New Elders! - 7/27/18

Painting

Pizza with friends

My best friends from a village

Hey Everyone!!

This week's been a pretty interesting one. Lots of good stuff! I hope you guys are all doing well!!

Let's seeee...We started out with serving two less active sisters, BY and BY. That's right, that is the exact same name. Except they're pronounced with a different tone, so good luck trying to figure out who's who. We got to paint their house, which was way fun. Afterwards we went out and got pizza at a random place together, and they are both wanting to come back to church! They're way awesome.

In the process of painting their house, my legs became covered in a thick coating of paint and lacquer. Don't ask how – haha - it just kinda happened ;). So my choices were to either rip it all out of my leg hair like a super fun waxing session or shave it all off. In other news, my legs are extremely smooth now.

Yesterday, U and BA passed their baptismal interviews, and J should pass his! So we'll have three baptisms this week!! That's pretty neat.

Also, we got the two new elders here in Laos! Elder Jorgensen and Elder Eckersley are way cool. Elder Eckersley is half Lao and we've been homies for a while now. Elder Jorgensen's grandparents served in Laos a few years ago, so that's cool. He's a way cool dude. I'm excited to be with them for a year in a communist country.

I'm sure a lot of you guys have heard, but there has been quite the tragedy over here in Laos. A dam in southern Laos burst due to the flooding from rainy season, and has completely devastated the southern part of Laos. Hundreds of people are still missing, and way more have been displaced - and have had all of their possessions and homes destroyed. It's been amazing to see all of the people of Laos come together and donate what little they have to help these people. Please pray for all of those affected, because Laos people are some of the nicest and compassionate people. Thanks!

I hope you all have had great weeks!! Keep being awesome! I love and miss you all! You're in my prayers. 

❤️❤️❤️

Elder Ridd 

Playing soccer with children

Zone conference in Laos with President & Sister Hammond
PC: Thailand Bangkok Mission FB page

Meeting President Hammond
PC: Thailand Bangkok Mission FB page

Tree Cutting and KA - 7/21/18

Section of the North village

Our children homies

Hey Everyone!

This week's been a good time. We were able to get a lot of good work done! This past Sunday was KA's baptism! It was awesome. She was so happy.

On Monday we went over to G and KA's house and helped them cut down a massive tree. A lot of that was us climbing up the tree and attacking the branches with machetes. It was way fun.

We went to one of the northern villages on Tuesday and visited a bunch of members there. We will be going back up there today to help plant some rice. It's funny because every time we go up there, we have a large group of children that guides us around and plays with us.

On Wednesday we did placement exams for our English classes that will start up again on August 1st. We have advanced, intermediate, and beginner classes, so that'll be fun.

Today will be interesting. President Hammond, his family, and the assistants will be flying up to give us a special zone conference for just Laos. That'll be interesting. We're supposed to take them sightseeing a little bit, so we'll see how that goes!

Well, that's been my week! I hope you've all been having a good time!

I love and miss you all! You're all in my prayers.

❤️❤️

Elder Ridd

YSA lunch

Good Old-Fashioned American Imperialists - 7/14/18

Member visit

Museum

Hey, what's up, capitalists? This week was pretty solid. We got to get a lot of good work in and made people feel special, so that's sweeeeet.

I hope that you've all had good weeks. 

For this past pday, we went to an extremely communist museum. It was pretty wild. There were a lot of large statues of important-looking Lao men and also a lot of anti-American propaganda. The first part was pretty neat because it had a lot of random Lao culture stuff, but when you went to the 2nd floor of the museum there was so much random communist stuff about fighting the "imperialist Americans" during the conflict in Vietnam. Very interesting stuff. But also very skewed. 

We got to visit a lot of members that haven't been visited in forever, so that was a great experience. One of the senior couples here wanted to go and meet a member about an hour and a half outside of the city, so we took them out there to visit.

Today was a good day as well. Awhile ago, we got to send a member off on his mission to Australia, and today we got to go out and eat with his non-member family. They are all really good at English and wanted to practice, haha. His dad is also one of the richest people in Laos, so that was also pretty fun. We went to a really fancy French restaurant. There's so much French stuff here in Laos because back in the imperialistic days, France dominated Laos. They did some pretty bad stuff to Laos, but that's over now, and we have good food because of it, so it's aight.

This week in my studies I re-read a General Conference talk by Elder Holland called "Songs Sung and Unsung.” It's a really good topic and it's also a pretty good mood booster. One of my fav quotes from it is as follows:

"When we disparage our uniqueness or try to conform to fictitious stereotypes—stereotypes driven by an insatiable consumer culture and idealized beyond any possible realization by social media—we lose the richness of tone and timbre that God intended when He created a world of diversity."

So pretty much always remember that every child of God is unique, special, and has divine characteristics that set them apart from everybody else. Nowadays I know there are lots of sources of pressure coming from everywhere - that you need to be a certain way to be good enough for other people. That's not true. Just go be the best YOU that you can be. Differences exist for a reason. How boring would it be if everybody were the same? I think that takes away a lot of the fun and diversity in life. (To read or listen to the rest of this great talk, click here).

We were able to teach a bunch of our investigators this week. We have KA getting baptized this Sunday, so that's really exciting. She's awesome. We have a lot of others coming up as well! We have about 4 baptisms scheduled in 2 weeks, and another 5 set for the beginning of August. The work here is going surprisingly well! It's probably one of the highest baptizing districts in the world. I definitely think a lot of the success is due to the faith and hard work of the members. I also feel like the Lord is preparing this section of the world for some big things in the future.

Time definitely does seem to be going fast. It's really weird! There's so much work here but I love it so much.

I hope all of you are doing great! Don't forget how much I love each and every one of you. I pray for all of you! You're all amazing.

Love and miss you,

Elder Ridd ❤️

Museum

Service project/member visit