Happy 60th Birthday to President Smedley/ A Baptism

We invited the office staff and some new Cambodian missionaries to join us along with 2 Senior Couple for cake and ice-cream. So it was a nice crowd of 14 people. The frosting turned out okay even though I forgot and put 1/2 the brown sugar it should have had. I should have licked the side of the cake pan and then you wouldn't see the extra frosting!

Sister Nouer (say New-a with a smile and your teeth together.) is a new Cambodian missionary. She and another Elder are starting out their missions without going to the MTC. They go in June with 2-3 other missionaries who just received their calls. These two had their calls for 3 months already and so Scott had them start now. I am Sister Nouer's companion until the new missionaries from the MTC come in tomorrow. We have 8 new missionaries coming in. Sister Nouer came into my office to tell me Good Night. There is one American sister coming in and they will be companions for a day. Sister Nouer is so willing to do what she needs to do. I went through her clothes and she had some short skirts and denim pants about 3 pair and 2 pair of high heels to do missionary work in. She was still left with 4 useable skirts. Tomorrow morning we will go next door to a store and see if they have any long enough skirts. I think she will have to wait until she goes up to her area. But she had a good attitude about getting rid of unuseable items. High heels are not good biking shoes or walking shoes. I mean, these were 4 inch heels! Her family will bring her in 2 pair of other serviceable shoes tomorrow morning.

We visited a branch that had a baptism after. Janet, on the left is an investigator from China. She speaks no Cambodian. She just dropped in after work because she couldn't go to Sacrament meeting in the International Branch. She works 7 days a week and 12 hour days with 2 days off a month! She is looking for different work. She had never seen a baptism, so we invited her to come. She loved it, but was surprised that women couldn't baptize or hold any priesthood. The other sister is a returned missionary, Sister Mouk, who did some translating for the talks for Janet and me.

These are two of the young men baptized that I talked about in one of my weekly letters. The Elders felt impressed to stop and talk to two young men, and ended up giving 13 other people pamphlets and got many return appointments. The young man in the white shirt and tie on the right is one of those young men. The other with the white shirt also got baptized, but I don't know if he was one of that other crowd. The missionaries from L-R: Elders: Leng, Hermann, and Stevens.