOVING ITS MOVING ITS MOVING" and I jump up too and watch this mouse crawl on the piping above us but I guess our sudden movements scared it and it turned around and crawled back out the roof. So thats the end of that. This week was just a week full of vermin. and dont worry, i fully intend to include a picture of the dead cockroach. 

More animal things....Riddle me this: what do you do when you're riding your bike through a round-about and encounter a large herd of goats in the middle of the street? Because that happened to me. Just food for thought.

When we went to Bung Snaay this week, a dog took my shoe while we were teaching a lesson. In Cambodia (as in most asian countries) you take your shoes off before going into the house. But because these people don't really have houses, they mostly have shacks, we just leave our shoes at the bottom of a ladder usually and then climb up the ladder to get inside. So anyway, I climbed down the ladder after a lesson and one of my shoes was gone. So the investigator we were just with rallies pretty much the whole phum (village) to look for my shoe. And its lookin like Im going to have to go shoeless for the rest of my mission. So then i think about those little toddlers who always speak in church about prayer and it always goes something like this: "one time, i lost my toy and i couldnt find it so i prayed to Heavenly Father that he would help me find my toy and then i found it and i know prayer works in the name of jesus christ amen." Right? Every Mormon reading this knows exactly what im talking about. So to test the waters, in my head (and with a smirk on my face) I said, "Heavenly Father, I know that this really isn't super important, but it would make my job as a missionary a lot easier if i had both my shoes. So if it's your will, please help me get my shoe back." I kid you not, ten seconds later, a girl behind me yells out "Sistaa! Sistaa!" and shes waving my shoe in the air. I was smiling about that for the rest of the day. Probably one of my favorite stories from my mission thus far. 

Also, one of the less-active members we visit sometimes said my feet look like baby pigs this week. Sister Homer just about died, she could barely ride her bike because she was laughing so hard after Ming Hian said that. I don't really get it. This woman is freaking hysterical though. Shes totally nuts and just makes fun of us the whole time. The first time I met her she went on a rant about how Sister Homer should marry her son. She also tries to feed us food from the little stand outside of her house that she sells from. But its always NASTY stuff. This isn't like Cambodian food that she cooks. They're little treats that seriously make me gag. Like one time, she gave us these little hot dogs. But they're uncooked snack hot dogs if that makes sense. And they're spicy. And warm because they're just sitting out in the sun at her stand all day. so disgusting. That woman cracks me up. Anyway, if you can tell me what it means to have feet that look like baby pigs, let me know.

Now to the actual important parts of being on a mission (though I could talk about the weird things all day long and be very content). So we taught in Vial Ksaac this week. that's the place thats literally out in the jungle. I flippin LOVE Vial Ksaac. Not only is it the epitome of being on a mission on a third world country (riding your nike along bumpy dirt roads, past herds of cattle and bamboo huts in the blistering heat) but the people there are amazing. When we come to teach people, ESPECIALLY the kids, we basically just teach the whole neighborhood (I've got a picture of that too). We went to go teach a girl named Srei Mei, and all the little kids see, even kids who aren't familiar with our church at all, and then we end up teaching like 20 people at once. It technically only counts for one lesson but i couldnt care less. The people there just love meeting with us, it's so cool. And when I was there this past week, it was around 4pm and it had cooled down a bit but it was still warm, and we were sitting under a mango tree on a little mat in the afternoon sun and just singing hymns with all of these kids gathered around and i just felt so........HAPPY. and so peaceful. Like where else would I rather be? The Spirit was so strong there. happiness like that is different from any other happiness, and it doesn't come from any source other than this gospel. I know that for a fact. Being a missionary is sometimes the most amazing thing in the world. 

We also got a few new investigators this week! We already have about 10, which is a lot to handle considering we also have to meet with recent converts and other members, AND we have two branches. We are seriously always busy. BUT these investigators are looking really promising. One of them is named Ming Rong and the other is Ming Moom. they're gold. So remember those names because I'll probably talk about them a lot in the near future. they are both so sweet and genuine. My new projects muahahaha.

