For the three remaining viewers of our blog, I apologize for the one-month delay. We've been up to our necks preparing for the grand opening of our new church building in Kampong Cham, and just haven't had time to get one out. The grand opening (Open House) and dedication have now been completed (yay!!), but the path getting there was not paved with yellow bricks. Actually, it was a cultural minefield, in which we blew ourselves up several times.We learned that delivering invitations to dignitaries has very specific protocols. First, the invitation ink colors are significant. You can't use black on the main part of the invitation because it's associated with death. Pink is best (huh??). Our team thought that hand-writing the names on the invitations (think calligraphy) would be a nice touch. Well, it's NOT. Anything hand-written is low class. It needs to be a professionally printed wordstrip - glued to the envelope. Oops. Reset and redo. We finally got a professional culture expert to guide us on the rest of the stuff. If we would have done it our way, we'd probably be in jail about now. We were lucky though. We delivered nearly 50 VIP invitations, and 30 came. 

All things considered, it was a good turnout. We did a custom tour for our VIP guests, and they were suitably impressed with more than just our building. The LDS Church has been a major player with Cambodian Humanitarian needs. Water wells, wheel chairs, painting schools and providing clean latrines are just a few of the projects our dignitaries learned about as they toured the building.  The obligatory speeches from a few dignitaries were nice - except for one, which was really a "vote for my guy" campaign speech. It wouldn't have been too bad, but it went on and on and on for 59 minutes. But at least it wasn't Donald and Hillary (please, no one be offended, we're viewing from afar). 

The ribbon cutting had very strict protocols as well. Red carpet (had to be red). Ribbon holders decked out in fancy Cambodian dress. And scissors that looked like they came from WalMart. Classic. 

Because of the loooong speech, everyone was starving and headed straight for the food tents - which unfortunately had no food (the caterer was late). But when it came, it was like opening night at Hogwarts. 650 people inhaled a several hundred pounds of food in less than 30 minutes (Cambodians take their food VERY seriously). 

All in all, it was a great event. Larger than expected turnout (650 ish people - we used every chair and bench we had except for 10). ALL of us are excited to be out of our crummy rented buildings and into this new one. But taking care of this beautiful building is the next chapter. LDS church members around the globe do the basic cleaning and maintenance work on their meetinghouses. This will be a new experience for us in Kampong Cham. No one owns a vacuum cleaner - many have never seen one. And bathroom cleaning is as foreign to them as pink ink on invitations is to us. Most in our area have outhouses - some less than that. 20 years from now, these will be great stories the members will tell their children and grandchildren ("Grampa, tell us again about mops and brooms - we love fairy tales"). But our Cinderella story is just beginning.