Through all Thai-als and tribulations

Day 7
May 30, 2017 Tues
Provo, UT

So day 1 was soooo long. They dived right in and our teacher, Brother Tirrell, only spoke Thai to us. I ran into 5 people from my ward during meals, including my old roommate Elder Sweeney (who is going to Russia), several classmates and of course many of my coworkers still work in the missionary training center (MTC) cafeteria. It's pretty wild.

My P-days (preparation days - for now at least) are Tuesday. My district has 13 people, including me. Our district consists of just our class. I have 2 companions of my own, Elder Wilde from Minnesota and Elder Brown from Utah (also the senior companion). There is one other Elder companionship- Elders Truman from N. Carolina (District Leader) and Guanzon from the Philippines.

The rest are sisters, let's see if I can remember this: Sisters Roberts from California and Engstrom from Utah, Peterson from Canada and Bingham from Utah, Phierson from Alaska and Hall from Idaho, Shaw from Idaho and Rogers from New Zealand.

Our zone is super small- We have the new Cambodian district of 4 sisters (Clark, Pratt, Davis, Bashford) and a solo elder (Tuft), the Vietnamese elders (Hawkins and Rydalch), and the solos (Elder Truman to Thailand and Elder Yang to Minnesota Mong speaking). 

My housing is the entire fourth floor for our zone, with just about every companionship getting their own room (even though they are meant for 6). It's pretty wild.

My classroom is pretty nice, if a bit cramped. The new buildings are just classrooms and offices, but we aren't moving there. For some reason, we are on the top floor of every building we go to, so I'll have killer calves by the end of my stay.

We did a scheduled service project on Friday, where we went to a different residence building and cleaned their bathrooms. That day was also the first day we began teaching our "investigator". We teach about every other day, and we are only allowed to do it in Thai, which makes it so hard. They are 20 minutes, and our first was a train wreck. 2nd was a bit better, and the third went so much better than we anticipated, we got through our planned lesson in like 5 minutes, then scrambled to fill the Thai-me. We ended up committing her to read and pray about the Book of Mormon everyday, to go to church on Sunday, and to read a pamphlet about Joseph Smith. Tomorrow, we are going to try to commit her to baptism. I am unable to write her name in English, but it sounds like toy, but instead of a "t", it's with a hard "d".

We are trying our hardest to learn Thai as fast as we can. We are learning it with romanticized Thai right now, which is basically Thai written in our alphabet, with all kinds of accents and letters that don't actually make the right sounds. We will hopefully be starting script on Saturday, which makes it easier.

We've been playing beach volleyball as a zone every time we have our exercise time. It's so much fun and everyone is so good and we are able to volley! I love my zone so much- we've all grown so close and we love each other, especially our district.

We are rarely at our residence, more often we are in our classroom. We basically live there. It's tragic. On Sunday, we really met with our Branch presidency. Our meetings, however, were rather boring. And it was weird. We had sacrament, then went to lunch, then priesthood. We decided to do choir, and the guy who's the chorister was so funny but managed to keep it spiritual. We are singing a wonderful medley, with practice on Sunday and Tuesday, performing at the Tuesday devotional. 

The Sunday devotional was awesome! It was some international MTC administrator and his wife. They gave excellent talks, and afterwords we watched the "movie" Characters of Christ" by Elder Bednar, as per tradition. It was great! We are singing at the devotional tonight, with a mysterious general authority speaking.

We went on a temple walk, and took pictures as a district and zone. Sis. Roberts should've emailed a few to you - I didn't bring my camera, and we are working on getting access to our zone drive folder so we can share our pics. The first one was our reaction faces after teaching our investigator the first time.

Overall it is so spiritual here! I've never felt it so often and so strongly! It's amazing! My days are jammed packed, but it's a good jam packed I guess. I'm having fun (enough) and am able to interact with so many wonderful people! Because of the sister from New Zealand not being here on a visa, we have access to our flight details. We are leaving the 24th, but our first real day in Thailand will be the 26th of July.

Love you all! Best,

Elder Montague