Yea, Thailand and Stuff

Salakeawku the sculpture park

So this week seemed really long, well at least every day seemed really long but now
its already another p-day! so ya! last p day we went and visitd this weird sculpture
garden, my trainer said its like one of the weirdest far out places in thailand
so i am pretty luck to go to it and on my first transfer. I was feeling sorry for
myself for getting called clear out here but I learned that this area is one of the
most sought after places. Ha, Maybe i'd just like the big city better than this place
but I am learning to like it better. While it has been pretty trying and hard, I have
been trying to work my hardest the whole time, and not get discouraged. or rather when
I am discouraged I keep working anyways.
 From both mom and dad thanks for the advice. I have faith and hope that it'll
get better, and I'm gonna keep on working. I'll just take it one p-day at a time.
or like 1 day even.
 So, for actually what I did. was alot of contacting. We contacted contacted
and contacted some more. And all you are supposed to do is go up to someone and
ask if they want to be cleansed from their sins. President senior says the people that
are ready will want this and be open to teaching. I think It has a really good point
because this way we don't waste our time trying to convince someone thats not even
interested by first asking them questions like,.... so, nice weather today eh? not that
I can even say it in thai. ha.
 Thats another thing, my Thai is coming along poorly. But i keep working at it.
at church I can't understand hardly a single thing they are saying. But they say it
will come so I am counting on that. Last week we taught a total of 2 lessons.
 also what is fun is that after church the members always get together and eat.
So they make us food every sunday for lunch. Then a lady from the ward always brings
us dinner too.
 So just for mom, I will describe the food. Its THAI FOOD! Most of it is really
good. Especially the yellow curry with chicken. Even though its kindof basic that is
definitly my favorite dish here. Other stuff is good, too. The best treat thing ive had
is like mangoes with sticky rice. Except for the rice isn't normal rice. It is steamed
with like sugar and stuff so its pretty much like candy. Then they put mangoes with it
and you just eat it all up. Its really fattening, but so freaking good. I had that my
first day here. also they have these little cake things that look like a triangle slice
of a pb and j sandwich all wrapped up but it is so delicious. Yea, maybe mom and dad will
want to come pick me up just for that :)
 Some of the food is spicey. But you can tell them how spicey you want it. so I
usually don't get it too spicey. I don't want any bad fire butthole. I had diaharea like
once or twice already, and its not too fun. But, ya know, its your average fire butthole
experience, so im used to it. Im getting more used to defecating on a toilet with no seat
and having to pour water on my own fecul matter. Its only bad when its really hot and
humid in the bathroom and I'm sweating bullets while squatting and trying not to shiz

down my leg. Ha. the internet just crapped out in this place we were in, so we had to move to

another place. But yea. So we did the sculpture garden thing which was really weird.

Today we are probably just gonna chill and buy stuff and my companion is gonna get

a hair cut. Apparently there is not a whole lot to do but there is a sand castle thing

and im sure we will find other weird stuff to do. But yea. Ill send some pictures.

Just doing my thing here in nong khai.

love, Elder Smith

PS (Mom ask Marked if he was taller than most Thai people and more details about the food.) Now that I think of it I find myself looking down on most people. Literally,not figurativly. Also, the food is almost always served on top of rice. You got like curries, then other sauce stuff that is put on rice. There is something thats like noodles but its made out of an unriped fruit.. its name escapes me at the moment. But a lot of the times it has the peanuty taste which is really good! also they measure the heat of the food by the amount of met, or peppers that are put into it. met is the classifier for seeds. but you say that when you are saying how many you want. I usually get 1 pepper in a dish of whatever stuff. But you can go up to 20. they gave us 20 met stuff on the day we came in. it was hot, we will just say that... But my favorite by far is sticky rice with mango and the yellow curry with rice. and you can buy a dish of each of those for 40 bot. Which is only about 1.5 dollars I believe. HAH! BRAD. (MOM: London is terribly expensive, but they do have toilet seats:) but with that being said we only get like 160 dollars a month for food. it goes faster than you think... because anything that isn't authentic thai is expensive. Like, nutella. here, for a tiny thing. is like 600 baht. Not that I want it, but I was like, holy crap! you gotta be kidding. but yea.

love, markie mark

First Five Days in Thailand

We are a stone's throw from Laos. 