I'm so glad that I'm going to be here for a while. Did I tell you guys this? Here's the deal: I'm still training and will be until the end of january, but the thing is that Sister Homer has been in Kampong Cham for 6 months now, and thats a LONG time to be in one area. Shes most likely going to get transferred after shes done training me. But we're the only sisters in the area (im the only sister being trained in a province in the whole mission
, which is kind of cool) which means they need to keep at least one of us here, someone who knows the members and the area and such. So that'll be me. Which means I'll be here until at least March most likely. Which I'm totally cool with. I LOVE KAMPONG CHAM. its seriously the best.

Anyway, i'm gonna finish up because I don't have a lot of time to email today. This afternoon we're leaving the area pretty early to go to this really cool wat (buddhist monk temple) called Han Che. So keep your eyes peeled for those pictures next week. I hear its awesome. Today I'm also sending you some pictures of a wat that I went to the first week I was here. They're from when i had been in Cambodia for 4 days. I dont know why I never sent them to you, but it was super awesome. That wat is called Phnom Broh (brother hill) but we all call it the "monkey wat." you'll see why. YOU GUYS LOOK WHERE I GET TO SERVE MY MISSION. 

Enjoy the Christmas season for me! Christmas is nonexistent in Cambodia. I love you all and miss you so much! 

Looooooooooooooooooooooove, Sistaa Daivee

The cockroach that ruined my life. It was already mostly dead (still twitching) so we sprayed it with half a can of Raid and then poured dish soap on it for good measure. I'm in trouble for when i serve in the city, I'll just say that now. 

These are all the kids we taught at Vial Ksaac that one day. We're standing in front of a huge pile of rice stalks after the grains of rice have been taken from them. I get to harvest some more on friday!!!

Sister Homer with the Viall Ksaac people. I LOVE THIS PLACE.

This girls name is Linaa. She's getting baptized this week!!!! Stinkin adorable.

Okay the rest of these pictures are from Phnom broh (monkey wat) on my very first P-day. So freaking cool!!! We biked up this GIGANTIC hill to get to this wat and I thought i was going to die. I was sweating like no other that day. That elder in the front is Elder Sorensen. He's our district leader.

MONKEY WAT!!!!!!!! What you don't know is that rtwo minutes before this picture took place, that monkey attacked me and the bag of peanuts i had just bought. Literally ran to me full speed and snatched the bag out of my hands. Peanuts were flying everywhere. But i pretended we were on good terms for the sake of this awesome snapshot. Don't be fooled. We're not friends.

More monkeys!!!!! They were actually everywhere.

worth the hike

Still part of the same wat area, but on a different hill techincally called Phnom Srei (sister hill......get it?) This is the staircase we had to climb. It has like 300-something steps that were all diferent heights and levels. it killed me. 

It wouldnt be a wat without some awesome gigantic buddha statues.

"I finally got to use my sickle"

Suesdai!!

Welll...................

I saw my first live cockroach this week and let's be honest nothing else really matters. I could just end the email right there. 

But I won't. I will say this though: My intense fear/distrust/disgust towards cockroaches is COMPLETELY justified. I could go on a very long rant, but just let it be known that Satan carries out the majority of his work through cockroaches. Of this I am certain.

Anywho, this week was completely crazy. I don't even know what happened. let me give you a little background info. On a normal week, Sister Homer and I will teach about 30 lessons. More than 35 is a great week, and 20-30 is less than decent. This week, everything that could possibly happen to mess up your teaching schedule happened to us. Do you know what our total teaching count was????????????
12.

