There and Back Again..... and again...... and again - 11/17/18

Big bus station that I've seen too many times in my life

Sleepless in McDonald's

Random rabbits at a member's house

The squad

Whassup my dudes?

Another good week out here. A sleep deprived week, but still a good one. 

SO, this week started great with Lanoy getting confirmed! It got better because we cleared up the confusion with Mii's parents. They are actually fine with her getting baptized and plan on coming. So that's neat. She'll be getting baptized tomorrow by yours truly. I'm way excited for her. 

We taught English as usual on Monday, but on Tuesday Elder Phasay and I ran to catch a bus to cross the Laos -Thai border and get to Udorn. We were able to do that successfully, and helped Udorn teach their English class. Hah, who doesn't love English class? It seems to be a common theme in my mission. 

We then partnered up with Elder Byers, one of my good friends from the MTC, and grabbed a bus to Bangkok the next day. Fun fact: We also took Haylee Hammond, the mission president's daughter, down to Bangkok with us. Apparently she's doing a mini mission here or something, so President moves her around a lot to help even out areas if there are any emergency transfers. So that was an interesting 10-hour bus ride. 

When we got to Bangkok we grabbed some food real quick with one of Elder Byers's recent converts there and then went to the Assistant's house to crash. At about 2 in the morning, the Assistants - as well as some other Elders that came to get their visas renewed - stumbled into the house, waking everyone up. Lol. Then we went back to bed and got up at the lovely time of 4 AM to head to the visa place. 

So far, so good right? Well, when we got to the visa place we waited about 4 hours until 8 AM. Then when all the missionaries received their papers to renew their visas, Elder Phasay and I mysteriously never received ours. Luckily, we can put two and two together, so we asked the office worker who was in charge of getting our visa stuff all ready. Long story short, we were told to come down to get our Thai visas renewed, which is all good and well, but the people in the office decided not to get our papers ready because our passports weren't at the office. So obviously they took that to mean that we either aren't real, or we don't need renewals. So without confirming with anyone, they just didn't get our stuff ready. It appears we took the trip down for almost no reason hahahaha. While we were in Bangkok, President interviewed us, so I guess there was that. 

We finally cleared stuff up though, and we will be making that trip down again in 2 weeks. I can't wait. It was great to see all of my MTC group though. Those guys are great. Seeing Bangkok also brought back a bunch of weird memories haha. The buildings are so big there, which was weird cause in Laos I'm used to almost all buildings being less than 4 stories tall, with dirt roads everywhere. I'm ready for some culture shock when I get back. So yeah, that was a wild time. 

Hopefully you guys had a little less of a hectic week haha.

I love and miss you all! 

Elder/Comrade/Secret Missionary Ridd

The Birthday Baptism - 11/10/18

La's baptism 

A cool member and his really cute baby.

Hey everyoooooone! 

I hope you've had solid weeks! My week was pretty good! 

It started off way good! On Sunday, Lanoy got baptized!!! Yay! She was super happy and excited. She cried - which was neat. Her parents also came! They were way good. They seemed to really enjoy it and were interested in the church. Hopefully they'll be able to come again this week and start learning. I'd say it was a pretty nice birthday present. 

That night the other elders and I went and ate birthday cake at one of the senior missionaries' houses. So that was pretty great! 

Mii is doing well! She has a desire to be baptized and is on track to, but her parents seem not too happy about her learning, so we will probably have to hold off on that :(. 

The rest of this week has been pretty tame. Just the English grind. We went to the US Embassy here to renew our passports because we are running out of pages in ours. We will probably get them on the 20th. 

This upcoming week will include a lot of traveling for Elder Phasay and me. We, as well as the other 20 people in our MTC group, have to meet up in Bangkok and get our Thai visas renewed. SO that'll be a lot of time spent on a bus haha. It'll be cool to see Bangkok and everyone in our group again though. 

Wellllllll, that's about all that's been up with me!

Thanks for everythiiiiing. Also thanks to everybody for the birthday wishes. 

Love ya!

Elder Ridd

US Embassy

 Brother Sai and I. He's way cool.

Helping the Blind to See - 11/3/18

Helping do screenings at the "Seeing Is Believing" project. 

Schoolchildren waiting for their vision screening

Some good Vietnamese food

 Sister Anne Khamvongsa returning home from her mission
(she's the one with her arms around the kid in the red shirt)

Hey Peeps. 

Another wonderful week among the communists! Everyone here is doing well! Let's see.... 

On Tuesday we had a sister missionary return from her mission in Australia. Her name is Lily and she seems like a pretty cool member. We also had another sister return from her mission in Thailand on Friday, and I actually got to serve with her during my very first transfer in Thailand! Her name is Sister Anne, but she went by Sister Khamvongsa on her mission. There's probably pictures of her in my emails from way back in the day. She's also way awesome! 

On Wednesday night, one of the senior missionaries here, Elder Meldrum, really wanted to have a guys’ night out. So us four elders, Elder Meldrum, Brother Sean Brown, and a bunch of other people here in the branches went to a Brazilian barbecue place. It was pretty great. I love meat. 

The other big thing that happened this week was a big service project that DIC (Deseret International Charities) and TAF (The Asha Foundation) worked together for. I don't know if I have ever talked about Sean Brown in any other emails, but he is a way cool member here. He and his wife, Asha, live here with three of their kids. They run probably one of the biggest charity organizations in Laos, TAF. They're probably some of my favorite people here.  

But yeah, DIC and TAF teamed up to help screen children here in Laos to see if they need glasses. We got some doctors from a local hospital and went and visited a bunch of schools here in Vientiane to screen all the students and teachers there. Oh man, there are lots of kids here who have some awful eyesight but had no way to get glasses. Now that we are done with the screenings, we are going to order glasses for all of them and then give them to them! I'm really excited to see the kids’ reaction to finally being able to see stuff. 

It was an awesome project, and I am way thankful that I had the opportunity to participate in it. 

Tomorrow, Lanoy will be baptized! That'll be way awesome. Her friend is set to follow her example and be baptized in about 2 weeks. They are both so awesome. 

That's about all that went on this week! I love and miss you all! Thanks for being awesome.

<3

Your favorite communist English teacher,

Elder Ridd ;)