Chiang Mai 9.24.12

Hey Family,

This week was great. This morning I went and played with tigers. True Story. It was pretty awesome. We played with baby tigers and the big boys too. Fun stuff.

This week I went to Lampang on exchanges. It was way fun. E. Berbert is way funny. This is his first transfer so he is pretty new, but way hilarious. We had a good time. #thathurtstheteammoment: We were teaching these two guys off the invite and it was going great at first. We said an opening prayer and one guy said he felt the power of it. Yes. We start talking about who God is and how he helps us. I was trying to explain how with the gospel they can have more happiness than they have now, I said, "You can have more happiness than this." Then one guy says, "You're gonna need to speak clearer than this for me to understand." Ouch. Then it went downhill from there. We asked to make a return appointment. Nope. Asked for their number to call them later. No bueno. They flipped, "What do you want my number for? What if you call me and I'm outta town?" It was pretty weird. Nutshell: Trainwreck. Ironically they worked for the train station.

So Sister It, the sister that failed her interview last time, passed. She will get baptized on Friday. Go Team! Her son should interview this week and hopefully get baptized on the same day. That will be sweet. Brother Rak (translates to Brother Love) will interview on Tuesday too. So this could be a very good week.

Transfers are this week. We'll find out tomorrow if anyone is moving and if we need to go down to the meeting or not. E. Wilamas really doesn't want to move but it's likely he will. We'll see though, anything could happen.

Spiritual Business: This week we learned about Becoming. The entire mission received training on a talk by Elder Oaks from 2002 titled 'The Challenge to Become.' It is amazing. It talks about how knowing and declaring is not enough. We need to do and become. That is the purpose of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, this life too, to become like Christ. If we want to go to the Celestial Kingdom we need to do the things that will help us become the type of person worthy to inherit our Father's kingdom. I gained a new perspective on things this week. Great talk. Read it.

Much Love,

Elder M. Riley Creer

The Only

#Hashtags:

After Tiger Kingdom, I'm determined to be a zoo keeper #somethingmysisterwouldsay

Thankful that I grew up in a home with nightly family prayers. #blessed #myfamilyrocks #sponsored

I tried to send 2 emails of pics and it said your email rejected them...sorry.

Dad- digestion issues are the norm in Thailand. Everyone gets hit...even the locals. #consequencesofaspicyculture

Chiang Mai 9.17.12

Hey Family!

This week was an adventure. Well every week is an adventure when you are in Thailand.

English Class Fail- At the end of english class we have a 10 minute spiritual thought where we try and help the students feel the spirit so they will be interested in learning more about the Church. For the past few weeks the thought just hasn't been working. We have been trying to watch a Mormon message or some other Church video and each time something goes wrong. Well this past week we had it all worked out. The laptop was there ready to go. The projector was all set up. The video was picked. All of our ducks were in a row (as Mom would say). So we start the video. It was about the birth of Christ. The angel is appearing to the shepherds and telling them about the Baby Jesus and everything is going great. The shepherds start in to town to find Jesus and are about to find Him when the video freezes. Right before the climax of the video, the most important part, it stops. Bummer. E. Wilamas got up and tried to save it by explaining that the shepherds were about to find the Baby Jesus but everyone was still pretty confused. So what was supposed to be a spiritual thought turned into a train wreck. #goodtimesinenglishclass

This week was District Conference. Elder Gong of the Seventy was here. He is in the Asia Area Presidency. He is phenomenal. The meetings were super great and perfect for our investigators. They talked a lot about doing the basics (Reading the scrips daily, praying daily, going to church weekly, paying a full tithe) in order to prepare Thailand for a temple. These people have incredible love and appreciation for the temple. It is remarkable. The leaders are really trying to help the members understand they need to be worthy for a temple before they will receive one. It was fabulous.