TWELVE FREAKING LESSONS. Most people might look at that and go.....what were you doing? Did you guys get Dhengay fever or something? No. We were SO BUSY all week, running (technically biking) everywhere, changing our schedule, trying to find people to teach. So many of the members and investigators we scheduled to teach were out of town, or not home when we went to see them. Then Sister Homer's tire went kaput and that took out almost a whole afternoon. THEN we had to help out with things like english class and help the senior couple with their piano class. THEN on Thanksgiving day, we lost an entire day of teaching basically to go do service (which I totally don't have a problem with, because service is the bomb dot com). THEN (and here's the real kicker), a member of one of our branches died of some sort of liver disease. So we spent two days helping the family (also members) with the funeral. Although this was a very sad occasion, it was actually a really cool experience so I'm going to tell you about that a little bit:

The thing about Cambodians is that they're all Buddhist. No news there. But what's interesting is that Buddhism is less of a religion and more of a culture, so even people who are totally awesome, active members of the church (like this family) still have there Buddhist ceremonies for weddings, funerals, etc. So we walk into this funeral with the senior couple and cause quite a scene right off the bat because we are four starkly white people. There's a monk sittin in the middle of a table surrounded by flowers and fruit, chanting away. Then the family, all dressed in white, starts this procession to the gravesite (also strange because most people in Cambodia will do cremation, so I don't know what was up with the burial) and they pick up the table WITH THE MONK ON IT and just carry him over to the gravesite and the whole funeral crowd just follows. Anyway, I really liked this because I loved seeing the mutual respect that exists between religions here. The Buddhists did their whole thing of chanting and blessing and other stuff and I had no idea what was going on. But then they all finished up and politely yielded to let the leaders of our church step in and say a prayer and dedicate the grave and sing some hymns. It was like two totally different cultures just showing respect to each other and I freaking loved it. I love how Buddhists are super accepting of other religions and that there isn't this fight between the christians in this country and the culture. We're all just sharing and it's totally cool. We see monks all the time, just walking around like normal people and seriously sister homer and I are just like "sup". What a cool place to be.

So like I said I also got to do service this week. I've got a buttload of pictures of that and I'm super happy about it because...... (drumroll) I FINALLY GOT TO HARVEST RICE. Now don't get too excited. There was no water involved. The rice patties in the water are only there when you're planting the rice. It's all dried up by the time you harvest it. But still. I feel like I've officially been initiated into Asia. You just can't consider yourself a missionary in Asia until you've done some sort of work farming rice. C'mon. I finally got to use my sickle though. So props to me. Seriously you guys, I am never going to look at rice the same way again. Sister homer and I discuss this at length pretty frequently. Each stalk only has MAYBE 20 individual grains of rice on it. Do you have any idea how much rice Asians eat????? Every freaking meal!!! And we're talking about all of Asia. It blows my mind. There's no way this world produces enough rice for all of the Asians who eat it like nobody's business. Sister Homer and I think there's some sort of conspiracy going on because the numbers just don't add up. One huuuuge crop of rice would feed one Cambodian for maybe a couple months. Something's fishy about this, but I shan't go on. All you need to know is that harvesting rice is really hard work, and my back still hurts from it but it was super awesome. 

SOOOOO here's the deal. I can't teach in English. I spent a good majority of my mission complaining about how I can't teach good lessons because I don't know the language, thinking that if i could teach in English I would be the world's best teacher. Wrong. So wrong. So incredibly, STUPIDLY WRONG. We have this one investigator named Moiseng and she's pretty proficient in English but she wants to speak it better so we have our lessons with her in English and seriously you guys.....I'm such a fool. (sidenote: i've noticed that i pick up certain habits depending on who i spend the most time with. using the word "fool" is something I have acquired from sister homer. i say "such a fool" at least 10 times a day). I cannot teach in English. It reminds me of something gabrielle told me when i ran into her at the MTC. She said someone told her, "You are assigned to your mission language because God knows that that is the language you are best able to preach the gospel in." I found that so interesting. I consider myself to be fairly well spoken, and we know that I've just always been good at English. But that in no way means that I should be teaching this gospel in English. Because I can't apparently. God is merciful, because I would embarrass myself and confuse people so much if I had been sent to an English speaking mission. Guys......I'm such a fool. Poor Moiseng. Poor Sister Homer because she has to re-explain things all the time for me. I swear I'll get the hang of this one day.

