How To Write Elder Anderson Now That He's In Cambodia + new letter

NOTE TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY

I would suggest you those who want to write Ryan do so through www.DearElder.com.  I signed up for it this week, and it is super easy.  All you have to do is put in some personal info to register for FREE and then you can write your elder.  You choose his Mission, Cambodia Phnom Penh and input Ryan’s name and then just type in your letter and push SEND.  This service then prints your letter and delivers it to the pouch department in Salt Lake City and they include it in the weekly pouch that goes to Cambodia.  The Cambodia pouches are sent out on Mondays, so be sure your letter is in the cue by Sunday night to get in included.  It takes three weeks for Ryan to get the mail, but it costs you nothing for this service.  You don’t have to worry about envelopes or stamps.  The pouch is sent express mail, so it is faster than sending it by regular mail to the Mission Home in Phnom Penh.  It is FREE and SECURE, give it a try.  Please don’t write Ryan on the myldsmail website, he only has a few minutes to read and write on that site on his pdays and we want him to spend his time writing to us.  Thanks for all your prayers and support of our missionary.  Also, I have asked Ryan to put a list of those he has received letters from in the first sentence of every email he writes home, that way you can know your letter was received by him.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEND IT DEAR WITH DEARELDER.COM
(this is if you want to add photos to your letter or other "goodies")

Elder Ryan Anderson

House 2B, Street 222 Off Nordham Blvd.

PO Box 165

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Or

(Mission Pouch Mail):

Elder Ryan Anderson

Cambodia Phnom Penh Mission

POB 30150

Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0150

Heres Elder Andersons most recent letter as well

Dear Family

To answer questions. Right now my area is on the edge of the city so living conditions are still moderate. It’s a very nice place compared to everyone else.  Very primitive compared to America. I sleep on a mattress that’s on the ground in another companionships room because it’s the only room with air conditioning that we are only allowed to use at night. A lot of the time the power doesn’t work and the sometimes the water won’t turn on either.. So you have to work around that.  The food so far for the most part isn’t bad. Since I’m near the city on p day we go to a grocery store and get a few expensive American things that keep my stomach happy. Other than that we go to a market by our house that looks like a horror film!!! I almost can’t stand it! We run in, grab what we need and get out fast! The spirit is just not there. That gets us by for the week pretty much. Haven't eaten anything too scary yet! I have seen dog and snakes and bugs and rats! But haven’t had any yet.  Speaking the language, I do with the Khmer, but not with my companion. All the American elders like to have a break from Khmer because it can literally give you a head ache. The average elder gets the language down between 6-9 months not including the MTC so I still have a long way to go but it’s coming along! What’s hard is that I only have 30 minutes of language study a day. But oh well.  

Ok stories!  Last week I had to get a haircut! And it was awesome! The place looked terrible! I wish I knew how to explain it! Anyway I go up there and take off my helmet and as soon as they see my hair there are like 4 guys that stand up and want me to sit in their chair! I picked the one that looked the least scary! So I sat down and without saying anything he just starts cutting.. and while he was cutting my hair he kept saying ''sok poah      sa?at.. Which means hair color pretty! He took a long time but he did a way good job! He only had a blunt pair of scissors and a dirty comb. I then asked him if he would shave my face because I saw another guy doing it. That was fun! Long story short I got a haircut shaved face, neck and shoulder massage all for one dollar and fifty cents!!!

Yesterday was probably the worst day yet, but it was so funny! It’s the day we ride out to Bakuu. And apparently President Smedley wanted to ride out with us and visit. So he did! He got his bike and everything. Here is how it went... It poured rain so we left late, my bike broke again, we were more late, Elder Conway’s bike broke, more late, I had to pull my companion on his bike through mud for miles! My bike gets a flat front tire, more late, more tired, finally get into town with the mission President pulling my comp and I’m riding on rims!! I ditch my bike and we miss our first lesson. In our second lesson we have members show up and ruin the lesson.  Next lesson was good but we were all so tired and muddy! Going back our investigator gets his brother to give us a ride back to our house and hour late. President Smedley was such a good sport for all of this! 

The work here in Tak Khmao is interesting, it’s very hard to explain.  We are basically building the kingdom of god from scratch like I mentioned last week. It’s hard because everyday you don’t see the immediate results from the work. You just have to have the faith that this is what we need to do in this area.  The members are a pain to work with along with all the branch leaders because they have all lost the vision and the spirit of missionary work! Sorry I don’t have very much Gospel news to share but that’s because it’s just very slow right now.  

I’m out of time and have to go into the city and get back before our P day is over!

I love all of you and please send me more suggestions on how I can make my email better!

Elder Ryan Anderson!

The Last 2 Letters

sorry i'm getting behind!

these next 2 letters are definitely worth reading!

