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