Tuesday, September 4, 2012

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

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