Winter Vacation - 12/15/18

Buddha Park

The boyz at Buddha Park. We went into the mouth of this thing. It was weird.
It was supposed to represent hell. Neat.

Hey everybody!

This past week was pretty good. Not too much happened though. 

We're finally done with this semester of English. Yesssss. Now we can actually go visit people and travel the country to track down the families of Elder Eckersley and Elder Phasay. We are very much looking forward to that, so it should be a good time. This week we went to a place called Buddha Park. It was pretty neat. There were tons of Buddha statues everywhere. We went with Elder Phasay's cousin, Pocky, so that was good.

We also visited a random place where a few members grow tons of mushrooms. That was pretty weird. They cooked some for us though, so I guess we win?

Apparently we are having a surprise Zone Conference this week on Thursday and a special zone pday with everyone on the Wednesday before. That'll be strange because I'm not sure what's going with that. I'll keep ya updated.

Well, yeah that's about it for this week! It's weird because Christmas is in about a week and it definitely still feels like summer here still. Strange. I hope you all have some great times this Holiday Season! Remember what the purpose of it all is, and share some love with those around you!

I love and miss you all! Thanks for your awesome examples!

Love u guyz 😘❤️

Comrade Ridd 

Pocky with a door thing on her back. 

I Don't Wanna Go to Communist Prison - 12/8/18

Visiting some members in Udorn with some Udorn missionaries

A not-too-appetizing cookbook

Very low-budget carnival game consisting of old tennis balls and tin cans

Zone Conference

A chicken in a tree

Hey guys,

This week was cool. We got to go to church in Thailand this past week, so that was interesting. I can still understand Thai well, so that's also a plus. Speaking is weird to do though. Zone Conference was good. There was a lot of talking about inviting people, which is awesome, but if you do it here you'll end up in prison getting reeducated pretty quickly. So yeah, not too applicable, but good nonetheless. 

Let's seeeee....This week was pretty basic. We taught a lot of English. I've gotta make English tests this weekend at some point because we will test in like 2 weeks. That'll be good. It's going to be weird because after we test we are gonna have a month break in January. So we'll be able to visit people all over the place. We are making plans to go visit some of Elder Phasay and Eckersley's families in other provinces. 

Yesterday we went to visit a bunch of Hmong members and former investigators up north. It's Hmong new year this week and next week, so there were a lot of shops and games and stuff set up around. That was pretty cool to see. The people up there are reeeeeaaally poor though, so it's interesting to see how they do stuff. 

Today we helped out at a TAF Christmas party thing. We got together with a bunch of English students from TAF (that member run charity) and went to visit a really poor school. We went there and played lots of games, colored pictures, cut out snowflakes, and other fun stuff like that. It was a pretty cool experience. 

That's about all that's been going on here haha. 

I hope you are all having great weeks! I love and miss you all. Thanks for being kool.

<3

Elder Ridd

 

Zone Conference

Church is Canceled this Week due to Communism - 12/1/18

Some shots of the new chapel

Hey dudes.

Hopefully your weeks have been adequately enjoyable. This week was another wild ride. 

On Monday we taught English, as is tradition. Nothing too crazy there. 

Then on Tuesday, Elder Phasay and I got to go back down to the wonderful city of Bangkok. Wahooooo. At least this time we were able to fly for an hour instead of taking a 10 hour, extremely uncomfortable bus ride. So that was good. While in Bangkok, we stopped by one of Elder Phasay's old areas. We also got to stop by my first area, Thonburi, for a tiny bit so that was kinda neat.

On Wednesday we woke up at 4 in the morning and went to get our visas renewed. Good news, the office decided that we exist this time, so we were able to get it done! Now I don't have to worry about visa stuff ever again. Hopefully. We then caught a flight back to Udorn and had to stay the night there before busing over the bridge to Laos the next morning.

On Friday and today, we were able to participate in the final parts of the Seeing is Believing project, and got to go hand out glasses at the schools that we screened. It was way cool to see all of the kids finally able to see stuff. We also went to the village chief's office and gave out free reading glasses to anyone that showed up there. We had around a few hundred people show up for that part, so that was kool.

We also got to see the church building finally completed!!! It looks amaziiiiiing. It's probably the biggest/nicest church in the mission now.

Speaking of church, since tomorrow is Laos National Day, church was canceled in Laos. Laos National Day​ is a day that everyone in Laos takes pride in being communist, so they just get really drunk and party. They also enjoy imprisoning white people/church members for little to no reason, so the leaders decided to be safe and cancel church. Right now, the other Elders and I are on a bus going down to Udorn so we can attend church there tomorrow. I love traveling so much. Ha ha ha. We will stay in Udorn for both Sunday and Monday because Monday will also be our zone conference. I'm looking forward to it. 

Wellllllll, that about sums up this week! Just a lot of traveling and service for the most part!

Thanks everybody for being awesome, and I encourage you all to show service this December as Christ did - as a way to remember Him and His example.

I love and miss you all!

Your fav communist, 

<3

Comrade Hayden