Sad News

There is a lot going on today and I don’t have a lot of time to email so I am sending these audio recordings that explain what is going on. 

Excerpts from audio files:

12/15

There has been a lot of stuff going on today.

I have been out in the field exactly one year today.

The Elders in Lao got some pretty rough news today. I emailed last week about the property that the Church bought. It was one of the only properties available to buy because most people don’t want to sell to Christians. It made it really hard but we found a place where we could have a church and then it turned out they made a rule that there couldn’t be any churches in the area where we bought the building so our church can’t be a church. Now it’s just a random house that the Church owns. So that has been pretty rough news, just because it’s going to take a while to find a new spot. It’s a pretty hard time for the members and for everyone.

Last day with the deaf kids.

And then, today, we got some even worse news.

So, when we come here to Lao, we get Visas to be here through the Lao government, through what is called an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) which basically tells the government that Deseret International Charities will donate this much money, will build this many bathrooms, will build this many water tanks, teach this much English, and in return the Lao government will give us Visas to be here. So those MOUs need to be renewed every two years and the Senior Missionary, Elder Carter, has been working really hard to renew those; to write new drafts of this MOU and send it in and it keeps getting shut down. They won’t accept our MOU that we write out and we’ll go back and he’ll write a new one, maybe increasing the amount of English we’ll teach or the number of bathrooms DIC will build, things like that. Then he will send it back in, and Elder Carter has written about 35 drafts of this. Keep in mind that this is about a 30 page document. So, it’s a lot of writing. So far it’s been shut down on all fronts.

So today, we got the bad news that by the end of the year all of the Elders will be leaving Lao. Most likely it will be this next week that we will all leave because we have been finishing up all of our classes and there is nothing else going on. We need to be out by the end of the year. The only way we could stay past the end of the year would be on tourist visas and we would not be allowed to teach or do any service. So it would be really unfruitful to leave the Elders here in Lao when we don’t have a church and we don’t have any English to teach.

This has been a rough thing for us. We kind of knew this was a possibility but we never thought it would happen. We never thought it would be this bad. We don’t know all the details yet but two of us are leaving tomorrow because two Elders are finishing their missions early so they can be home for Christmas so two of us will go out and replace them and the other four of us will be out of here on the 22^nd or 23^rd.

It’s been a really sad morning. The thing that is the most terrible about it is that the members here in Lao are the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life. When people become Christian here in Laos they face a lot of adversity. They kind of get pushed to the bottom of society. It becomes hard for them to find work, their family disowns them. Tons of bad things happen to these members. Because of that, they have some of the most amazing faith that I have ever seen in my life. There have been members who have the roofs stolen off of their houses, members who have been kicked out on to the street, lost their jobs, all sorts of things have happened. Just because they have decided to become Christian. Now, at this time when we haven’t had a church, it’s been way hard for them, not being able to go to church. They’re still facing this same adversity but they’re not around the people that help strengthen them up. I’m just way worried about all of these members. The church building isn’t going their way and we don’t know how long that’s going to take and now the Elders are leaving and I’m just worried that the members are going to feel that they are being abandoned.

All of the members here are the most amazing people and I’m really saddened by the fact that I’m going to be leaving them this soon. I’m really saddened that there aren’t going to be any missionaries here to get to experience these members and their faith.

It’s been a really rough morning for all of the Elders as we got the news and had to go out and tell the members. There’re just a lot of people here in Laos that are just special people. They are truly the elect, and the people that God needs, to build the church here in Lao. I’m just really sad to be leaving them way sooner than I planned on.

Going back into Thailand is going to be hard but it has benefits. I feel like I’ve learned a lot from the members here that I can take back to the members in Thailand and help strengthen their faith. Also I can devote myself to fulltime missionary work which will be really nice. I’m going to miss it here. We had a lot of things planned. Such as spending Christmas with the members. I’m pretty sure we’re not going to be here for Christmas unless we can really talk President Johnson into it. I don’t know, Elder Saunders’ and my Visas expire on the 27^th and everyone else’s expire on the 31^st except for Elder Blocker who’s expires on the 17^th. So he’s most likely going to be one of the two who’s going down tomorrow. I don’t know, the transfer isn’t until the 29^th this month but from what I’m hearing we’re all going to be moving out a bit before that. So, that’s what’s going on. I don’t know how much time I’ll have for email on p-day. We’re just trying to set up as much with the members as we can. So that might cut out p-day and everything.

12/17

So we had a bit of an update today.

Everyone is still going out of Lao but we’re on a little bit different schedule. Elder Blocker’s visa expired on the 17^th, which is today, so we just got back from dropping him off at the bus station. So he’s going back to Thailand.  He’s going to be serving in Bangkok for the rest of the transfer. As for the rest of us, we will all be able to stay here until the end of the transfer.  The day of transfer is the 29^th but Elder Saunders and my Visas expire on the 27^th so we will have to leave a little bit earlier on the 26th.  So we’ll be able to have Christmas here and enjoy that and then we’ll be leaving.  So we all get a little more time here and we’re happy that we get to spend Christmas here and get to enjoy that.

For the rest of today we are going to visit a lot of members.

So that is the update.

--Elder Cheney