#relatable

My companion knows how famous i am and how much everyone i meet adores me so he wanted me to promote him in one of my letters. i told him it would cost the steep price of 1 dank pbj sandwich from his breakfast tomorrow morning and he agreed. he is an aspiring poet so please just humor him for me if you would be so kind. his fan mail address is lambertj@myldsmail.net if you want to spam him. here is one of his works:

There is one show I truly love

Sent to us from high above

Every episode I did see

My love, my life: community

anyway..... HELLO EVERYBODY AND CUMRIABSUA!!! (that means hello in cambodian, i finally learned a word)

this week has been a week that will go down in history!!!! as one of the most identical weeks to last week!!!!!

it was literally exactly the same. but that means it was equally as awesome!!!!!!!!

i love the mtc!! i love my life!! i love getting more emails than my companions!!! so keep it up!! thx!!

this week we got 2 new "investigators" and we're teaching them about Jesus and stuff. it's really cool how much we have learned already. now i can pretty much take a basic idea of anything i want to say and say it in cambodian! I'm so excited to be able to talk to real cambodians. we also had this new thing where people who speak fluent cambodian come in and we get to talk to them/teach them and it was super fun. i saw my homie Daniel McKinley!! 

my companions stink just as bad as ever! good thing my mom overnighted me some sneaker fresheners because i know it was for my companions and NOT A SUBTLE JAB AT MY PERSONAL HYGIENE!!!!!!!! wow thx mom gosh...(okay fine, i admit i smell pretty bad. i did brush my teeth 2 days this week so i got that going for me)

also i am officially in the lead on the cinnamon roll contest!!!!! I'm so proud of you mom! i knew you could do it! i forgot that we had those Great Harvest boxes laying around the house!!!! I'm so glad you could hand make your cinnamon rolls and then put them perfectly in those boxes and ship them to me, how kind of you! elder maurer's mom still has yet to send any rolls to him. apparently they're the best in the world but I'm pretty sure his mom doesn't love him enough to send any. lol.

the highlight of my life this week has been Elder Ros. he is amazing! he's this little cute plump cambodian kid from New York. he has the greatest laugh of anyone ever, aside from the man Ron Swanson himself, and he laughs at everything. he has the strongest testimony I've ever seen and he's working so hard to get the language down. he is now known as my spiritual guru. last night his companion told him he was getting a little bit scruffy and elder ros confessed that he had never actually shaved before! so our whole district had an impromptu shave session/lesson in honor of Elder Ros' inaugural shave.

i gave him a couple of cheap razors that i had lying around and we all taught him how to shave. you should have seen the huge grin on his face all night (yes, i was watching him while we slept). it was just a really cute moment and a great bonding experience for our district. i love elder ros.

some of our friends in our hall moved out this week and it's tradition to leave stuff outside your door for anyone to take when you leave so I GOT A YOYO!!!!!! I'm going to teach some little Cambodian kid to yoyo and bestow upon him the blessing of the most useless toy known to man. it will be a wondrous occasion. i can't wait.

my favorite quote from a district member that will not be named this week is "wait, isn't the book of mormon the new testament????" i lol'd so hard. so if any of you have doubts on whether or not you could handle going on a mission, if you know what the new testament is then you can do it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i believe!!!

just to let you all know, my mom edits my emails like i was a nazi soldier in WW2. so if my letter seems more mature than normal, know that I'm still sam. (and on that note, my diarrhea count for this week is 2!!! anyone who tells you the mtc food doesn't murder you is probably your bishop!!!)

i love all of you! thanks for keeping me in your prayers. i can really feel it. keep it up! i give permission for anyone to share my emails with any friends you want. all you have to do is have your friend send me an email telling me I'm cute and I'll pay shipping and handling. you're welcome.

semi-spiritual shpeel (applies to stuff outside the church): yesterday i heard 2 talks that i think might change my life. they were talking about different things but had the exact same message. the first was by Kelly Nills and he was asking the question of how to be happy. he talked about how you can be the happiest if you don't think about your own happiness. he gave an example of when he was using a sander to sand some wood in his shop class and he was focusing on sanding the middle and making that really smooth. his teacher then came up to him and said that if he focuses first on the sides of the wood the middle would take care of itself because of the width of the sander and stuff. if we focus on others first and try to help them, our own happiness will come naturally. 

the next talk was by Elder Bednar and it was a little more churchy about the character of Christ (look up the talk, it's so good. it was given at the MTC a couple years ago). it was asking the question of how we can be more Christlike and be more converted. his answer was the same as in the first talk. forget yourself and help others. even in his darkest hours Christ was helping others. he never thought about himself. Bednar told a story of a lady whose daughter and two friends were in a car crash in the middle of the night. she was on the phone with both Elder Bednar and the EMT at the same time. the EMT reported that one of the girls had died and it was the lady's daughter. the other two were in critical condition but alive. the very first thing the lady said when she found out her ONLY child had died was to ask Elder Bednar to call the other two moms to let them know that their daughters were OK. her selflessness was a true sign of conversion. 

i want to be able to help others and be selfless.

I'm so glad I'll have the chance to do that in cambodia.

I love you all.

love, elder sam