Week 3: Elder Ridd Learns to Read. 7/25/17

Elders Todd, Ference, Ellsworth, and McDonald

All of the Cambodian missionaries, leaving the MTC

Elder Tuft, leaving the MTC

Hello Everybody!!

I hope you all are having a great week!

This week has been pretty much the same as the past few. I've taught many lessons to many new "investigators" and have studied for about nine hours a day, every day! Something interesting this week is that the older Thai district, as well as the Cambodian district who were in our zone, left! The Thais left yesterday at about five in the morning, and the Cambodians left today at about 1:50 PM. 

The Cambodian district had 4 sisters and 1 elder in it, so the elder was a companion to one of the Thai missionaries who left on Monday. Since I am in a threesome, I was selected to be the companion of the Cambodian elder, Elder Tuft, for the past two days. He's a really cool guy. It was weird to be in a normal companionship for two days, but now I'm back to normal. 

We learned the Thai alphabet last week and have begun to learn how to actually read it now. I can slowly read, but the hard part is that in Thai, all the words are put together - so you can only know when the word ends by recognizing the word itself. Which is also difficult because half of the 46 consonants have different ending sounds than the sounds they usually make. 

So Thai is still really hard, but it's getting better. Elder Jorgensen and Elder Byers were selected to be our new zone leaders since the older Thai missionaries have shipped out.

I hope you're all doing great! Sorry about the short email, but not too much has been going on - haha!

I miss and love you all!

Elder Ridd

The Pringles tower of Elder Ference

Week 2 = Donezo. 7/18/17

We were able to walk around the temple on Sunday, which was pretty cool.
(L-R) - Elder Petterson, Elder Pool, Elder Ference, Me (Elder Ridd), and Elder Todd.

Elder Petterson, Elder Pool, Elder Ference, Elder Jorgensen, Me (Elder Ridd),
Elder Todd, and Elder Byers

Hellooooo Everybody,

This week has been a roller coaster - hahaha. My MTC district is awesome and the teachers I have are really cool, but Thai is sooooooooooo difficult and I don't really like how every single day is the exact same as the day before. 

Last Wednesday we got soooo many new people in the MTC it was insane. The best part was annoying them by saying, "Welcome to the MTC" to everybody who had an orange dot on the name tag, which indicates that they're new. Literally everybody in the MTC says it to them, so they get super annoyed by it and it's great.

Faa, our investigator, revealed herself to be our main teacher and she's from Thailand - so she's reeeaaally good at Thai and speaks super fast. I can understand the gist of what she says but I miss words here and there. Thai is literally insane. We have started to learn the 44 consonants of the script and need to know them by tomorrow, because the teachers aren't going to write in the Romanized form anymore. 

The way the language and words are set up is very strange. In the Romanized version, c's are pronounced as j's and x's sound like you're trying to pronounce a u but you're smiling. It kinda sounds like the "UH" sound you make when you're punched in the gut. It's super easy to accidentally say a u when you meant an x. There's tons of other weird differences too, but let me talk about the tones real quick...

Tones are the worst - hahaha. So, chxa is the word for believe, chua is the word for evil, and chua with an uptone is the word for a bacteria. Also: mxa means when, but mua is the word for chaotic, or someone who's just a total mess haha. 

You can make a sentence by saying khaw khaaw khaw khaw khaaw khaw. One of those means rice, one means he or she, one means to enter, one means white, and one means knee. All different tones, of course, which is suuuuper fun (not really).

But yeah, there are times when you feel super good about your Thai and then the next day you feel like you'll never be able to speak it, because your teacher goes off and tells a story and you only pick up like three words, hahahaha.

It's all good though! Not too much happened this week really. Lots of studying, class, studying, working out, class, and then collapsing into bed, haha. So far, no devotionals from any apostles, sadly. My companions and district are still all super cool so that awesome! I'm super pumped to actually go to Thailand though!

I hope you all are doing great! 

Love and miss you all!

Elder Ridd

Sawa dii khab: The First Email - 7/11/17

Elder Ridd, with MTC companions Elder Todd & Elder Ference

Hello Friends/Family/People!

This has probably been the longest week of my life so far, hahaha. After I was dropped off at the MTC, I was promptly taken away by an Elder, called a "host"- heading somewhere in Montana - who took me where I was supposed to go. I was then given a large stack of books and a bag from the BYU Bookstore to put them in. My "host" then said that I was too late to meet my class and that they were all in an orientation meeting, so I had to drop all of my bags in the classroom and literally run to the big orientation meeting. I was then seated with a bunch of random Elders. There were about 700 new missionaries that entered to MTC that day, so it was pretty crowded.

The orientation was alright; it was the MTC presidency talking to us. Afterwards, they told us to go to the cafeteria and that any Elders without their companions yet would meet them in class after our dinner, which for some reason was at 4:00.

As I was waiting in line, some Elders in front of me heard me talking to other people about going to the Thailand Bangkok Mission, so they turned around and turned out to be my companions. Yep, companions. I'm in a trio and both of them are really cool. Elder Todd is from Kaysville, Utah and is tall and does cross country; and Elder Ference is from Holladay, Utah. We ate dinner together and then headed to our class to meet our district. The other people in our district are really cool people. We're the only trio and there's a total of 11 people in our district, all Elders. There is a whole other district going to our mission as well, and they have 11 missionaries as well, but they have a trio of sisters. There's also a district that has been here for 6 weeks already that has a bunch of people in it.

Class was crazy. Our teacher is Brother Sugihara and his family is from Japan, but he served in Thailand. He pretty much shoves a ton of Thai into our heads each class. We taught our first "investigator" in Thai on Thursday, sooooo yeah, that was interesting. Her name is Faa and she took my Thai Book of Mormon. I got it back though so it's all goooood. I handed it to her while we were attempting to explain it, and she said a bunch of stuff really fast. Not knowing what to do I just said, "Uhhhh, cay?" which translates to: "Uhhhhh, yes?" and then she kept it. The next day we taught her again, but we learned a lot more Thai in the course of that one day in between. We subtly swapped the copy of mine that she had with a cheaper one so I have mine back. We taught her again just yesterday and each time is better because I can actually understand a bunch of Thai gospel words now. I know how to pray, say the Missionary Purpose, and a bunch of random gospel related words in Thai now, but I still have noooo idea how to say a lot of basic things besides Hello, are you good, and a few random verbs. But it's going well. I have to have about 400 Thai words memorized by Saturday so I'll let you guys know how that goes.

On Sunday night we watched a really good talk by Elder Bednar called "The Character of Christ". It was suuuuuper good and it was about turning ourselves outward instead of focusing on ourselves. You all should watch it cause it's gooooooood. (Click here to watch the BYU-I talk by Elder Bednar, which is similar to this particular MTC talk.) No apostles have talked to us yet, but they might tonight because Tuesdays are usually when they have General Authorities come out to the MTC.

The days have been super long, but they're getting better. I feel more confident in Thai and we're on a more normal schedule now so that's good. We were asked how we want our names in Thai spelled and apparently mine is gonna sound like Elder Reed, cause Thai people pronounce things differently. Oh yeah, and apparently when they say Elder it sounds more like "ELDAAAA", so I will now be known as "ELDAAA REEEED" for the next two years! My district already calls me that now though so I'll get used to it, haha. If any of you walk by the MTC and hear "ELDAAAA" just know it's the Thai missionaries talking to each other.

I hope you are all doing great! Miss you all and love you guys!

Phom rag puagkhun! <3

ELDA REED


Some of these pics are from the new MTC buildings. Sadly, I don't have class in them, but they're super cool inside and have crazy awesome murals. I'll try to send pics of some next week.