In Nong Khai Province

Alright. So, my p-days are on Monday! Which for you guys is Sunday. Which is super weird considering it is 12:00 pm here, and 10 at night for you guys. But on a different day! Yea, hopefully I will get used to it. (There's a 14 hours time difference.)

When we got to the airport it was really hot, but didn't seem as humid as I imagined it. The weather has actually been pretty nice. In the morning its like 60-70 and in the day its sunny and warm. I actually got sunburned a tiny bit after riding our bikes outside for hours trying to find a part to go contacting at. 

We are up in Nong Khai. Which is clear up next to Laos. The aparment we are in is crap, and the city is smaller, less people, but still seems to be huge and confusing. It's hard to find a lot of people at one place to be able to contact. and at the moment, we have zero investigators because the previous Elders' records were incorrect. So, we are starting from scratch.

Other than that it is ok here. It is true what they say, Thai food is really good. So I'm happy for that.

In our house apartment thing we have two bathrooms with toilets that are little bowls that you squat over then poop into. Afterwards you have to dump water on your product to make it flush. Luckily we have running water, but it's not sanitary. So, we have a water dispenser that we use for drinking water. I can send pictures of the place next week, but it is pretty bad. Luckily we have AC in our room and it works really well. I didn't think it would, so I turned it down all the way and woke up in the middle of the night freezing my butt off! So, I guess that was a pleasant suprise. I didn't think I was gonna have to deal with mosquitoes because the places in Bangkok seemed pretty nice. But the shack we are in has them, so we are gonna have to fix that. Cover the windows, and spray it out. I don't want to get any kind of sickness...

Otherwise things have been going... well, tough. This is harder than I thought it would be. Ha, imagine that! So yea. I will be ok though. They have good food here and... some of the people are nice. I just hope I can get over this initial phase where I don't know anything and I can't understand anyone.

Anyways, I'll email you next week! I hope you guys are having fun! Maybe pray for me or something. I think I could use the help. 

Love, Elder Smith

p.s. When you send mail you just send it to the mission office. We don't have individual addresses. Then the mission president gets the mail to use. So that means I'll probably get mail every transfer meeting when I go back to Bangkok which is a 10 hour bus ride--at least as long as I am here at the top of the country. But don't let that discourage you from sending it!

MTC--I didn't realize I was standing SOOO awkwardly.

Oh and also the money was from some random strangers who gave it to us in the airport. 

That was awesome because we were starving!

I'm in Bangkok!

He Has Arrived

The Bangkok Thailand mission president and his wife are awesome in that they quickly email mom and dad to let them know their missionary has safely arrived. I appreciated it so much and even cried, just a little, when I saw the photo of him in his lei. Here's a link to the letter. Click here.

"Mini Me" is on the righthand side of the line.

Sunday Night

Hey I leave tomorrow at 11:30. my flight plans got changed so instead of going to  San Francisco airport I am going with one other elder to the LA airport, then to hong kong, then to thailand. We are gonna have an 8 hr layover in la. So I will be there from about 3 pm to 12 pm. or so. So yea. Ill call ya then!

Mini Me

So, Elder Larsen had to get a new suit because he ripped the butt part of his sliding down a railing. He went to Mr. Mac here in Provo. and guess what suit he got. MY exact suit! but it's chill. He's like my mini me. Because, well, He's short. But yea. It's chill. The suit is fly. Again, good choice mom :)

P.S. From MOM--Mark and I reasoned that this light weight Italian wool suit would breathe better in the tropical heat of Bangkok. Mark knows how much a favor natural fibers. We couldn't buy a white suit, so we got the lightest "legal" color of suit we could find. It looks good on these two awesome missionaries:)

Last Letter from the MTC to Family

I don't have anything to say. The mtc is boring. Devotionals are long. And I am learning thai. amen.

But apart from that I'm friking stoked to go to thailand! yea!

sooooososss yea. Tha'ts about it.

