Songkran--Happy New Year! (celebrated from April 13-16)

Songkran is Thai New Year. The custom used to be to gently pour water over the hands of people to give them a blessing for the coming year. Now it is a four day water fight. People stand on the side of the street with hoses and buckets of water and spray/splash water on anyone who goes by--walking, on bikes, on motorcycles, in cars, taxis, whatever. They also put 50-gallon barrels of water with blocks of ice in them in the back of pickup trucks and drive around throwing buckets of water on people. After they get you wet, they sometimes throw flour or baby powder on you for good measure. They don't care what you are wearing or what you are carrying, it is understood that you are in a "war" zone. If you go down the street, you are going to get wet! Happy New Year!

 This is an advertisement in a Tesco store (Thai version of WalMart) for supplies for Songkran! Everything from special shirts, to water guns, food, and more.

 

Here is our district all ready for fun and frolic with the members at the church. (back row) Elder Watts, Sister Downs, Sister Yim, Sister Slaugh, Elder Brown, Sister Brown, Sister Tilley, and Elder Burke. (front) Sister Phorn (relief society president Udorn Branch Two) Elder Cahoon, and Elder Terry.

Before the attack began, they gave us garlands of jasmine. This is Sister Kulaab (Rose), the oldest party goer and one of our new dear friends.

 

The little kids are especially treacherous--this little girl, Ice Cream (all Thai people have a nickname that they go by-we don't know most of their real names) stalked Ray. Surrender was futile.

Elder Watts gearing up and Sister Downs sneaking up from the rear!

 Sister Yim's little cup of water was no match for Ray's hose!

Sister Kulaab had partied all she could and was headed home!

 The attack squad lined up wreaking havoc in front of the church. They took no prisoners.

 Again, it's the little ones on the attack (with a little encouragement)!

 Elder Burke taking it like a man, flour in the face and all. Elder Proctor and Sister Tilley kept pouring it on.

 Refueling with som tam, fruit, corn on the cob, and treats. As always the members provide great food.

 Since it was impossible to do missionary work during Songkran, the elders and sisters had an early curfew--7:00pm. It gave us a chance to get everyone together for a taste of home--pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, with apple crisp for dessert.

Sister Yim, Sister Downs, Elder Terry, Elder Watts, Elder Proctor, Elder Cahoon, Elder Jensen, Elder Burke, Sister Slaugh, and Sister Tilley

Apology from Jeanene: Some things are published out of sequence. We have had changes in district assignments that gave us a new cast of characters. Some posts show the new district mixed in with the old district. I hope it's not confusing. We are having a great time with our new missionaries and miss our former ones.

Sunday night waffles!

Every Sunday night, after the elders and sisters have finished their contacting and planning, they all come over to our apartment to mix up waffle batter. We get everything ready--a bowl of dry ingredients, a bowl with a mixture of egg yolk, milk and oil, and a bowl with light fluffy egg whites. They are getting quite expert at putting them together to create yummy waffles for their dinner. We have a little visit, talking about what's happened the last few days, plans for p-day, and what's going on with their families. They also have an opportunity to tell us how cute our grandchildren are. There is always lots of laughter and fun. It's a great way to begin a new week! It's easy to see from their faces that they love being missionaries!

Sister Zaugg (Oregon City, Oregon), Sister Stewart (Las Vegas, NV), Sister Tilley (Brigham City, Utah), and Sister Adams (Kaysville, Utah).

Elder Thanawat (Bangkok, Thailand), Elder Jex (Highland, Utah) Elder King (Ammon, Idaho) Elder Burke (North Ogden, Utah).

We love our missionaries, past and present!

