Surprise!!

Hello everyone! what up from Thailand!! Im in the sickest internet cafe ive ever seen! These chairs.. yeah i want one. Totally gamer status in here too.. theres like 5 thai kids skipping school to play games and stuff.. i would totally do that too! So, right now it is 12 noon in thailand.. its about 10 pm over there right? Insane right!? Okay well, ill keep things the way i have so far.. first things first: Scripture of the week! Moroni 10: 34 - "...Amen." I'm done! First time finishing the Book of Mormon.. sad, I know, but you can kiss it. Finished about 2 ish hours ago for personal study this morning. Phrase of the week: "No one cares about how much you know, until they know how much you care." Pretty cool huh? Ill explain that one more later but i really loved it when i heard it and, its for you Dad.. which ill explain later too.
okay... FIRST WEEK IN THAILAND! Oh boy, where to start... How bout the plane? 13 hours and 20 minutes? No problem! Took some benedryl from Elder Merril... done! Was out for probably 10 hours. They served us breakfast... not bad. and when i say not bad, i mean it was terrible, but compared to most flights.. not bad. THey served some nasty eggs and Merrel loved em... he starts eating them "oh man! these are so delicious and cheesey!" Me: "Elder Merrel, thats the problem, they DONT HAVE CHEESE IN THEM." What'er. Taiwan was pretty cool.. longish layover and we just walked around for a little bit.. got some food.. Elder Hess and i were just like, "uh.. what do we eat?!" But it was all good.. ended up getting some fried rice and a passion fruit smoothie.. dank. Boarded to Thailand around 930 and landed around 1130. Met the AP's and the Prez.. they were awesome. One of the AP's, Elder Young, told us a story about a run in with a bus... at 65 miles an hour.. yeah. He went flying. Got up, walked away. Met President Smith and his Wife.. so awesome. She's was camera happy and just started takin so many pictures, but shes hilarious and so cool. He's a great guy too. Served his mission here so he speaks fluently. We walked outside... BOOM. Humidity. Who said we werent allowed to swim on our missions? They obviously havent been to Thailand. Enjoy that picture in your minds now. Got in the car, took about a 45 minute drive to the Mission home and saw a lot of Thailand... WOW! This place is sick NASTY! Both connotations of that phrase... Seriously, this place is so gross.. when it rains it just dumps and every building is all mildewy and green, the streets are broken, theres black mold everywhere.. UGH! Nasty! But, it is sick because theres temples scattered everywhere too, and man they are beautiful. Even the highway has little gold statues of buddha or whoever. I got some pictures but i dont have a sd port yet so when i get that today ill send some next week. So we get to the President's home and they had lunch all ready for us... wasnt thai lunch but they did have PINEAPPLE!! OMGSH ITS SO GOOD! I ate so much my tounge probably wanted to blead and it started tingling... kinda like right now cause one of the members's gave me ice breakers sours and i havent stopped eating them. Anyway, Prez took us over to the mission office for some paper work, interviews, and the Dan Jones exercise. Who is Dan Jones? He was called to serve in Wales and he did work. Nuff said. Anyway, they split us up with a "trainer" for the day and took us out for an hour to give out a book of mormon and 3 pass along cards to people on the street.. done son! No idea what i said when i was speaking but it must have made sense! Got rid of my book of mormon on the 2nd dude... and gave away the rest.. The guy with the BoM was surprising cause he was so interested.. i thought it was a trick, like my trainer, Elder Rovig, paid him to be nice and accepting.. not so. Thai people are just super nice and friendly.. i already heard about this, it was just still surprising. Elder Rovig had an awesome approach to finding.. he would just yell "Hello" to everyone he passed and wave at them, then go up and shake their hand for about 30 seconds so they couldnt go away. One kid looked absolutely terrified, cause when you stretch out your hand to shake they dont know what to do.. so this kids just lookin at Elder Rovig, then at me... then at Rovig.. then back at me. His face just screamed "hey.. you. Help me out here.. get him away." So funny. That kid ended up running away eventually but what'er. So we talked with other people and i didnt really know what i was doing, but hey! It was fun.

