Well, things have definitely changed since my last blog post. I know, it’s been a really long time! We’ve moved to a house in the village. And Lanita and Lydia left last Tuesday. We have been working on getting settled in and getting everything into running order the last couple weeks. Moving tires you out!

The past couple months we’ve been working on getting the house ready on the side of everything else. After working on the house so long, I think all of us dreaded moving. However, now that we are finally moved, it’s not actually moving. I love the big yard with grass and lots of plants! I’ve been cleaning it up and planting other plants in my free time. I don’t know why, it just calms me down and makes me feel so happy.

I loved having Lydia and Lanita around often the last week before they left. We’d play spikeball, work, or just sit and talk together. We’d play games late into the evening. My favorite was when we convinced everyone to play hide-an-seek in the dark. It made some good memories!

We were talking about it the other day and we all agreed that a day off was far past overdue. We’ve been so busy for such a long time, and we never had enough time to go do something fun. Even our Saturdays were too busy. Dad has to preach every single Sunday, so that fills up saturday, his only day “off”, with preparing the message for sunday.

So we took off. Kind of anyway! The guys ended up having to work until around lunch. We went to the temple restaurant and ate a delicious lunch then headed out to angkor putt putt. We were almost there when the truck went into neutral and wouldn’t go back into gear. We pulled over and the boys checked out what was wrong. We decided that dad would go back to the house and bring the truck back to pull the mini truck to the mechanic while went putting.

So after mini golfing, we drove back to where we left the truck, hooked it to the other truck, and headed for the mechanic. We didn’t get very far before Austin was motioning for us to stop. “The wheel is coming off” he hollered up. The guys got off and pushed it back on. Then, we just barely started going again when it started falling off again! We laughed at our luck, and shoved it on again. Thankfully we didn’t have to stop again after that. When we finally got to the mechanic shop however, they said they couldn’t fix it there. So we turned around and finally found another one!

After all that drama, we went to a small rollerskating park. We were the only ones there. So we could do pretty much much whatever we wanted. A couple of us fell more then a couple times, but it was fun! It was the first time I had done anything like that since we’ve come over! After we were all sweaty and tired out from that, we went and tried out a delicious falafel and kebab restaurant.

Veasna’s little sister wanted to travel up to phnom phen with the girls to be with her sister there. We waited for her at lucky mall for a long time, finally we called to see what was up. “Oh! We’re leaving now, we’re leaving now” they said. Veasna’s sister messaged a bit later saying that they were waiting on a tuk tuk! The girls needed to finish packing up and it was getting late. We called them back and asked if they could meet us at makro instead.

We were started for home when Lydia remembered that their clothes were still at the laundry mat! After discussing what to do, we asked one of the Khmer guys close to there to go pick up the white teachers’ clothes. We don’t know what the Lady thought, but she did give them to him!

Thankfully, after changes of plans to our day, we did get Veasna’s sister and the girls did get packed up in time! They have now safely made it back to their families. I hope they have fun, but I can’t wait to have them back! It’s looking like a long couple of months right now!
This last week we’ve been working on getting the last odds and ends in place. It is finally pretty much all put away. This Friday, Thain and Austin put up a fence around a little section of land and we moved banana and lemon trees over to it. We’ll see if it floods that high or not this year, hopefully not. We’re wanting to grow a variety of plants on the plot.

I apologize again for not keeping you updated for so long, just so much happened after we got back and I didn’t want to write. The precious little writing creativity in me vanished, to where, I have no idea. And there was so much to update on it felt like a huge task. I finally decided to just update on the past while for now, and if I ever get the urge to finish my unfinished the numerous others, I can. But I really will try to keep y’all updated more now!

Heather for the Helmuth’s