I think that's pretty much all I have to say for this week. I wish you guys were here with me to experience these things and it's such a bummer that everything is normal to me now, because I bet you'd get a kick out of the things that happen to me on a daily basis. There was a legitimate catfight on our balcony the other night. Sister Homer and I watched from our bedroom window in amazement. these two cats were attacking each other and hissing and screaming like it was a movie. We named them Orange Gladiator and Khmau Coward (khmau = black). We also had quite the run-in with a particularly vengeful lizard. We named him Satan. So yeah. 

Life is good. Cambodia's good. Loving the people. Loving God. The usual. 

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas season!!!!!! I love you guys so much! 

Daoy kdei srolan (with love),

Sistaa Daivee

These are the Elders in our district. (Minus elder sorensen and elder mcgavin, who I was in the mtc with). the only white guy there is Elder Jones who was also in the MTC with me. Elder barney has the red scarf on. hes half japanese but hes an american. From the left on the bottom is Elder Chan, Elder Sam, Edler Hang and Elder Ti. They're all khmer and all awesome! Elder Sam and Elder Chan both know Garrett Gibson! Small world.

We ate dinner with the family we helped at their house after we finished working in the fields. We ate........honestly I don't know what it was. Some sort of mochi-like gooey rice ball with bean mash in the middle and it was in a sweet broth. Quite strange.

Just for the record, i am not crouching down in this picture. rice is tall, i guess.

"It's all good in the hood"

Suesdai!!!

It always takes me about 5 minutes to start these emails because I never know where to begin! This week was a little slow in terms of teaching and big events and stuff but i still have a bunch of things to tell you. 

First of all, I'm just going to go into a little rant about how much I love my companion (which is what I know EVERYONE was worried about for me going into a mission.....is she going to hate all of her companions?) NO. I absolutely adore Sister Homer. It's funny how much we have in common. We have such similar opinions on things and perspectives. There are aspects of our personalities that are different, but those are the things about her that are making me a better missionary. She's a SUPER hard worker and I totally need someone like that to kick me in the butt. In the sweetest way possible. But the other day I told her how lazy i am and she was like, "Really? I haven't seen that at all! I never would have known you're lazy" ........so that's ridiculous. The mission is changing me guys. Apparently im not lazy anymore. to be honest, I don't really have the choice to be. Anyway, she's also super smiley and really nice, and I think we all know I could use an extra dose of that every now and again. But we laugh so much. We get along so well and because of that we just crack each other up all the time. We were doing language study the other day and Sister Homer is reading in her dictionary. Now, we love this dictionary because it was probably made in Cmabodia by a cambodian and therefore has cambodian definitions that are......less than normal. So she just starts laughing and shows me this verb that i can''t even remember, but here is what the definition was: "To throw out one's buttock to someone to convey a mild insult." WHAT?! First of all, in what culture is that a thing? I guess in Cambodia. Second of all, we spent about 20 minutes discussing the fact that it was a singular BUTTOCK. I don't even understand. Anyway, it's little things like that with Sister Homer that make a rough day easier. I am so lucky to have her as my trainer. 

The only thing that's hard about being a new missionary is that I'm still learning the area and the people. Everyone looks the same to me here and I swear to you, Cambodia has like 10 names in total. Everyone has the same name. Plus in cambodia you call people either "sister" or "brother" or "üncle" or "grandma" based on their age. So for example the word for sister is "srei". so youve got one girl named Miah and another named Mei so their names are "Srei Miah"and "Srei Mei" and theyre both the same age and look exactly the same and........that drives me nuts. I can't keep anyone straight. The language is hard but i knew it would be. I'm honestly not stressed about the language because I know it will come. I'm working hard during language study and picking things up here and there, so I'm not too frustrated by that. I'm learning by immersion. It's exactly what you would expect. The language is the least of my worries. 

On that note, I spoke yesterday in church! It was absolutely terrifying, but afterwards everyone told me that "Sistaa nyiay cbaah!" which means that I speak very clearly. A lot of people have a problem with cambodians telling them that they can't understand what they're saying, or because we have an american accent and look american they'll just say "I don't speak English" even when you're speaking Khmer to them! Super yap. But I haven't had that problem and everyone here tells me I speak really well, so I'm happy about that. 

