Before we left Alpine, as we were visiting with the Ulrich's, Dave said that if there was something he could do to help the Church in Cambodia, he would be willing to come to help. So ... As we were considering how we might reach out to business and government people here we had the idea to see if Dave really was available to come and do a seminar for the people here. The response from him was an immediate yes. A big commitment and very generous of him. We had the idea to have a Church sponsored event that would be focused on business more than the things we usually do that focus on a more lower income section of the population in Cambodia which is, of course, most of them. We spoke with our good friend and best helper, Vichit, who was amazed that we knew Dave and that he would agree to come. He had heard Dave before in Singapore and said that no one with his credentials had been to Cambodia to do something like this. With his help and suggestions we began to put together a team to help us hoping to use members in the business community to help us reach other businessmen. We had a couple of meetings in our apartment to begin focusing on what the best topic would be and how to focus it in Cambodia. Dave had sent us a lot of material that he had used before to draw from and that helped us to focus in on human resources which is Dave's real strength and everyone said was so sorely needed here. Vichit then put us in touch with Sandra D'Amico at HRInc and that was a huge blessing for us and they were pretty excited to be part of this event too as they knew about Dave. They began working on reaching their clients and the attendee list grew very quickly. The charge was $100 per seat and at Dave's suggestion the money was to be donated to charity and we chose Cambodian Children's Fund. We had had approval every step of the way to go ahead and have the event but as it came closer, Elder Gong said we could not have the Church sponsor this event as the Church is neutral and does not support anyone's professional views. This was a big blow to us as we knew that Dave had done this same thing in other places sponsored by the Church. But after much thought, and prayer on our part, Dave decided to come anyway as a philanthropic gesture. We were very grateful that he would still come and decided to go ahead and have HRInc be the sponsor with the Church as visible as possible by making it clear that he was here at our invitation. Thanks to HRInc the event kept growing and we had to change venue just 3 days before the seminar to accommodate the large group. That was a huge task for Sandra and her team but they worked so hard and pulled it together. The day went so well. The minister of women's affairs had agreed to come and welcome and introduce Dave. We were so honored to have her come in spite of just having been released from the hospital in Thailand where she was treated for Dengue fever. We are very grateful for her friendship as well as her husband and daughter too. We had split second timing to get Dave to the hotel in time from the airport and then kept him busy every minute. He was so very great that the attendees all stayed the whole day, even though it was a Saturday. They were very engaged with him and he was amazing in the way he moved around and kept the audience interested and gave personal attention. It was better than we could have ever dreamed and we are giving Cambodian Children's Fund about $12,000.
Dave also very kindly did a fireside for the YSAs at the South Stake Center in the evening. He was exhausted as he told us that he had been on a plane for 4 of the last 5 nights. But the audience had no idea as he did such a wonderful job all day long. Thank you so very much Dave. We pray that the Church now has more good exposure here through this effort even if we had to go about it differently than we had planned.
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