Celebrating in Savannakhet - 1/19/19

Random, terrifying statue

Handing over school supplies to lots of children

Random airplane we found

Huge abandoned stadium

The wedding venue

Hey Everybody!!

This past week has been pretty wild, but also really fun. Right now I'm writing you from Savannakhet, which is about 9ish hours south of Vientiane. 

Let's see, on Monday we had a handover for Vientiane Rescue, which is the first emergency response team in Laos. They have volunteer firefighters, paramedics, etc. DIC (Deseret International Charities – the charity organization with which Elder Ridd volunteers) donated a load of money and partnered with another organization that donated tons of equipment. It was way cool. Something even cooler that came out of it is that Laos Rescue wants to do more work with DIC. Something they've been thinking about is having the four of us young volunteers receive paramedic training with them and then going out to help them with calls and responding to emergencies. We are wayyyy interested in this, so that may be an opportunity soon in the future.

On Thursday, we drove down here to Savannakhet with Elder Phasay's uncle and a bunch of other family members. It was a looooong ride haha. We arrived and then visited with Phasay's family and roamed around the city. This city is wayyyy nice. It's super relaxed and is way more clean and modern-looking than Vientiane, but that's not really saying much haha. It's more spaced out and has a more relaxed feeling to it. We were able to donate a bunch of school supplies to a school down here also, so that was way fun.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to go to a wedding for one of Elder Phasay's cousins. That was pretty wild. It was extremely Buddhist and had lots of drunk people. People down here in Savannakhet have also pretty much never seen white people so there was a tooooon of staring and picture taking happening. I've probably taken more pictures with old Asian women in the past two days than I ever thought I would in my life. Fun stuff. 

Today we are heading back to Vientiane. We're gonna be going back on a bus, so that should be interesting. Tomorrow is gonna be a solid day, and the first branch is going to have 2 baptisms which will be cool. On Monday we will be back on the road going to see some of Elder Eckersley's family in a northwestern province called Sayaburi, so that'll also be an experience.

I hope you've all been doing well! I love and miss you all. I'm pretty tired from lots of traveling, but other than that I've been great!

<3

(undercover) Elder Ridd

We had to be undercover outside of Vientiane otherwise we'll be arrested. We wore nice stuff for the wedding though.