Saturday, February 16, 2019

Pday is for the Fam - 2/16/19


Cows
Random picture of a wedding
Elder Jorgensen with a bunch of partiers eating behind him

Hey guys! 

This week's been pretty cool! We're back to the English teaching grind. Elder Eckersley and I have two classes right now...one intermediate class that's every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; and an advanced class that meets every Tuesday and Thursday. The students all seem pretty good and are happy to be learning.

As all of you have probably heard, we're now able to call our families on pdays. Definitely a surprise for us. It was pretty good timing though because the news came out at like 12:30 AM Lao time and I woke up to a barrage of family members asking if I'd call today. It was pretty cool. It was really strange to talk to everyone, and it will definitely be interesting for it to become a normal thing. I'm pretty sure that the four of us out here may have been among the first to call home because there's not really anywhere else that has pdays on Saturday hahahaha.

Today we went to a YSA activity at a lake house out here. It was pretty cool. We got to talk a lot with everyone and play some fun games. Afterwards we went and tried to visit the less active family of the Branch President's brother. When we got there they weren't home, but the sort of less active parents of his were. We had a pretty good time sitting and talking with them.

Thanks guys! I love you all. I don't have many pics this week, sorry. :(

Sunday, February 10, 2019

Another Month, Another New Year's Celebration - 2/9/19


Dragons at the Chinese New Year festival
My new job - volunteer firefighter/paramedic in Laos


The uncle and his granddaughter (His name is Brother Bounma, btw)
Hey everybody!!

This week's has been a pretty decent one. Life's kinda been slowing down again here with English teaching starting up again. At church we have some pretty solid investigators. They're progressing kinda slowly, but hey I'm not going anywhere so it's fine.

On Monday we visited a YSA member named Brother Khid. He's way cool and has a bunch of family in the church. We've been trying to visit his uncle and his family, because they left the church over a fight right before the church was shut down here, so around 3-4 years ago. The uncle has started to come to church again almost every week, but his family hasn't and we wanted to go visit them. While visiting with Khid he's like, "Oh, I'm gonna go there in like 10 minutes. You guys wanna come?" and we were like, "Uh yeah, we've been trying to meet with him for 3 months.”

So we ran over there and met with the uncle and finally met his wife, son, son's wife, and granddaughter, who all haven't been to church in 4 years. While we were there, a member in the branch presidency called the uncle and found out we were there. He then invited everybody over for a big dinner. So, pretty much miracles on miracles.

We all went over and had a way good dinner with the uncle's entire fam, the branch 1st counselor, and us missionaries. It was way awesome. The uncle and son cried and told us that they want to come back really badly. It turns out that their family is the first family in Laos to ever be sealed together. So that's also way awesome. We were the first elders since the church shut down that reached out to his family and he said that that meant the world to them. Big props to the Branch Counselor for ministering and caring for this family for the entire 4 years that they've been gone.

So yeah, Monday was pretty neat. On Wednesday night we went to a really expensive Japanese all-you-can-eat place with Mino's dad, the really rich nonmember banker. It was cool cause we got to hang out with their family who used to investigate the church in Australia.

On Thursday we went to the Vientiane Rescue place to hand over a bunch of firefighting supplies. That was cool. We talked about us going out with them to help rescue people in ambulances and potentially fighting fires as well, which would be a neat thing to do.

Then on Thursday night we were invited to a huge Chinese New Year celebration. It was wild. They had all kinds of crazy dragon dances, martial arts, and terrifying authentic Chinese food. Very interesting stuff. The dragon dancers were literally insane though. They did some wild stuff.

Welllll, that's pretty much been my week. Pretty fun. 

I hope you all have a great week and a good Valentine's Day!

Shout out to the best dad in the world who turns 40 this week ;).  He's the best role model I've ever had and always inspires me to be better. Love you, Dad!!!

Love and miss you all!
<3

Elder Teacher Paramedic Firefighter Comrade Ridd
;)
Dinner with Mino's family
Me with a goat

Saturday, February 2, 2019

Hey Guys, It's February - 2/2/19

Funeral in Laos
We had a Lao YSA member move to Bangkok to learn,
 so this is us sending her at the airport. 


Hey Comrades! 

Another fantastic week in the fantastic People's Democratic Republic of Laos! This week was a little bit of a slow one, but no worries comrades, it was still a good one. 

The biggest thing we were able to do this week was probably an English placement testing. We had to go and test a bunch of people and interview them to be placed into one of our English classes. We had a pretty big turnout at all of our locations so far. We also were able to go visit a bunch of members which is always a good experience. 

We were able to go to a Buddhist funeral last week. It was interesting. We had a big Lao lunch with the village and then went to a temple where they built this massive funeral pyre thing for him. After that they put the casket on it, drenched it in gas, launched fireworks at it, and watched it burn. Interesting. 

Today we are going up to some northern members and we're gonna go fishing with them up there. Should be fun. 

Hope you are all doing well! Love and miss ya!

Stay strong comrades.
<3
Comrade Ridd