Went back to the office around 6 and finished up some other crap and went back to the mission home for some thai dinner.. delicious! Had some "prick" which is spciy sauce.. yes i know, unfortunate name. But it was spicy, but not tear inducing.. for Hess however, it was. He cried. Had a nice pow wow with the Prez and wife and hit the sack early.. i passed out. Next morning, thursday, was moves meeting over at one of the church buildings.. long story short, im in a little area, and by little area i mean pretty friggen big(!), called Don Muang. My companion is Elder Crowley.... MR CROWLEY!! Its not actually pronounced the same way, but who cares.. the point is the same and its awesome.. and hes great. Been out here for a little over a year now. He's from North Carolina and went to BYU the year before me. We are the only 2 Elders assigned to this area, as most missionaries are, and its a really cool place. So after moves our District from the MTC parted ways.. Lucky Elder King is up in Chiang Rai.. the mountain kingdom! I want to go there. Dropped my crap off at the house, which is both a dump and a cozy place, and had to place some stuff for this week. Then, went out for appointments and contacting. So like i said, this place is sweet.. Its beautiful... in a weird way... the culture is mostly preserved and there quite of few temples around, but also there are a lot of architecture that closely relates all that. Most places have a mini ancestry temple thing where they basically feed their ancestors with แฟฌฐา (Fanta.. its everywhere). Its nice. Then, theres the nasty part of it.. which is also all of it. The smell is absolutely disgusting.. i would rather stick my face in dog crap then smell this.. and theres still dog crap everywhere! Theres mold everywhere and if you thought Kawaii had a ton of chickens.. it aint got nothing on Thailand.. except for Thailand, its dogs. They are EVERYWHERE. And its really quite sad.. ive seen some already with legs bent in ways that shouldnt be bent, bowels hanging out (and thats not a joke), and some with no left eyes.. its actually really sad and im not even joking when i say i see them and get depressed. But in any case.. Don Muang is a sweet place.
So kawaii has nothing on thailand in terms of wildlife, and Starbucks has got NOTHING on 7-11.. they are on EVERY block.. usually 2 within 100 yards of each other. Probably my favorite place, even more now. Also, houses are just stuck in the most random places and every house is pretty much a store.. everyone cooks something or sells drinks. its kinda awesome. There are street vendors who ride bikes, or just push carts, with chicken or ice cream, or whatever. Love it. Stopped the other day to get ice cream in a bun.. so delicious. Bread, rice, fruit, ice cream and chocolate sauce... all for only 10 baht.. epic. Also, those little yogurt drinks? EVERYWHERE! Huge bottles too. Also blueberry, mixed fruit, and green apple flavors. Choco pies, pocky sticks, yan yan, and pretty much every other awesome korean market candies are here too. Finally found M and Ms crispy.. of course i had to go half way around the world to find it.. but i can buy that, a bottle of water for about 35 baht.. thats barely over a dollar! Bought a full meal of sweet and sour pork on saturday for 25 baht. Can life get better? I submit that it cannot! Im lying, but for the sake of the joke i had to say it. Not gonna lie though.. in terms of food.. kinda been disappointed.. not in the fruit, that stuff is delicious. But for some reason i havent been liking the food ive been getting. Maybe i need a little time, but right now.. eh.. not for me.
Ok now for some business.. investigators! We have 2 with a baptismal date right now.. phii phccn and phii bii.. we call everyone "phii" because its formal and polite. And that first one is a woman, and it translates to "blessing.." hahah.. how awesome is that?! Anyway, พร, is a reall sweet lady probably bout 30 ish years old.. shes histerical. She knows a little bit of english because thats where Crowley met her, was at English lessons. Shes been progressing for quite some time now... almost a month and a half i think. She loves to talk and when i first met her, it was thursday night, at President Wisid's house (by the way, this family is awesome! Really helping the work go forward.. ill try and tell more about them later) and when i told her that i had been in thailand for only 2 days her eyes got huge and she was quiet for a minute and said, "OH WOW!" But shes kinda bittersweet.. she seems to be really interested, and she went to church yesterday and loved it, then went to a baptismal service after and loved that too, but i dont think really understands how important everything is yet. Yesterday she bought us some drinks, and Elder Crowley was like, "well i guess we need to teach keeping the sabbath day holy again." Guess so. But we'll keep chuggin. Ok i think my time is running out.. not because i have a time limit but because ive been here for a while.

