Battambang and Central Zone Activity

On Monday, June14, 2010, we took the Battambang Zone and the Central Zone to this mountain. To the far right is where the cave is where maybe a million bats come out every night between the hours of 6:10 and 6:20. That's when they start to come out. It takes over an hour for them all to come out. We are heading first of all near the top of the mountain where the Wat is. Near the top of this mountain are the Killing Caves of Battambang. I don't know what it is called. That is what I call it. I have put it on the blog before. Most of these missionaries hadn't seen either the bones at the bottom of the cave nor the Wat and monkeys, nor the bats coming out of the caves.
The Central Zone are the missionaries assigned to Vietnam speaking. They are pretty much confined to the city their whole missions. So Scott decided it would be a great break for them to go to a Zone Conference with another Zone out of the city. They really enjoyed themselves.

Elder Ly and Sister Harlan are in this picture. This is looking up from the main bottom of the cave. On my other blog I have a picture of the hole where the Pol Pot killers would line people up and kill them, then drop their bodies down into the cave. This is now a park where they respectively have made the holding house into a wat of sorts and have a big Buddha laying down at the bottom of the cave. One of these days, I'll take a picture of him.

The cave goes further down, so of course these brave missionaries thought they would go to the bottom of the steps and take more pictures. I was very happy when they all came back up.

Near the buddha that lays down are some of the skulls found at the bottom of the cave. They are housed here as a mass burial similar to the Killing Fields. It is a very sober place, to be respected and sorrowed over in the brutal way the people were murdered during that sad period of time here in Cambodia.

Just up and out of the caves are rocks that have large holes in them. Elder Pyne, above has climbed into one of them and thinks maybe he'll use that vine to swing off. Elder Lines I think is encouraging him.

We drove further up the mountain towards the Wat at the top. At the very top of the mountain is a Wat. This is a large Buddha with statues of monks worshipping him. This mountain has many older women who wear white and shave their heads. They are also considered monks and people show them great respect. From this point we walked up some steps to an overlook and also there were many monkey's up there that loved bananas.

Battambang and Central Zones. President Smedley was in the car studying for his Zone conference talk the next day. I couldn't believe how I could walk up all those steep steps and not even be out of breath. I think it's because I walk up and down the stairs here in the mission home many, many times during a day. I guess it must be very good on my heart.

From Left to right: Standing: Elders Cox and Jennings. Sitting: Elders Seang, Ly, Sweeten, Schwindlehurst,Meas, me, Sister Sok and Elder Oldroyd. Sitting: Front is Sister Harlan and behind her is Sister Nouer. Back row: Elders Peterson, Lines, Pyne, Nybo, and Andersen. Sister Vo. Standing in the very back are Elders Phirun and Long.

Sister Sok and me. I carry my water bottle wherever I go because of the heat. Beautiful view, isn't it?

More of the view by this orange blossom tree which I do not know the name of.

Just beyond the over look are more steps up to the top. We stopped where the monkeys were and spent enough time feeding them, that we didn't have time to walk to the very top. This mother is nursing her little one.

Elders Ly and Seang having a visit with her.

Sister Vo and Elder Jennings giving them bananas. There was a male monkey who wanted no more bananas. When the Elders tried to feed him, he would hiss at them and tried to swipe at a finger of one of them. I think one of the Elders was teasing it, and so that made the monkey mad at everyone else. I didn't get a picture of all of that action. Sorry!

From there we went to the bottom of the mountain and waited for the bats to come out which you can see in the next blog.