You probs don't have to post this one on my blog. Unless  you really want to. then you can. I guess.

I am just super antsy to get to thailand now. But don't worry. Im still studying hard. I've made more progress in the last two weeks than I have in... well, some two other weeks. which means im doing good. My teacher (Sister Yeo) told me in an interview that I am doing really good at thai. and that I am an amazing missionary. Take it for what its worth, but I think I'm on track. Me and my companion have this phrase well always tell eachother during "comp invintory" its where you talk to eachother and tell them what problems you got with em. what you been beefin about lately. We never do, because we work really well together. But then we have to tell eachother how we can improve so we just say, "Keep on Keepin on." Ha. So, thats what sister yeo said to me. I thought it was funny. But true. We've established a good set of ethics and habits here that if we carry over to the mission field we will do quite ok. hopefully!

also. We were doing trc and this dude told us after we taught him for 40 minutes that we were gang maag at the language, and at reading script. gang means like, solid, pro, good. So, that was a confidence boost. I honestly feel like I know nothing. And I'm sure i'll feel like that when I get to thailand. But thats ok, because if I was satisfied with where im at. I'll never improve. So hopefully throughout my whole mission I can stay unsatisfied with my language ability and continue to improve. Because I don't want to be just fluent. I want to speak like I do in english, but in thai. which means I gotta know some random big words and words like traipse. ha :)

anways, I guess I did have something to say. Look at that! :) Im glad that I get to serve a mission. It is going to be awesome. Just plain awesome! :)

Letter to Fam Fam and Others

Me studying really hard.

I only got 1.5 weeks left here! I am so stoked! The bad thing is I still have to do TRC twice before I go. TRC stand for "Teaching Resource Center". and basically its where RM's from BYU come in and you teach them.. in thai. only problem is they know more than you so you can't teach them simple things.... and since our thai is very limited its hard to come up with anything that they wouldn't already know. So, we usually just have them read scriptures and then ask them how they feel about it. And them sometimes I'll try to string together a complex question that usually doesn't end up making any sense... So, those are probably my least favorite things, But everything else is good. Just yesterday this older couple came into the mtc that is going to thailand too. The guy had been to thailand on his mission clear back in 1971, right during the Vietnam war. He says he was the 85th missionary to ever go there, and that they didn't have the Book of Mormon translated into thai yet. That sounds like it would have been tough! they were sent in with nothing, and had to find their own places to live, and everything. We pretty much have it easy. Our teacher showed us a video that they had made from some of the thailand missionaries. and their appartments are freaking nice! Like, clean, large, air conditioned. They honestly looked up to par with new heritage at byu... kinda funny. but it makes sense because everything there is so cheap! they probably pay a quarter of what they pay for brad's and they are way nicer. Sucks to suck Elder B Smith! just kidding. you don't have to deal with scorching heat every day... That was another thing he said. "the only thing I would change about thailand is the weather" sooo thatll be interesting. I will just have a fat swack/swas for my whole mission. But thats ok, because I have a large stash of deoderant. plus, I ain't trying to impress anybody. Heck, why don't I just not even wear deoderant.

So things here in the mtc are still pretty mtc like. Nothing to report. I got better at thai I think. Annnnndddddddddd I finished the BoM while being here in the mtc. so that is cool as well.

Other than that it's all been a good week, just trying to work my hardest and maximize the time spent here to learn thai the best.

Hope ya'll have a good week! don't have too much fun here in the cold. I guess that'll be one good thing. No fridged cold... I don't know how to spell fridged.. friged. frigged .  .. . . hmmm. oh well. These computers tell me its wrong, but they don't have autocorrect enabled. So I cant do anything except for know its wrong.

Nerd Sadness :(

Love, Elder Smith!

p.s. uhhhhhhh . yea I got nothing

p.p.s. send me some letters you bums.

p.p.p.s. my lips hurt real bad..... despite my use of chapstick. 

A lip care package direct from Elder Smith in London.
This should work much better than the junk you're using:)

My cereal

I was trying to take a nap and they stole my sheets
and pillow then pulled the mattress out from under me...