Week 12

Elder and Sister Blattman’s Missionary Weekly Journal March 20-26, 2011

It’s not about where you go so much as the people you meet. Sister Rennie, the wife one of the counselors in the bishopric in the downtown Independence Ward is one of the friendliest and kindest persons we have met. She makes everyone feel loved and she is especially kind to missionaries. She invited us to dinner Sunday evening and while we were waiting for the four Elders to arrive to eat with us, and as she was pulling pan after pan from the oven for a meal that was more like a feast, we talked and Nancy asked her about her family and how she came to be a member of the Church. We already knew that Sister Rennie is Cambodian and the only member of the Church in her family. Nancy was also intrigued because in Relief Society meeting Sister Renny had said that her mother had never spoken the words “I love you” to her or her siblings but that she knew that her mother loved her deeply. Brother Rennie began the story by telling of her father, a teacher at a university in Cambodia. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge over took their city. Her father was warned at school that if he went home he would be killed. (The Khmer Rouge killed all intellectuals knowing that this group would oppose them. The Khmer Rouge would kill 1.7 million of their own citizens, more than 1 in 5, in what was one of the bloodiest genocides of the 20th century.) Her father said he could not leave his family, knowing also that if he did not go home, his family would be killed. He could not be dissuaded by his friends to try to escape. He went home, was beaten and arrested. He and his wife and seven children were marched to an open field where he was forced to dig his grave. The family was told that if they cried or showed any emotion towards this traitor they would be shot too. They all stood there stoically as their father was shot and pushed into the grave he had dug. For the next several nights soldiers sneaked up to their hut by night to listen to hear if anyone cried or mourned for their father. Her brothers were forced to go away to work and the family became desperate for food. Each morning the soldiers would drag a body through the streets in their town to show what happened to someone who was caught foraging for food. When the boys were allowed to come home for a visit her mother took them away into the jungle to escape. She tied the seven children together in a line with string so no one would be lost. Sister Rennie was only two years old. She said she didn’t remember much except the big thorns that cut her barefeet and made them bleed. She also remembered hiding in the leaves looking at the feet of soldiers as they walked by just inches away. Later in summer time she recalled the blisters on her feet from the hot pavement. The trip to a refugee camp should have taken a couple months but it took the family three years to get out because they were caught and put back in different detention camps in Cambodia. As a tiny child Sister Rennie ate centipedes, crickets, and termites to supplement her meager diet. At one point she said she remembered eating dirt because she was so hungry. They made it to a Seventh Day Adventist refugee camp after three years of walking. There her mother was taught to be a cook. At the end of her shift she was allowed to take one donut and a piece of banana bread home with her. This she sold and bought vegetable which she pickled and then sold. With this income she bought rice for the children. In the refugee camp the family received a weekly ration of a small bowl of rice (she showed us a bowl like we would eat breakfast cereal) and a small fish. They were always desperately hungry. Sister Rennie scoured the dirt along walkways looking for any bit of dropped food. She laughed when she told us that once a year, for a birthday, children were given just one grape. Eventually, a sponsor was found and the family was found be healthy enough to emigrate. When they got to the United States, the sponsoring family in Philadelphia stole the money they would have received for clothing, bedding, etc. She started school in Philadelphia in the winter without shoes and was sent home because you have to have shoes to go to school. The Elders arrived at this point and she would have quit her story but we asked her to continue. When she was 20 years old she was sitting on the steps of her apartment with her sister and two Mormon missionaries walked by. She turned to her sister and spoke in Cambodian that she thought they were cute. To her surprise one of the Elders turned to her and greeted her in Cambodian. At an earlier time we had remarked to her about meeting Elder Ang at the MTC, also a Cambodian who was going to Boston, that he must be the only Cambodian missionary and she had said that there was at least one other one years before who had taught her the gospel. After joining the Church she went on a mission to California. Her biggest challenge was eating American food. Cheese and dairy products in particular made her gag. Mac & Cheese was impossible for her to swallow so she kept a little zip-lock bag in her skirt to discretely slip away the American food. With prearranged stealth, when her host wasn’t looking she would plop the dessert from her plate to her companion’s. At that point we asked her about all the food she had prepared that night for us and the Elders; chicken pot pie – a real pie with a special sauce, a big pan of funeral potatoes, piles of handmade Philly cheese steak egg rolls, a rich chocolate & cream cake with sliced strawberries decoratively laid on the frosting and drizzled with chocolate sauce, and food on and on. “Oh no, I can’t eat this food. I make myself some rice later. I guess I have a food fixation. I have to make sure that everyone has plenty to eat.” Her husband didn’t seem to mind but he confessed he had a hard time keeping his weight down. Her children, we noticed, were kind of picky eaters but she didn’t seem to mind. As she finished her story and told of meeting her husband at the Philly singles ward, the house they had just bought and how she was remodeling it, we realized the only time she teared up was when she talked about getting her father’s temple work completed. We understood why she said that her mother, who also now lives here in Philly loves her and brothers and sisters even though she had never repeated those words.