So I had a moment of brilliance the other day, wanna hear it???? Okay so Sister Homer and I are teaching in Vial Ksaac and she says something referring to the name of our church, which is obviously on our nametags. So she goes to point to my nametag and that's when we both realized i totally forgot to put on my nametag that morning!!! That has NEVER happened to me before. Your nametag is basically your most important and most prized possession. I was in shock. But without missing a beat, Sister Homer reaches into her purse and pulls out a spare nametag she keeps in her bag. When she first handed it to me, I was a little confused because I was like, this says "Sister Homer" not "Sister Davis". But that's when I had my moment of brilliance, ready? IT DOESN'T MATTER. It doesn't matter in the slightest that my name wasn't right because who the heck cares what my name is? The reason we wear our nametag is not because it has our name on it. We wear it because the second we put it on, we become official representatives of Jesus Christ. After our own names, the biggest word on the nametag is "Jesus Christ". THAT is why we wear the nametag. So it doesn't matter that for a whole day, my nametag said "Sister Homer". What matters is that it says Jesus Christ, and it tells people that I'm here for him, not for myself. (To be honest, this was Sister Homer's MTC nametag, which has the church's name in Khmer but our name is in English. So in reality, nobody would have been able to read her name anyway and tell that it was wrong. BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. The point is I had an epiphany so just roll with it.)
Here's another story that tells you why nametags are so important. A couple days after that happened, Sister Homer and I are riding our bikes through the city of Kampong Cham and this random guy starts calling out "Miss! MISS!" from behind us. At first we both tried to ignore him because people here yell things at the two white girls all the time, but he straight up just rode his bike in between us and goes "You are missionaries, yes?" (In english, might I add. heavy cambodian accent, but he totally knows english.) he must have seen our nametags and recognized that we are missionaries. We were dumbfounded. We pulled over at a gas station to talk to this guy who's basically dying to learn more. He goes OFF about how he's studied tons of other denominations, like 7th day adventists and jehovah's witnesses and he just wants to learn more. he knew a little about mormons, so we gave him our number and have been waiting for him to call us. Anyway, things like that do NOT happen in cambodia. pretty much no one has even heard of Heavenly Father or Jesus Christ. So it was super crazy that this guy knew so much about Christianity and wanted to learn so badly. Anyway, that was a really cool thing that I honestly thought i would never encounter in a country like cambodia. 

I'm honestly doing just fine. It's really hard to be away from home but I know that I'm in the right place and doing the right stuff, and it's changing me and my perspective so much. Sister Homer also had a hard time at first and she's totally willing to let me go off on a rant about how I want to go home and then she'll just wait for me to finish and be like, "No, you're not going home. I will tackle you to the ground. It gets better, just wait." And after I've calmed down I'm like, yeah. Being here is kind of awesome and I know it's only going to get better. Obviously its hard, but seriously, I'm cool.  I love Cambodia. I love the members here. I love riding my bike down Vial Ksaac even though my butt is more sore than you can imagine. I don't love the smells yet, but I don't think that's ever going to change. I love my companion and the other missionaries here. I just love what I'm doing. So stop freaking out and being worried about me! It's all good in the hood.

I feel like this email wasn't as interesting. Obviously interesting things happen to me, but I think I'm getting used to it so I forget about the things that are normal to me and probably not normal to you. But you also keep sending me emails saying you're worried about me, so I'm mostly using this email opportunity to set your minds at ease. I'm fine. So next week we can get back to the interesting stuff okay? Okay.

I love you all super a lot. (can you tell im losing my grasp of english?)

LOOOOVE, Sister Davis

These kids literally just followed me around everywhere. I don't know them at all but they see the American Sisters and just go crazy. 

This is me drinking from a gigantic coconut. there's guy on the side of the road across from our house who sells them. He just hacks them open with his machete and sticks a straw in there. 50 cents. that thing got me through two lunches. 

