Monday, December 17, 2012

Nongkhai 12.17.12

Hey Family!

What's up!

This week was fantastic. Truly Splendid. Loved it. Yep.

So transfer meeting is tomorrow. It got moved because of Christmas flights being more expensive or something. Anyway, we got the details this morning: E. Barfuss is moving. I'm getting a new companion...again. I'm praying he is Thai. But I still am yet to have a companion for more than 6 weeks. Maybe I am just too difficult to work with and all my companions request to move. Hopefully not.

Friday...Zone Conference. It was great. We met at the Central (giant mall) in Udorn...to go bowling. Yep. The whole zone along with Pres. Senior and his wife went bowling. It was a blast. The alley was playing Christmas music too! So sweet. Then we went to the church and had the training, which blew our minds (well my mind at least). President Senior changed the lessons key indicator. We used to count something as a lesson if we prayed and shared a piece of doctrine. Now it counts as a lesson if you leave them with a feeling of wonder. It totally changes the focus of the work. Missionaries used to get caught up in praying in order to count it as a lesson and focusing on numbers. Now the focus is not the number at all, but the feeling we leave with people. I guess our key indicators can sky rocket now, but the real point is that we leave people who we meet with feelings of "exquisite wonder." So sweet. After the training we lit off some lanterns as a zone and went to a crazy expensive buffet. We went hard in the paint there. My house of elders agreed to pause our 40 day fast since it was our Christmas dinner and all. Aka I went hard at the ice cream bar. Yeah buddy. #tastybusiness.
The dinner ended up taking pretty long so we didn't have time to catch a bus back to Nongkhai. After trying several hotels that were all full we ended up crashing at the Udorn elders' house...aka I slept on a tiny couch. Calling it sleep isn't quite accurate. I tried to sleep on a tiny couch. It was a rough night.

My favorite person in Nongkhai: I love Nongkhai. One reason I love it is because of the people. One person in particular is a champ. She is 4 and a half feet tall. She has an out of tune guitar that she can't play. And she can't talk. But she wears hoodrat sunglasses. She is the best. She doesn't know how to play but she strums her heart out. She does this little dance as she plays too. It is so funny. She inspires me, she is dirt poor, can't sing, can't play guitar, but she still has a good time rocking on the side of the street. Epitome of finding joy in what you have.


Well I love you all! Talk to you next week.

Elder M. Riley Creer
The Only



#hashtags:
That surprise moment when you have to give the Thai equivalent of a wedding toast...#Nuts.


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