#Scareoftheweek: The person who was supposed to translate for the Saturday evening session wasn't there (it was E. Mondragon (aka one of the zone leaders) and they got stuck with some business or something). I was sitting with the choir (right behind where the translator was supposed to sit). The meeting starts and the other members of the choir realize the translator isn't there, so they hand the microphone to me and tell me to start translating. Fear. Nausea. Cold Sweats. Hot Sweats. Throat Swelling. Cardiac Arrest. These are just a few of the symptoms I started experiencing. So I start moving to the front row where the microphone is, trying to comprehend the fact that I'm about to translate for Elder Gong and President Senior (they are kind of a big deal) not to mention all the other members in the audience. Luckily Sister Murray walks up and saves the day (she translates every week for sacrament meeting and is pretty baller). She asked if I was going to translate. Yeah right. So she sits down, looking just as stressed as I was until she showed up, turns to me and says pray for me. I did. Twice. She did well in the end though and the meeting was stellar. Narrowly avoided a catastrophe. #translatinghorrorstories

We had an investigator interview for baptism on Sunday. She didn't pass. It was a bummer. She has never prayed and asked God about the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith or anything really. She feels like asking God questions is sort of like challenging God. She believes everything and is willing to keep all the commandments though, she just lacks that spiritual witness. I realized how important that spiritual witness really is. When tough times come, if we don't have that spiritual witness our belief will crumble. No matter how strong we think our belief is, it can't withstand the storms of Satan. We need to build a firm foundation in Christ and to do that we need to pray and ask. When we have that spiritual witness, we can withstand the buffetings of Satan because our foundation is firm, steadfast. We also need to understand that God loves us and is waiting for us to ask. He won't upbraid us for asking, He will rejoice that we are knocking.

Well Thailand is still great. Being a missionary is supreme. I miss you all. Life is good and I am happy.

Much Love,

Elder M. Riley Creer

The Only

#hashtags:

We were going to go ride elephants today but our guy cancelled on us because it is too wet. #rainseasonstrikesagain

E. Wilamas' Favorite Phrase: "You Sneaky Mom!" #Yes

Sorry no pics this week, this computer is being a creep.

Riley Pictures 9.10.12

#Hmongswag

Jungle time.

Chiangmai

lost count...psych I didn't even try.

I LOVE MOUNTAINS

Epic shot.

The Bellagio Fountains...Thai-sized

Us, Brother Champ (he baptized her) and Sister เดือน (she's 25...not 13)

#realHmongswag

Chiang Mai 9.10.12

Dear Family,

What's up?

Life is good.

Last Pday: We went on a tour of the mountain. It was sweet. We saw a crazy Buddhist temple, lots of flowers (Bhubing Palace), and a Hmong village. It was pretty sweet. The bad news: That morning I was down to eat pizza at this almost-Italian place but E. Wilamas wanted to eat isaan food. So we go eat the isaan food and then take care of some stuff and then go meet the zone leaders to hit up the mountain tour. Well we are just having a grand ol' time taking pictures in Hmong clothes when it hits. Digestion Devastation. I'm praying there is an actual bathroom at the next destination (the Buddhist temple) so I decide to endure the winding, curving, meandering car ride. It was the longest ride of my life. The entire time I thought my insides were going to explode. I prayed hard. REAL hard. So we get to the temple and I bail out of the truck and am walking/jogging to the bathroom. I'm frantically following signs that lead me to "the bathroom." I barely made it. Toilets? Don't have em. It was a glorified hole in the ground. Talk about a quad workout. Toilet Paper? Not a chance. Next thing I know, I'm missing a couple pages from my planner and a tourist map of the Bhubing palace. Lesson Learned: never eat isaan before you go on a mountain tour of places that don't have real bathrooms.

*Note to the Editor: Whether this is appropriate for the blog is up to your discretion.*
(The Editor deleted two sentences)

เดือน got baptized on Saturday. #holler The missionaries sang a special musical number for the baptismal service. Pre-mish, singing was never a strong point of mine...well it still isn't a strong point but now I don't as embarrassed. The best part was the confirmation on Sunday. She is Hmong (Like the people we went and visited last Pday) so she wore her authentic Hmong outfit. It was SICK. We took pictures so don't even worry. It was great to see her get baptized though, she is way solid. A bunch of our investigators were able to go too, so it was just a great all over the place.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to teach a Filipino man. It was awesome. It was a testimony to how the Lord prepares people to receive this gospel. He is in Chiangmai working to provide for his kids who live with his ex-wife. He leaves near a member of our branch (also Filipino) and talked a lot about the influence she has on him. He said that whenever he is around members of the church he gets this feeling that won't go away. He said it bothers him, it keeps him up at night, it makes him want to learn more. It was amazing to hear him describe the way the Spirit is working in his life to lead him out of the darkness of sin into the light of the gospel. #epicsentence. He was so sincere, the spirit was so strong in the room. It was incredible. The Lord truly does prepare His children to hear the gospel and leads them to it.

