Sunday, February 27, 2011
Although most missionaries from Cambodia are assigned to their home country, a handful are called to serve in America and other countries. One such missionary, Sister Try, has just returned from an 18-month mission in Ogden, Utah. We were asked to take her family to the airport to greet their daughter, and the below photo was taken there. It is interesting that one of her brothers completed his Cambodia mission just a few weeks ago, so they had many things to share with each other. Sister Try's father works as a security guard at the mission home and can speak a little English. He told us that his daughter was asked to speak in their Sunday sacrament meeting and needed a translator because she had become so rusty in her native language that she needed to speak in English. Based on the experiences of other returning missionaries, a couple of weeks will bring her Khmer back. Our American missionaries don't have that problem since they use both English and Khmer on their missions--although we have noticed that their English vocabulary tends to fall behind with their focus on learning Khmer.