Monday, April 25, 2016

Transfers and Elephants

So Transfers were this week, and I just want to start off by quoting an entry from my journal:

4-14-16
"So I had a really interesting dream last night, in the dream it was transfers and Elder Parish and I were riding down on a bus to Bangkok. Once we got there I got a new companion who was a khon Thai (native Thai person) the only other parts of the dream were us riding back up to Chiang Mai and me teaching English by myself. The dream felt way different then all my other dreams. It felt really real not just some weird dream where some random thing is happening."

So we got transfer calls this week and I found out I was getting a new companion.  I am with Elder Joyem and staying in Chiang Mai this transfer, then I found out Elder Joyem was a native Thai and it blew my mind. That is not all; the next part of the dream was the bus rides.  I thought I would probably not go down to transfers in Bangkok, I would just stay in Chiang Mai and Elder Parish would go down. But then they told us that I needed to go down to renew my visa. So then I ended up going down and coming back up. So that was really crazy that all of the dream actually happened. 

Transfers killed most of the work week because we had to leave Wednesday to get there Thursday. I renewed my visa Friday and got back to Chiang Mai on Saturday morning.


So today was really fun. Yesterday, we decided we would go ride elephants today.  We had this member take us.  We got to go to one place where we just played with and fed the elephants and then the second place we went to we could ride them. It was super fun. 


So that sums up the week pretty well. We had a lot of stuff going on.

-- Elder Cheney
ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ ซีนีย์






Monday, April 18, 2016

Songkran

So I don't have that much to write about this week because it has only been a few days since I wrote last. The big thing I can write about is Songkran.









It was crazy. So the whole holiday is three days long and the purpose used to be some Buddhist tradition of washing your hands off in this bowl once a year, but the holiday has changed to where it is now just a giant water fight for the whole country.


What we did for the day we had off was we got our good squirt guns and we went to some of the busy parts of Chiang Mai. At those places everyone was just shooting water at people and dumping buckets on people all day. 



A lot of people just camp out in the backs of trucks. These trucks will just have a huge basin of water in the back and the people will sit in the back and throw water at people as the truck drives around. 

There is also this thing in Thailand called the clong. It is basically a kind of really disgusting water and during Songkran everyone was just swimming in it and pumping water up to spray people with. The water is super gross and we tried to avoid it at first.  Then we just had to take it after a while, there was no dodging it. Afterward, we all used alcohol to clean our ears out and used this eye disinfectant as well.

The rest of Songkran was kind of annoying because the other days we had to go out and work.  All of our investigators were out of town so we were left with trying to invite people all day.  It does not matter if you are in nice clothes or not, they would still soak you during Songkran, so we had to deal with people dumping water on us the whole time we are trying to talk to them.

Not much else happened this week. Transfers are coming up so next week I might have interesting news. I’m not sure what is happening but I kind of think Elder Parish might be moving because he has been here for a while but we will see.

--Elder Cheney 
ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ ซีนีย์



Thursday, April 14, 2016

Village of the Long Necks

Hello Everyone,

It seems like it has been a long time since I emailed last. A lot has happened

Last Monday we were able to go to this village up is the mountains. It was pretty cool to see these people that choose to live away from society. Lots of crazy stuff. They had these people that wore brass rings around there necks.  We asked why they started doing that, and it turns out they used to put those on because tigers used to attack people and slash their necks.  So they started protecting necks because tigers won’t kill them unless they can slash the neck. It eventually just turned in to a fashion thing.

We had to go to Bangkok last week and it turned into a really interesting adventure. We took the train through the night. They have beds on the train so we could sleep through the night, the problem is I am a tall man in a short country so the beds there are not big enough.  We got to Bangkok early in the morning and we went to the Visa place to renew Elder Parish's visa.  We were there for a few hours then finished up and called the bus station to see if we could get a bus back so we could get back to Chiang Mai that night. We called them and they said they didn't have any buses for 4 days. We didn't have a phone number for the train station so we had to take a taxi for about an hour through Bangkok to get there. We talked to the people and they didn't have a train till like 6:30 which was about 8 hours away. Without any other options, we bought the tickets.  Elder Parish had the house wallet that we use to pay for travel and stuff and it was almost empty so I lent some money for us to get train tickets. When we walk away, we check our wallets and realize we only have about 80 baht  each ( about $2.50) and we still haven't had breakfast. We have tons of time but we can't really go anywhere. We think for a while and realize that food is cheaper at Universities so we ask where the nearest university is and start walking there. It wasn't too far away and we got there and ate a low priced meal, then walked around the University. We eventually just found this air conditioned room and camped out there for about 4 hours. Then ate another low priced meal. We then headed back to the station and used our remaining baht to get snacks for the 12 hour train ride. We made it back to Chiang Mai then had to Bike back to our house, shower, get money, and Bike back to get to General Conference in time.
 
General Conference was great, I really enjoyed all of it, the way they did it was they played it in Thai for everyone and had it running in English at the same time playing through the Headphones we translate to. It worked out pretty well, and I could sit there and listen to how they translated some things into Thai. It was pretty relaxing to sit back and to listen to the words of the Apostles. 

On Monday we had a zone conference which was also really good.  I had to Recite D&C 4 in Thai for everyone. That was fun, I think I did a good job; it was a lot of stuff to memorize in a different language though.

So our P-day was moved to today (Thursday) so we can play Songkran.  It is a three day festival all throughout Thailand. Today is the middle day and basically what songkran is, is a huge water fight. Yesterday we were out trying to do work and people would just be dumping huge buckets of water on us. We had to bike into town last night and in the main part of Chiang Mai it is really crazy everywhere. There was no way you can move anywhere here without getting soaked. We get to play today so that will be a lot of fun. I will probably have some fun experiences to share on Monday.




That’s all for this week.
-- Elder Cheney
ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ ซีนีย์






Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Busy week in Chiang Mai

This week has been a good week. I already talked about the cool tiger we went to see last P day. Today we are going to this village with the people that put brass rings around their necks to make their necks longer. Pictures to come next week.

We were able to meet with a lot of people this week. The family we have been teaching really wants to continue to meet with us so we are still trying to teach them. We are excited for them to progress. Jackie is still doing great. He is getting baptized on the 17th so that will be a cool thing. 

We met with an investigator this week that was interesting. He was the rice farmer and we were teaching him the Plan of Salvation. He is kind of stuck because he does not want celestial glory because he does not feel like he can become a good enough person to go there. It was kind of weird because he didn't want never ending happiness. We are going to try explaining next time that he can truly be forgiven through Christ. That is kind of a weird concept for Thai people. 

This week is going to be crazy. We have to go to Bangkok on Thursday so we can renew Elder Parish's Visa and we shouldn't get back until Friday night. Then we have conference on Saturday and Sunday. So this week will go by really fast. 

General Conference here is a week delayed because we are ahead it wouldn't work Saturday and Sunday to watch it. They will show it at the Church in Thai and we will sit in another room and watch it in English. 

Not much else happened this week. Hope I have some good stuff next week.
--Elder Cheney 

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน


 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ ซีนีย์