Much Love,

Elder M. Riley Creer
The Only

#Hashtags:
No elephant rides today...the brother who trains them is sick. #NUTS
Made mac and cheese yesterday #tastybusiness. Felt like home #Amurrica.

Pictures 9.3.12

Temple time


Me and some white guy...#psych


Yeah I rang that bad boy

#yikes ..... If Thailand had scouts E. Wilamas would be an Eagle #beprepared

Chiang Mai 9.3.12

Dear Family,

So Chiangmai rocks. We have a good time. There is this ancient wall with a moat that surrounds part of the city. It is way sick. When I ride by it on my bike I feel like a warrior riding my stallion into battle against the invading Hmongs...ok not really but really old walls are pretty neat.

I didn't have to teach priesthood meeting yesterday, but I did have to translate it. A canadian couple came to Thailand for a conference and came to church, so I translated for him and and also for our Filipino investigator that doesn't speak Thai. It was rough, the lesson was on home teaching. On one side of me I had our investigator who had no idea what home teaching was and on the other a guy who did. Lets just say it was stressful trying to make sure both of them got something out of the lesson. I also had to translate for the youth sunday school class. This guy who works at the US embassy just moved here and none of them speak thai. So I translated for their two sons in sunday school. Basically I don't like translating at all...it stresses me out. This is how it generally goes: I start translating a sentence/thought but don't catch it all, so my only option is to make something up and fill in the blanks. But while I'm making something up I miss the next part of the lesson so then I have to make that part up too. In the end, very little of the lesson actually gets translated. #messybusiness.

Lord Working Through Me Experience: We were teaching this lady that has been learning and coming to church forever but hasn't been baptized because of some issue with a past husband or something. We didn't plan on teaching her that day so we didn't have a commitment to give her. We were teaching about trusting in the Lord and I was trying to think of something to give her when I thought just give her a baptismal date. I sort of second guessed myself though, thinking I know she has an issue with her past husband and will probably say something like how she needs to figure that out first. Well I asked her if she'd prepare to be baptized in October and at first she wasn't so sure because of her wacky issue. But then she said she just needed to trust in the Lord and agreed to the date. It was awesome to see the Spirit working inside her, helping her apply the principle we had just taught and making a step closer to baptism. It was pretty awesome. The fact that she gave us mini donuts to eat after we taught made it pretty awesome x 2.

Yesterday was fast sunday. We forgot to start our fast until 6 pm on Saturday. Starting your fast late is the worst. Everyone else at church is eating all sorts of good stuff and we can't yet. Awful. Working on an empty stomach is no fun too. It's hard to share the gospel when you are physically drained. I feel like people took one look at us and our half-smiles (all we could manage) and peaced out. By the time it was time to go home we were both utterly exhausted and had zero energy.

Humorous Story: Friday night. I am just finishing recording the day's adventures in my journal when E. Wilamas comes in and tells me to go look at the bathroom. I go in there and there is water shooting out of the wall. There is a faucet about 3 feet off the floor (not sure why it's there) that broke when E. Wilamas turned the handle. The entire fixture snapped off. So water was streaming out of the wall. Classic. So we turned off the water and decided to fix it the next morning. Well the temporary fix was a stick wrapped in a plastic bag shoved into the broken piece of pipe to stop the water show. It worked...sort of. Yesterday E. Wilamas replaced the stick with a pipe plug thing (yeah...I dropped out of plumbing school) so now everything is good. Good times.

So yeah...life is great still. Can't believe it is September already. Peace Out.

Much Love

Elder M. Riley Creer
The Only

Sam- no elephants yet but next week we are going to go ride some. true story.
Dad- We couldn't meet the girl that brings her friends this past week but I think we have an appointment tomorrow.
Mom- Get better. Please :)
KandJ- สู้สู้.

#Hashtags:
#thingsimiss: Dishwashers, more than 2 slurpees flavors. #Amurrica
When your companion accidentally drinks green tea and your next lesson is on the Word of Wisdom #irony