November 15th Letter

What is up?

Wow, today the keyboard that I am using is really bad. The space bar and the “A” key don’t work very well. If it is a really bad email I am sorry. This week has been really interesting, I was sent up to Lampang on Monday. I got up there at about 4am on Tuesday, and nobody was waiting. I had to borrower some random person’s cell phone to call Elder Shipley. Apparently, they went to the wrong place to get me. It was an interest start to an interesting week. We pretty much did nothing but inviting for all week, but that is ok because I spent the week with a greenie so I got to teach him a lot of stuff which was fun. We also had "Loy Gratong" which is a big Thai holiday. That was way fun in the north. Anyway, I stayed in Lampang until Saturday then we came back down to Bangkok because on Monday we had a Zone Conference with Elder Gong, we don’t travel on Sunday. Yes, I'm still a Zone Leader with Elder Shipley. It is kind of weird because we don't have an area and our zone members are spread out all over Bangkok. Everybody just switches off with the people they are staying with so they can get the area down. Pretty much our zone has the worst key indicators in the world, but that is ok because we are still doing a lot of service, which is just a different kind of key indicator. Yesterday I filled up bags of clean water at a water cleaning facility so that people in the floods would have something to drink.

Right now Elder Shipley and I are sleeping in a church because there is no room in any of the houses which is kind of fun, but really hard to shower. We just fill up buckets of water and dump them on ourselves – iffy huh? Today we had a zone sports day to try and lift everyone’s morale (everybody is feeling really down because nobody is teaching and so everybody is either doing service or knocking doors which is hard); however, it should get better. Everyone got rejuvenated. After today, Elder Shipley and I have no idea where we are going. Our area is still under water so they won't send us there, we might be going back to Lampang, but they don't know yet, probably just another night in the church.

As for Elder Shipley and I, we get along great. It was really cool not having to do the whole get to know you again. It was like just being sent to be companions with a really good friend. It is going really great even though it is kind of chaotic.

President Smith gave me a good compliment yesterday in our interview. He said he was glad that he has somebody experienced like me in this zone. At least he considers me experienced these days, I think that is improvement!

Anyway other than that news I don't really have a whole lot to say. It was a good Zone Conference. It was a good week, yep all in all it was good.

I hate how short my letters are getting but I have been typing really slowly because of the bad key board. I think this is all you guys are going to get this week. It sounds like you have had a good week.

I will think if I need anything and tell you next week. By the way the popcorn from popcornopolis didn’t travel well and was pretty bad, I couldn't really eat it at all; however, it was a good thought.

Movies – maybe The Village, and something else like Phantom of the Opera, I can't tell. Sorry, I know this is supposed to be an easy week, but I feel really unsure about both of those.

Tell Maren and Jessie I'm sorry but I don't have time to write this week.
I love you guys.