Week 6 Down: If I Were Going Anywhere Other Than Russia or Asia, I'd Be Gone - 8/15/17

We took group pics because Sister Khaumoingnoi left to go back to Thailand.
The Thai girl is Sister K. and the other is Sister Smith, who is another of our teachers. 

Hello everybody!

Hope that you're all having great weeks! This week has been like most of the others. We get about 9 new Thai missionaries and 21 new Cambodian missionaries in our zone tomorrow, which should be pretty cool. We are now done with week 6, so if I were going to anywhere that's not Russian-speaking or Asia, I'd be out of the MTC right now. 

Something cool that happened this week is that Elder M. Russell Ballard came and gave us a devotional on Sunday. He talked about how important it is to be loyal to the church and the Lord and to keep your standards high so that nobody ruins everything that you've worked for on your mission. A lot of it was centered on making good decisions and not being stupid. 

It is heavily rumored that we will also have Elder Neil L. Anderson speak to us tonight, which would be awesome because then we'd have two apostles talk to us in one week. 

One funny story that happened this week has to do with the tours that are going on for the MTC. Sometimes it feels like we're zoo animals because of how some of the people act around us. My companions and I were sitting outside at a table studying, and a group of about 5 tourists walked up to our table. They were probably about 2 feet or less from us and they start saying to each other, "Wow! Look at these missionaries! They're studying the scriptures! Wow! That's so cool! Wow!!!" It was very strange, but we kinda just laughed a little, and then we said hi to them. They completely ignored us and continued to stand there for about 20 seconds. They finally walked away, without acknowledging that we had the ability to talk. It was a very strange experience.

We helped host some of the tours here on Wednesday. It was pretty ironic because we're supposed to guide them around the new buildings, but we don't even go in them ever. They put all the 9 weekers (besides Chinese) in the old buildings. We pretty much have 13 Elders in a space a little bigger than a custodial closet - haha. Apparently, they save the new buildings for English, Spanish, Italian, and other languages with shorter stays. It doesn't make too much sense to me because we stay here for literally 3 times as long as some of the people in the new buildings, but oh well, haha.

Here's a fun Thai word for you guys: ตื่นเต้น it is pronounced like “dunten,” and means excited. It literally translates to "wake up and dance," so that's fun.

Love you all! I hope you are all doing well!

Elder Ridd

Here's a comparison of the size of an English triple combination and a Thai one.