September 18, 2004

Our branch assignments have now changed. We now work with Br 8 and Br 7. We gave up Br 12 and the people there we had grown to love. Gordon now work with the North District and we have a lot going there. We plan to divide two branches, one here in town and the other at Kampong Cham in September. Then later in the year we will divide the district to make a Kampong Cham District. Training will be a big issue as Kampong Cham is 2 ½ hours away. We need to use the old speaker phone technology Gordon helped to develop in Utah in the 1960's for distance learning. The other option is Internet phones but we do not have the computers.

We are running a pilot program teaching English in one of the branches. We hope to have a native person that speaks English teach in each branch. We have a number of proposed teachers attending the class and helping with some of the learning activities. Sisters Larsen and Gunderson are wonderful basic English teachers and are also our new house mates. Susan has really enjoyed working with them. Their teaching skill and ideas are great to watch.

We have a Learning Center here that teaches English but their focus is non-LDS and the needy. We have 6,000 poor members of the church that need the English skills to improve their lot in life as well. Much work to be done.

We had Youth Conference for 14-18 year olds. That activity was one of our first assignments when we came to Cambodia over a year ago. This time we made hygiene kits for orphanages. The church makes them in America to send to us but it cost more for the shipping and taxes to get them out of the port than for us to make them ourselves.

Elder Taylor does regular mission training of the three districts. Some type of training is going on every month. August was using Councils for management and September will be how to extend callings to members.

August 11th was our wedding anniversary, but we decided to wait and celebrate when we went to Hong Kong. The highlight of August was our trip to the Hong Kong temple with five families and one single sister (our maid) and Sisters Larson and Gunderson . Never thought we would be tour guides. This will be a wonderful experience. We had a great group rate on the plane and spent five days in the temple. These people will be among the first members to be sealed as families. The full filiallyionaries from here get to go to the temple but sealing of families for eternity is a whole next step in family perfection and we are happy to be a part of this. These 21 native Cambodians are all wonderful friends of ours.

Thank you for your support and interest.

Elder and Sister Taylor