Tug of War and Thailand - 9/22/18

Part of the finished water project for the village.

Wild Lao children playing tug of war (at the elementary school where the Handover Ceremony took place for the bathrooms & water wells donated by DIC).

Me with a goose

Hello family and pals of all kinds!

This week has been pretty good! A lot of the usual English teaching and visiting members, but there were also some pretty unique experiences as well!

On Saturday we were able to go out to eat with Elder Phasay's cousin. It was cool! He took us to check out some of his family around Vientiane beforehand too, so that was way cool. It was a way fun day though. We got to go into the middle of nowhere and pick up geese and stuff. Wild time.

We had a planning meeting for a Halloween activity that we are putting together with some members. It was pretty neat. 

The rest of the week was rather tame until Friday morning. Friday morning was the day that we had a Handover Ceremony for a bunch of bathrooms and a water well that were built by DIC at Elder Phasay's home village. They were built for an elementary school, so there was a large amount of wild Lao children there haha. It was a crazy time. We elders were in charge of playing games with all 200ish kids for about an hour or so. It was chaotic haha. These kids are straight wild. We did a bunch of races and also did a tug of war game. These children were absolutely ruthless to each other during it haha. They had so much energy and were so excited to drag each other through the mud to prove their dominance.

It was a really good time though hahaha. All these kids are way cute. 

So I am currently in Udorn, Thailand for our District conference this weekend! It'll be a good time. We are excited to be here and I am excited to possibly get my packages that I have been anticipating for almost 5 months - haha.

All is well out here! I love and miss you all!

Stay fresh, 

ເອວເດີ ຣີດ ❤️❤️

Touring around Elder Phasay's relatives' place

Double Baptism and Fidel Castro - 9/15/18

Baptism pics! 

Tavanh and Bouy's baptism pics

 Looking across the Mekhong at night

"Mom" and us at The People's Republic of Fried Chicken
(We can only assume that's what the 'P' stands for) 

Hey Everybody!

I hope that you've all had great weeks this week! This week has been pretty lowkey, so this email probably won't be too crazy.

We had two baptisms on Sunday!!!! Yay!! Both of the people, Tavanh and Bouy, are sooooo awesome. They have amazing faith and love the Lord so much. I'm so glad that I've been able to work with them and will continue to get to see them grow and progress in Christ's gospel.

English class has been an interesting time like usual, haha. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes you're so tired/bored of it that you don't wanna do it, haha. There's been some interesting thoughts, comments, and ideas the past few months, but I think this week might have had one of my favorites. When asked who their favorite superhero was, one of our students responded with: Fidel Castro hahahaha. He later changed his answer to the entire country of Cuba, but we had another student offer up the famous communist Cuban as their favorite as well. We also have had some other good answers, but Fidel Castro and the entire country of Cuba being someone's superhero was a highlight. Needless to say, the class was surprised when I chose Batman over a communist dictator. Oh well, everyone has their own taste, I guess.

This week we had a fun video call with the office Elders and the entire Udorn Zone to talk about technology safeguards. One of the things that stood out to me was the importance of good habits, as well as unity as a companionship and district. I think these two things can be applied to a lot of things we do in life as well. Also, unity is never bad when you're in a communist country with the same 4 people for a year - hahaha. I'm glad though, cause these guys are the best.

Let's seeee, we had an English student take us out to eat at a strange chicken restaurant that definitely might take inspiration from KFC. It's called PFC, and it is nowhere close to the league that KFC is in. This English student is one of our favorites. She absolutely loves all of these white guys who come out to teach English here, so she kinda adopts them and calls herself our Lao mom. She's funny. She sometimes invites us over to her house to eat these huge feasts with her family. She is also a communist government official at the border, so anytime we go in and out of the country she'll run down from her office and say hi.

Well, that's about all that I have for this week! Thank you all for you love and prayers! I know that Heavenly Father loves and knows each of you personally! As do I, but He takes it to a completely different scale.

You are all amazing!

<3

Elder Ridd

The Drought - 9/8/18

Bangkapi Elders reunited at zone conference 

Zone Conference

Hey Everybody,

It is me, your favorite communist government official. How have you all been doing¿

This week has been pretty solid. We didn't do a ton of English teaching this week because we went to Thailand, so that was wild. It was way cool to be able to go to Thailand because we could do stuff that are considered basic human rights such as: going to 7/11, saying that you're a missionary out loud, wearing clothes without getting filthy, and eating McDonald's. Just the usual stuff, ya know?

Anyways, this week was Zone Conference in Udorn Thani, so it was a great experience. They had all the missionaries in the Issan go, so that included the Udorn Zone and the Roi Et Zone which is home to my beloved Ubon Ratchathani. It was great to see a lot of my missionary friends who I haven't seen since I was exiled. This zone conference was special because Elder Homer from the 70 came to talk to us. The other Lao Elders and I gave him and President Hammond some good-looking Lao ties and they immediately ripped off their drab, normal human ties and put on their new intricately patterned Lao ties. I'm not biased about ties, but some ties are created more equal than others. ;)

Anyways, Elder Homer talked about a large variety of topics such as not dabbling in apostasy and not waking up at 2 in the morning on pday to go somewhere 6 hours away. You know, the usual stuff. It was kinda funny to watch him grill some of the Thai missionaries, cause we don't have those problems out here in our superior land of communism. 

He also talked a lot about the examples of Ammon and Aaron in The Book of Mormon. These definitely resonated with me as we talked about how they went about their work. They both started with offering their love and service to the kings and showing that they truly cared for the people. In Aaron's case, King Lamoni has already had a positive experience with Ammon, Aaron's brother. This piqued the King's interest in what Aaron was teaching, and allowed the King to trust Aaron even more. All of these things are essential to missionary work. If we don't leave a good impression on people, that will make it 100 times harder for the next set of missionaries of or even members that that person will come in contact with. Our goal is to leave everybody feeling positive about us and our message. It is also extremely important for us here in Laos. We are exposed to a lot of government officials while we go about our work here. A lot of them know that Deseret International Charities, our organization, has some sort of relationship to our church. As we go about serving the Lao people, it is important to leave positive impressions on all that we meet. If the government is going to open up to proselyting and open worship, it will only be through multiple positive experiences with us, DIC's extremely handsome poster boys, and all those who come after us.

Well, that's pretty much been out week, haha. Today we will be helping a member move some stuff, so that'll be fun. 

Oh yeah, it's been raining a tonnnnn over here lately, so that has nothing to do with the title. That's a reference to how we have had our packages stuck at the mission office for almost 5 months now. Haha. Plz help. 

I love all of you so much! Keep being amazing and show your love to everybody you meet. Stay frosty. 

<3

Elder Ridd

A small party sort of thing, thrown by Sister G

Elder Jorgensen and I attempting to take the most awkward picture we can - featuring G