11-10-14

 Leih hou ngohge faehzernghou gatihng!

PICTURES!!!!!!

I'd send you a bazillion, but I don't think the email would ever make it. Needless to say, I'm excited, and now that I can send them, I will start taking plenty more.

This last week was pretty epic. We did a lot of fun things, got a lot of work done, and made a lot of progress. We had TRC for the second time on Saturday. TRC is where you go teach random members who volunteer. You get about twenty minutes with each of them to teach a specific thing. I wrote down about five sentences in my language book, but only used one. The rest of the time I just went off of memory. I'm still amazed that after only four weeks I can teach a full lesson, teach an investigator how to pray, how to receive answers to their prayers, and invite/commit them to prayer.

Today we went to the temple, as usual, but this time we decided to do Sealings, rather than Endowments. It was an amazing experience. As I was being proxy for a son, and the officiator was reciting the ordinance, I could not but help remember when we went through the temple as a family. I was full of emotion and love for this gospel and for you all, and was immensely grateful for the fact that we have been sealed in the temple. It is a blessing second to none.

Perhaps the funniest thing that happened this week was while we were sitting at lunch on Friday. My comp, Elder Beresford, does this amazing magic trick with his ring. He puts it on his middle finger, and then makes it change fingers but slapping it against his wrist. The first time he showed it to us, we were dumbfounded, because it looked realistic. But then he did it again and we realized what was happening. He puts his middle finger and index finger against his arm, then says "WHABBAM!" and takes his index finger off and puts his ring finger on. But his fingers look enough alike that it seems realistic. Once you figure it out, though, it's hysterical. So, at lunch, he did it for this new guy who is speaking Lao, and the guy believed it at first, which made us all laugh. Then he figured it out and went into some fit of obnoxious laughter which is most definitely not human. It sounded like Sister Daily being attacked by a chipmunk. We laughed for ten minutes solid, and everyone in the cafeteria was just staring at us.

Life is good.

Except the food, which tried to kill me. 

And thank you all for supporting me. I like to play the tough guy, but already this experience has been very difficult. I'm very grateful to know that I have family back home who are proud of me, and are there for me. I will make you proud.