Sunday, March 3, 2013

Nongkhai 2.25.13

Dear Family,

First off, sorry I missed your birthday pops. I'm an awful son. I'll repent though. So Happy Birthday! This week was pretty sweet. Elder Jex and I have a ton of fun everyday. He is a funny kid...I mean elder.

This week S. Muay wanted to build a stand by her house so she could sell snacks and food in the mornings. So she asked the priesthood quorum to build it. So the quorum asked us to help. In less than 12 hours they constructed a shelter pavilion thing in front of her house. It was pretty cool to see and help out a little bit. When we showed up they were digging the holes for the 4 corner pillars. In between the digging I took a look at the pillars. They were concrete, color me impressed. Then I took a closer look and realized they were falling apart! Pieces were crumbling off one of them. Big pieces. We expressed our concern but nobody else seemed that worried about it. They said they would fix it later. To further my uncertainty, they only had 3 concrete pillars. What were we going to use for a 4th? Well luckily they found a decaying log that was tall enough to be the 4th corner. No worries, don't fret, we found a sweet log. Oh boy. In the future if her little canopy collapses it will make a great metaphor for gospel teaching (fractured pillars can't support a roof, neither can a fractured marriage; Need to stand firm in the faith or else collapse). Enjoy the pics.

Elder Jex and I stumbled upon a beach. Yes a beach. It's under a bridge. The Thai-Lao friendship bridge. It is way sweet. Back up a couple hours: Elder Jex wanted to check out the friendship bridge. It is on the other side of the city from our house. I didn't want to go. Rumor was we couldn't even walk to the middle anymore. Sounds boring. But I endeared him and we went (is that how you use the word endear? The only time I've ever heard it is when mom calls me George, I protest and then she tells me it is "endearing"). We rode to the base of the bridge and then saw a gate directly under the bridge with some guards out front. We decided to check it out. The guards let us in (they were more interested in their soccer magazine) and we rode to a spot to park our bikes. Then we realized what we had discovered. A beach. YES. We walked down to the waters edge and started snapping pictures. Nearby were some nearly-drunk Thai people. We asked if one of them could snap our picture for us. He did. Then his drunk friend decided we needed a picture with him as well. So he came and stood in between us and his buddy took another picture for us. Super random. Unfortunately the picture taker was too tipsy to actually take the photo (I think he just focused the camera bud didn't actually take the photo) so we don't have the photo to go with the story. Bummer. I was really stoked to have a picture with a random drunk Thai guy on a beach under a bridge in Thailand with Laos in the background. So epic.

The sweet moments: For the past while I have been craving smores. Perhaps it is because in the isaan they cook food over charcoals all the time so I just have that campfire smell tempting me µÅÍ´. So last pday I bought some marshmallows and chocolate at Tesco. They didn't have graham crackers. So we called the district president in Udorn. He comes up to Nongkynonks every week to teach institute class. We figured Udorn had to have graham crackers and he could bring some to us. Well calling a Thai man to buy us an american classic was a bad idea. He didn't know what they were. Even after describing them to him he couldn't find them. Failure. Determined to eat some sort of smore, we went to Tesco and bought the closest thing we could find. Then we waited for Sunday. That was the hardest part. Waiting. Waiting for that marshmallowy goodness. Sunday finally came and we devoured them. They were surprisingly good, even with 2nd rate chocolate and weird crackers. E. Wilamas was amazed. He'd never eaten a smore before (he's Thai). He was asking us where we learned to make them, who taught us, who started making smores and all these questions. Super funny. Probably just changed his life forever.

Well life is great. I love you all! Oh and pops, your first date with mom story was classic. I busted up laughing. I never knew my dad was such a sneaky mom. Katie and Jeremy, your turn! What happened on your first date? Jeremy did your kiss her right off the bat? Or wait for the right pitch? Sam, get married so I can ask you this question too.

Much Love

Elder M. Riley Creer
the only


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