Our English Class

We teach advanced English classes every Tuesday night at the church from 6:30 - 8:00 PM. There are many people who want to learn English to improve their job and schooling opportunities. In Thailand, students are taught English in school from the time they are four or five years old, so they normally, but not always (see the store advertisement below) know the grammar quite well and can read pretty well, but their pronunciation needs improvement. Our goal is to help them with their verbal skills. We have a lot of fun, but we try to challenge them. We have high school, college, and professional people like teachers and nurses in our class. We do lots of different activities from impromptu speaking, to pronouncing hard words--beginning with 'V' or ending with 'L', we play a Jeopardy game with English language categories, such as synonyms, past present and future tense, idioms (They hate this one because they can never figure them out), US geography, etc. We do listening activities to check for comprehension and lots more. It takes a lot of planning, but the class time is fun. We have anywhere from four to thirteen students a week.

Preparing a one minute speech on a topic they drew at random

Great and motivated students.

THIS IS WHY WE TEACH ENGLISH!!!!!!!

Honoring the king and queen

The people of Thailand deeply love and respect their king and queen. The king of Thailand is the only ruling monarch who was born in the United States (Massachusetts). His father was university at MIT at the time. This king became king in 1946. They have done a great deal to help their people improve their quality of life.There are monuments all over the country in their honor! This one is in a roundabout in Udon Thani right by where I get my hair cut. As you can see it is quite imposing!

You will see all sizes and variations of designs along the streets with many companies displaying the monarchs' pictures both inside and outside their businesses......

and across the highways. . .

in cities and in the country all across Thailand.

Around the church

This is our church in Udonthani. It is well-loved and well-used.

The members hang out here after school and work. They do homework, practice piano (since most of them don't have one at home), help the missionaries teach investigators, cook and eat, and just spend time with each other. There are so few members of the Church here that they love the support they get from being together. L-R Wiw, Ping Pong, Jack, Tuey and a friend. All of these are nick-names. We don't have any idea what their real names are. No one ever calls them by their real names.

Sister Downs and Sister Tilley are teaching a discussion. Mai (the boy in front) is helping teach the Plan of Salvation to his girl friend, May, (next to him). Sister A (middle) is waiting for her mission call, and Mo is an awesome convert of about 7 months. The missionaries do most of their teaching at the church.

Brother Jack sharing something interesting with Tuey, Sam, Dam, and Nam (Really) and green eggs and ham, Sam I am.

The church is always swarming with mosquitoes because the doors are always open. The missionaries and members take turns hunting them down with the mosquito zapper! Sister Slaugh is helping Sister Yim stay focused on them.

It's a tough job, but someone has to do it! I usually come home from the church with several new mosquito bites each day, so I appreciate their efforts to reduce the number of attackers! Two of the sisters went so far as to hunt down the lifeless corpses of the mosquitoes they slaughtered and placed them in a mosquito graveyard. (Just as a side note, we spend a lot of time in this particular room in the church--this is where we teach English and have district meetings, and I teach piano here, too. When we're not working on something at home, much of our time is spent here.)

Saturday evening--In the background Elder Burke is helping Brother O find the right size clothes for the baptism tomorrow while a dedicated sister helps clean up for Sunday meetings.

More help to clean the church, Dam and Pim. I'm sure Sam is working somewhere because he is always there on Saturday nights helping to make sure the church looks good on Sunday morning.

Welcome sight!

Our apartment is on the right side nearly all the way to the back. At the end of a long, tiring day, this is a wonderful sight. We love our work--and rest is welcome!

NongKhai Branch conference

NongKhai is a town about an hour away from Udorn. There are many lovely people there and they were very welcoming. In Sacrament meeting, Ray spoke, and I bore my testimony. (It's about the only thing I can say in Thai!) It's interesting that in just about every meeting wherever we are, the people look to us as experts on everything and expect us to have material at hand to add to the lesson. The district Relief Society president turned to me about half way through her lesson and asked me to teach a section of it--5-10 minutes. It was about the sacrament, so not too hard. Sure, happy to!! Thank heavens for Sister Zaugg (middle front) who could translate for me.

As is the custom here in Thailand, they invited us to join them in enjoying their potluck lunch after the meetings. It's an every week occurrence in each branch.