Elder Cheney's Suit and Thai Adventure: House Arrest

So this week was a little boring and kind of exciting time to be in Laos. We were under house arrest all week, which means we could not leave our house except to get food. This was a really long week of just kind of sitting around. The two oldest missionaries, Elder Magill and Elder Morley, went to Thailand for the week because they have a back and forth visa so they can just go in and out of Laos without any problems. Elder Saunders and myself do not yet have that privilege so we had to stay inside. The reason we had to stay inside was because there were a lot of ASEAN meetings going on here and Obama was here as well so we had to stay inside.

House arrest hasn’t been too bad. It has given us a lot of time to make food and clean and stuff that is always good. It did seem really weird when church was canceled on Sunday. I never thought I would miss a day of church as a missionary. That was an interesting day. We just stayed home, read the scriptures and called some members to make sure they were all doing good.

The senior missionaries here are really nice. There are two couples; the Carter’s and the Jensen’s.

Fun fact: I am the 24^th missionary to come into Laos.

Last P day, after emailing, we went to play basketball and the courts were occupied so we hung out with the deaf kids. They are super fun. They gave me a book on learning Lao Sign Language. So that was really cool. It is fun learning sign language from them. They are all so happy all the time. It is awesome. At that same place there are some blind people and we taught one of them how to ride a bike. It was super fun and he really enjoyed it.

Yesterday, Elder Smith-Driggs went to Thailand because he got his visa to travel back and forth between Thailand and Laos. So right now it is just Elder Saunders and I in Laos, it is fun, and it is also pretty weird because the house we live in is gigantic for an Elder house. It was not to bad when there were five of us here but now that there are only two of us it seems really empty all the time.

I am really excited for church tomorrow because I haven’t gotten to do any missionary work since coming to Laos. From what I hear Sunday is just a crazy. We teach all of our investigators in a single day. We do have a baptism tomorrow as well. I have never met him but that is also something to look forward to.

Highlights of the week haven’t been too exciting. Elder Saunders and I have been baking food. We made some banana bread, blueberry muffins, waffles, brownies, and peanut butter cookies. Elder Saunders and I also don’t know how to go anywhere so that has been kind of interesting, just the two of us wondering around Vientiane. Another highlight is when the senior missionaries brought over dinner for us we ate chili nachos. It was really delicious. Yesterday, we also got to get out of the house and go to Buddha Park with the senior missionaries it was fun. It was really nice to get out of the house and just be out and about.