This is the road I live on. I took this picture this morning when we were walking to the phsaa at 6am. 

This is the school that's on our road. It's literally derelict. It looks like it's rotting from the inside out, even though you probably can't tell from the picture

Teaching, Tan-lines and Traffic

Suesdai!!!!!

Am I alive? I think I'm alive. Literally checking my pulse as we speak. I have officially made it alive in Kampong Cham province for 12 days. But I can tell you it definitely doesn't feel like 12 days. My body clock is telling me that my mission is pretty much over already.

Here's the other reason I'm happy to be alive. I'm in an internet cafe right now obviously, but I had A TON of emails to read through so I've already been here for a while, and I had to pee soooooo badly. And so, THOU SHALT MARK NOVEMBER 17 OF THE YEAR TWO THOUSAND AND THIRTEEN AS THE FIRST TIME SISTER CHLOE DAVIS HAS UTILIZED A SQUATTY POTTY. Because that's all they have here in Cambodia, are squatty potties. Let me tell you a little something about squatty potties: they're exactly what they sound like. Right as I reluctantly stand up to go use it, I look back at Sister Homer and with such real, genuine empathy in her eyes she whispers, "good luck!" This girl is my savior. I am sufficiently scarred for the rest of the day so that's all I'm going to say about that.

Okay what happened this week. What DIDN'T happen this week? I'm actually starting to get used to this place. SO SO SLOWLY, but surely. It's becoming normal for me to walk outside and ride down Bung Snaay with it's tin houses or go to the branch mission leader's house and smell.....things. It's actually semi-normal. It's still crazy, and I still never forget how insane this life is that I'm living, but it's not impossible. A couple days ago Sister Homer said something to me that described Cambodia perfectly: "What you see, what you smell, what you hear, what you feel, what you taste.....Cambodia is perfectly designed to just severely disturb every single one of your senses." There is no better way to put it. Cambodia disturbs all of your senses, and it will probably take me approximately 10,000 years to stop being disturbed. But hey, I'm on my way. PS I've got a few awesome pictures for you today that will give you a little glimpse into the things I see and do every day. Actually, I've got a ton. Get stoked.

Okay so let me start off with the title of the email. One thing I have to mention is the fact that I'm getting tanlines already. Everywhere. Name a tanline, I've got it. Skirt tan line, shoe tan line, shirt tanline, watch tanline. Also the traffic. I've been thinking about what would happen if any of you saw me riding my bike around here. I know for certain you'd have a heart attack. I literally am close to getting run over every single day. There are NO road rules here. Absolutely none. Trucks, motos, cars all just weaving in and around each other and there are the missionaries on their bikes in the middle of the mess. I should be dead by now. BUT HEY: God loves His missionaries. So I'm still alive......? Yep still alive.

Teaching is slightly awesome and slightly terrifying and slightly impossible and slightly one of the best parts of being on a mission. First of all, I LOVE teaching the kids here. Didn't see that one coming, didya? Teaching kids is my favorite thing to do. Mostly because my language can be much simpler, which is easy for me too, plus they're all so flippin adorable. I taught this one girl named Ganyaa and seriously everytime we see her Sister Homer and I are just like, "where can i get one of her?! She's so freaking cute!!!" And the kids are also SO smart too, which is great to see when most of them have parents that don't even know how to read and write. We also have this one group of kids that are all cousins or something. We call it "The 5-kid Special" and we just take a bible story picture and just tell them a story basically. They live in an area called Vial Ksaac, which I have a couple pictures of. It's my favorite place to teach. Also, in Vial ksaac, i swear to you I found the Cambodian version of Nanny. I'm not even joking. She was telling us a story and I had NO CLUE what she was talking about, but she was cracking me up with her tone of voice and facial expressions. She is so the Asian Nana.

