Itss 2025🎉🎁🎉

 Whats up

Hope you all had a great new year. I can't believe it's 2025, having the new year in summer weather just doesnt feel real. I've had a great week though. I wont have another email until next thursday because we have transfers. My trainers dying so I'll get a new trainer. Crossing my fingers i get another veteran because with all the growth in the mission its been common to get a companion thats only been in the mission a transfer longer than me.
This weeks been great tho, we had a splits this last tuesday with our DL so we went to Nong Kai. We went to did their english class with them and got to have food with their neighbor. Some ppl were doing fireworks for the new year so that was sick. We got to exchange the wednesday for a lil but we only had a lil time cuz we had to make the 5 hour trip home at like 3:30 pm.
Rest of the weekdays were pretty normal. Friday we did sports night and we decided to bet with the thai kids that if we won they have to come to church and if we won would buy them dinner. Some of them were actually ballers this day so our first game ended was a 9-9 tied game. Dont even worry tho we clutched and Elder Saunders hit a 3 to give us the win. We pushed our luck a lil too much tho haha and challenged the next team to but score was 10-8 and one of them managed to hit his first 3 of the game to win😭 They havent cashed in their free dinner yet tho so we'll see if they remember. Too be fair tho the bet didnt get the other team to church haha, gonna have to try a dif method haha.
We had a new years activity this saturday that had a pretty good turnout. We jus had a lil meal and some members shared a few spiritual thoughts. Then got to finish off the evening with dinner with Sister and Elder Watts. Theyre the senior missionaries that are serving in Udon and were visiting Udon. They treated us to dinner at a frang (White person food) resturaunt. Theyre sooo nice and have they end next transfer so theyve been the senior missionaries almost the whole mission of my trainer.
This was my first fast sunday in thailand and it was great. Cant say i understood all the testimonies but we had a great lesson with sister จีน after and some of our new members. Then for dinner we went over to sister จีน's house and she absolutely treated us. She made this massive plate of cashew chicken for each of us, and a bowl of masuman curry. It was sooo good. Not to mention another member made these lil shrimp rice meals and i ate that right before we went over to her house so it feels like i jus ate the 3 meals i normally would fkr dinner hahah.
Todays been a fire Pday. We made the trip out to the 3 whales. Its like this rock formation that looks like 3 big whales. On the way we stopped at this big mountain surrounded by flat land and it was sool cool. The view was crazy and there was this lil buddhist shrine in the middle of a small pond. Anddd after i got to see my first monkeys!!! They were all over the parking lot it was crazy.
The 3 whales were sick too tho. We had to pay more cuz were frangs (foreigners) so its 100 baht instead of 20 baht but 100s actially not bad and it was so cool. It wasnt even really either cuz a lil truck takes us up and then we jus have to walk out onto them. The truck was kinda hauling on the way down mountain tho so also a bit of a roller coaster haha.

Funny thing-
I tried to do a flying photo where u jump and pose like superman but then land back on ur feet on one of the whales today. Only problem was i kinda forgot the land on ur feet part and basically jus dove onto the ground hahah. Luckily im good other than some kinda bruised palms. Somehow how tho she didnt get the photo tho so i abt killed myself for nothing haha

I actually had a great spiritual experience this week. Ik surprising, spiritual experience on the mission like is that even supposed to happen haha. Im kidding ofc. Anyways, friday we had just finished teaching an investigator with a member. my comp told me I'd be leading this lesson. Only thing was we were teaching the temple and ive never taught about the temple. We never practiced a lesson abt the temple in the mtc and i had only done a lil language study that day for temple words. I didnt know how to start the lesson or what a typical lesson on the temple looks like. Needless to say i didnt have much to contribute this lesson and i was kind of annoyed that i wasnt given much direction. On our way back from this investigator we stopped to visit member who hasnt been coming to church recently. Shes super nice. We were jus visiting her when Elder Oldem told me to share a spiritual thought. Ive been making tags fkr scriptures i want to share. I felt like i should share one of my faith scriptures so i shared Alma 7:23-24. After we read the scripture i was already thinking of how i was going tk say what i wanted in thai, but i figured id ask her what she liked first. She said she liked how it talks abt ความอดทน which is patience. Even tho looking back thats part of the reason i had the scripture tagged, i hadnt even realized it talked abt that. After she shared that it reqlly jus hit me hard that i jus need to be patient with the language and teaching and it will come. Honestly my mentality abt speaking thai has been good most of the time so far but for some reason i was not in the mindset friday. It was nice to get a lil reminder on a day that i was struggling. Rest of my day ended up going great from that point on.

Sorry emails so long, thanks to anyone thats made it this far.

Heres some flics

First pics is theirs neighbors party, the other elders house is tje one right behind us
Next ones where we had the new years activity, sooo magical
This is the random mountain surrounded by flat. Its got a staircase all the way up it. Dont have romm for one of the 3 whales pics but the next pic is from the top of the random mountain

Last pick is WILD MONKEY!!!