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

Out of the Concrete Box - 7/7/18

Hey Everybody! 

How are all of you? This week has been pretty neat. It pretty much consisted on TONS of visiting members and also moving out of our old house.

Our old house was essentially a messy, overheated concrete box with hoses for showers - haha. We're now in a pretty nice apartment, and I don't feel like I'm dead everyday, so that's good. Our new place is also at a good point between the church and city where we teach English, so it works really well.

We visited with a lot of people. Our days our pretty much completely full, so that's good.

Oh yeah, there's two way cool miracles that happened this week on the same day! While we were riding our bikes, someone on a motorcycle yelled "Elders!" and wanted to stop and talk with us. It's not every day that people recognize you as an undercover missionary, so we pulled over and talked to him. He is a member and said he got back to Laos from living in Minnesota a few months ago. He didn't know there was a church here, because it's not listed on lds.org due to communism. He seems way cool and speaks fluent English.

The other miracle was that the man who owns the shop right next to our apartment is a less active member! He also used to live in the US and speaks fluent English. So that's cool, because usually you don't run into people who know who you are without you seeking them out.

I hope you guys are all doing well!! Keep being awesome. 

Love and miss you all!

Elder Ridd