 July 8th 2011

Hello family and friends,

This week I want to explain more specifically about what I have been doing here in Cambodia.  My area Tak Khmao is an area that has been established in the past and use to have many members. But since then, most of them have fallen away.  So my district has taken it upon ourselves to fix this problem and help the branch get a stronger foundation. They only have branches here, no wards or stakes.  I’m having to learn a lot about leadership positions and organization of the church because one thing we are doing is helping the leaders know what they are supposed to do. Right now the missionaries are doing most of what the members are supposed to be doing.  It’s hard because in order for the missionaries work to be effective and have their recent converts stick and stay active they need the support system of the branch and it’s just not there. Nobody wants to help, nobody wants to learn what they should be doing because they don’t really want to do it. They have all lost the vision of what a branch should be. So we have an action plan to ease back on teaching new people and we are focusing on working with the branch council. Training them, teaching them, trying to get them excited about the work and the part they can play. And so far the ones who have taken it to heart have seen success. One return missionary we taught is now helping us work with the Branch council because he has more say than we do. We can’t tell them what to do, even though we would like too. But he is helping us get paperwork done that hasn’t been done forever, getting people trained and organized, he has the vision. We are also meeting with the members to get them to bring referrals to us! Because member referrals are almost always success stories! For example we have one guy out in Bakuu, were we ride out to twice a week, doing missionary work for us. He brought an entire family to church and set up a few appointments for us to meet them! Such a good guy and he can barely read and talk. But he has the vision!  I’m probably going to be here for the next 6 months and be able to see more progress like this hopefully so that in the future when missionaries bring people to church, they don’t have to do everything while the Cambodians eat rice, talk on the phone, get dressed and breastfeed in sacrament meeting. and yes that all happens.  The Branch will be able to take them in and they will stay! VISION! I pray that the Lord will help us with this one because a lot of days don’t feel very successful.  Anyway, I’m having fun and still haven’t gotten sick- thank heavens! Yesterday we had a 4th of July lunch and had our own celebration! It was fun. The only thing that gets me down at this point is language and learning my area  and the people! I want to help my companionship but I just can’t yet and it’s a bit frustrating. OH well I’m working hard and trying my best to learn!

One quick story of a crazy lesson I had this week! Sitting on the “table thing” everyone has here, the Lady we were teaching was holding a naked baby boy which is totally normal! And he starts to pee all over the table! and he is jumping and splashing pee all over the place! The lady takes a shirt and just mops it up. next thing, a deaf guy tries to talk to us and he is super weird! next thing some super weird lady walks by and makes a very sketchy money exchange with the lady we are teaching, next thing, some little girl gets naked and keeps yelling my companion’s name trying to get him to look at her! Super distracting! I don’t know what else could have happened to distract from that lesson! It was just crazy…

Anyway I have to go get my food for the week and such so I must go now until next week! Love you all!

Elder Ryan Anderson

July 1st 2011

Hello family and friends! From Dads email it sounds like I missed a lot of fun at home! And Holy Cow I'm an UNCLE!! It doesn’t feel real yet! I’m glad Meg and the baby are healthy and doing well!

STORY TIME

One cool story for this week. We went and visited a less active member who has been having trouble with his wife. When we got there lucky for us his wife wasn’t at home. He is LDS and his wife teaches at a Christian church. She keeps on throwing out his book of Mormons and makes him sleep outside. (not like inside is any better) but we talked to him and taught about the atonement of Jesus Christ and lifted his spirit a little. We gave him another book of Mormon and promised him that if he would read and pray everyday and keep his faith his wife would have her heart softened. We ended with a prayer and left.  A few days later when we came back to follow up, his wife was there and they were both just glowing! There was a definite light in the family now! The wife invited us in with a smile and we asked the man. What has happened, what changed?  He told us that he prayed and got the feeling to just talk to his wife from his heart and she would be softened also. So he did, and apparently they came to some agreement for now and they live in total peace and love! He also told us he went to his wife’s church because he wants to go to church with his wife but she won’t go to a Mormon church. And he said people were asking him about his book of Mormon and that he was preaching the gospel to other people at a different church! This man has such a good heart and such a desire to do good it’s amazing! So we gave him a bunch of pamphlets that we hand out about the restoration and the plan of salvation and we told him to go preach the gospel! Talk to people about the true gospel of Jesus Christ and of the restoration by Joseph smith. We even had him practice on us like we were strangers. It was so funny! He got into character and started to act like us and held up the book and started to say. This is Jesus Christ the son of god, savior and redeemer of the world. Flips the page. This is Joseph smith, so on and so forth! AHH it was so cool to see such a big change in someone so quickly and to see the blessings from god in his family.

2nd! We teach a family right now who is so good! All except the mom. She is missing an eye thanks to the Pol Pot regime and I personally think she’s missing half her brain too. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t read, doesn’t do anything. Won’t answer questions. She just likes to look at pictures.  The past few times we have visited she has been absent and they don’t know where she is. They say she just leaves and usually comes back in a few days.  So Weird! Anyway their house is incredibly poor Big Rats and big Roaches! In our lessons we sit on the floor so we have rats brushing against our backs as they scurry by and this time I had a Roach friend decide he wanted to hide under me! In the middle of the lesson a big Roach come runnin at me and stops under my crossed legs! I didn’t want to jump up because that’s super disrespectful to the head of the house. So I played it cool hoping it would leave! But no it decided to explore my pant leg a little and hang out for a bit! I had to slowly lift my leg and shake my pants! It felt in danger so it decided to make a break for it! Right out into the circle of people when..... WHACK a little girl had taken her book of Mormon and smashed the thing!  Everyone laughed the dad was super upset at his child for using the book that we gave her to smash the bug and the spirit was gone. So we testified Prayed and left. It was wild! 

Twice a week my comp and I have to ride 13 miles out to a place called Bakuu to visit some members and try to build up the kingdom in that area. We stay for the day and then ride 13 miles back to our apartment.  They are the hardest days but for some reason they feel the most rewarding. There are a few awesome families we love to teach. They are preparing for baptism. By the way we have 9 people with baptismal dates and we have like another 12 lined up to commit. But anyway Bakuu is just an awesome area and we love the people there!

I’m the administrative elder for our branch I don’t have enough time this week but next week I'll tell you more about the branch. But anyway part of my duty it to take care of our apartment. And I have to make sure we have water. Guess what? Between 4 Elders we go through 20 5 gallon jugs of water a week!!! Pretty crazy! 

I’m out of time and must go but I hope you enjoy this email for this week and I look forward to hearing from you next week love you all!!