Teaching can also be terribly frustrating. Like with this one investigator we have named Ming Mau. Oh Ming Mau, what am I going to do with you. This is actually the same lady whose grandson was sick and we brought her the first aid kit. But there's a problem with that. I love helping people here and doing service (which I'll talk some more about), but SO MANY Cambodians have this idea in their head that our church and specifically the missionaries are here to just give them things. We are a service church. We are always the first on call to help when someone or some place needs it. But we, especially the missionaries, are not here to give you money. We're here to give you something better than that. We're here to teach you about the greatest message you will ever know about. And it SUCKS that they don't even realize it. When we were teaching Ming Mau the other night, she was definitely intoxicated, but we don't know to what extent. So she had been drinking and she wasn't listening to anything we were saying (she also thinks that we're gods apparently. because I guess that's how Buddhists sometime view their monks, so we had to explain that we're not gods, we're just teachers. awkward). And anyway, she kept saying things like, "will you give me medicine? Will you give me money? Will you pay for my rent?" And we had to explain to her, WE DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY. We're not getting paid to be here. We're doing this for free because it's that important to us! Why do you think I left America to come to Cambodia! I must have something SUUUUUPER important to say! I wish I could just shake people by the shoulders and tell them that. So it's hard when people don't appreciate the reasons we've come here and learned their language and gave up a portion of our lives for because they think we'll just feed them and give them money. Super yap (annoying).

Can I just tell you the funniest thing that Ming said though? We asked her if she had been praying every day like we asked her to, and her response is this: "When I pray, I pray, and when i don't pray, I don't pray."

.......................................thank you. that doesn't answer my question in the slightest. Obviously it wasn't funny at the time, but Sister Homer and I were cracking up thinking back on it this morning. Cool Ming, cool.

Anyway, I got to do service last week with the rest of our district. We helped a member plant peanuts. No I'm not kidding. they were way out in the middle of nowhere and they had fields behind their house. LET ME TELL YOU: Cambodians are eerily particular about the way you are supposed to put peanuts in the ground. C'mon. I got corrected on my arrangement of peanut seeds more times than I can count. But it was so fun. I think doing service like that has to be one of my favorite parts of being a missionary. 

I just love helping the people here. Most of them have such hard conditions to deal with. Whether it's their house, the fact that their legs don't work, the fact that they can't even afford to send their kids to school (which absolutely BREAKS my heart that these amazing kids don't have the opportunity to go to school). I just wish i could change all of their lives. But for right now, I have to be content laying the foundation brick by brick. I can't change Cambodia in one 18 month stint. So I'm doing my part as a missionary and hope that for just one person, that can make the difference some time down the road in their future. 

I just don't even know what else I have to say. I honestly could write for hours about the things that happen to my every single second of the day, but I definitely don't have that kind of time, and my emails are already crazy long. Plus I've got a bunch of pictures for you and a picture is worth a thousand words; when you're in Cambodia, it's worth a TRILLION WORDS.

I love you all to the moon and back. I think about you every single day!!! Thank you so much for all of the love and support - from everyone!!!

Love, Sister Davis

This is a house in Bung Snaay that I teach at. Her name is Phalli. I was actually trying to get a picture of the whole road, but I didn't want to be the insensitive American taking pictures so I snapped this one from my bag. So sorry I couldn't get the rest of the road. but you probably get the idea.

This is Vial Ksaac. It's beautiful there. probably the prettiest part of Kampong Cham. 

                                                            More of Vial Ksaac.

                                                            YAY FOR SERVICE! 

AND YAY FOR PLANTING PEANUTS!!!

Also, you can go ahead and make this my profile picture on facebook. I don't think I'll ever get a better picture to represent the fact that I'm a missionary in Asia. The nametag, the peace sign, the Cambodian head scarf (not a fashion statement - simply to absorb the sweat, I promise), the fact that I'm planting peanut seeds. It's all there. 

This is the house of the family we did service for. We ate lunch with them afterwards. guys, Cambodian food is actually super awesome. But DONT EAT THE CHICKEN. the chicken of cambodians is not the same chicken of americans. its just...........not chicken. heed my warning!!! I think I'll take a picture of the meat area of the phsaa for you next week.