To answer your questions... havent found pants yet. But 2 of my pairs have already gotten soaked and they are still fine haha.. thursday and friday it just straight dumped on us from 7 until we got home. Ill keep looking. I need some hankerchiefs too.. lots.. i sweat so much, its kinda ridiculous. I made a joke in the MTC that we would be with investigators and strain to barely understand them already while wiping our faces and whicking the sweat from our hands.. without realizing it until right in the middle of the action, i did just that! Then i laughed a little bit on the outside.
As for you Dad, i go back to the Phrase of the week: No one cares about how much you know, until they know how much you care. The Missionaries at home need to know that the members care about the work. Missionary work doesnt stop after being released from the calling of "Missionary." It's really different to see our branch here.. there are only about 25 people and they care so much about the work that they are trying so hard to help us out so they can have more members.. its been over a year since a baptism and they are really wondering "whats wrong with our branch?" Well, theres nothing wrong. But they want to see more faces enjoying the gospel like they do. At home, it was really easy for me to not care about whether or not the missionaries need help, because "oh, someone else will do it." Don't assume that. Go out of your way to help them. Whether they ask for you help or not, they need it and are always grateful for anything you can do. Feeding them is great.. really great.. but going with them to teach a lesson is also amazing. Especially if you are a convert. Them seeing someone else who at one point was where they are now goes a long way. Be willing to stretch forth your helping hand before they even ask you for one. Ask them every week how investigators are doing, how they themselves are doing, and what you can do to help the work push forward. Show them how much you care. I hope you're getting this Ball and Drew! Stop texting!


K i gotta end this.. say what up to everyone for me, tell them i love them. I'd give you my address but i think i lost it hahah.. Erika has it though. Hope you are all doing well and sorry that this probably wasnt as personal as they usually are. Josh, thanks again for your letter 2 weeks ago.. i really appreciated it and still read it because those are some serious words of advice. Sorry i didnt get to email you personally but love ya bud. Say what up to Aroc for me, and give him a sweet bean dip. Mom, sorry about the mix up with the bank. No worries. We'll pull money out later. Glad you got to talk to Saakha. When you forward this to him, ask him to forward it to President Calder and the Macks. He'll know what to do. Thanks for all your support Mom. Erika, love you too. Hope all is well and you're loving the job. Next week ill get some pictures out and email all of you individually.


Love you all! Peace!
Elder Gudmundsen

Some pictures

AJ sent these home a few weeks ago, but I couldn't find a good way to get them online. Thus, the poor quality (digital pictures of hard copy photos. Oh well).

VASSUP!!

Hanloo everyone!

1 more Pday after today! So close and so weird. So...
Word of the Day: "Badger!" This is said whenever anyone rips a fart. Our 2 sister missionaries were the companions of a single one in a cambodian district and she would fart a lot.. every time she did she would say "badger" in a really funny way... we adopted it and ive said it countless times in class hahahah!
Scripture of the Week: Alma 60:24 Moroni's epistle to Pahoran "Except ye do repent of that which ye have done, and begin to be up and doing, and send forth food and men unto us... behold it will be expedient that we contend no more with the Lamanites until we have first CLEANSED our inward vessel, yea, even the great head of our government." In other words... until we kill you! Can you imagine if you were Pahoran? I would have crapped my loins! hah! Word of the Day: "Badger!" This is said whenever anyone rips a fart. Our 2 sister missionaries were the companions of a single one in a cambodian district and she would fart a lot.. every time she did she would say "badger" in a really funny way... we adopted it and ive said it countless times in class hahahah!
Scripture of the Week: Alma 60:24 Moroni's epistle to Pahoran "Except ye do repent of that which ye have done, and begin to be up and doing, and send forth food and men unto us... behold it will be expedient that we contend no more with the Lamanites until we have first CLEANSED our inward vessel, yea, even the great head of our government." In other words... until we kill you! Can you imagine if you were Pahoran? I would have crapped my loins! hah!

On to less important stuff.. hah! Jk. This week had a lot of ups and downs. It was all really awesome in the end, but lets just say there were a lot of tears last Thursday. Why? Cause it was Brother Duval's last day. We had him teaching us in the afternoon block so in the morning block we prepared a little something for him with Brother Saakha. We also got a nice 8 by 10 picture of us all lookin retarded cause the sun was so bright, and we signed it, and also signed a thailand shirt. In his last teaching block, he showed us a lot of pictures and stuff about thailand and also gave us last words of advice.. so good. He told us not to get trunky these last 3 weeks... because if we get trunky now, it will reflect the same in the last 3 weeks of our mission.. push through it all. These last 3 weeks prepare us best for thailand and the last 3 weeks of our mission prepare us for our last transfer home. That man is amazing. We then had Brother Saakha come in un-anounced around 4 p.m. to have a little devotional for him in the last 30 minutes. We all went around talking about him and it was really sweet. Elder Hess couldnt stop laughing because when Elder Merril cries... its kinda funny haha not gonna lie. But where I lost is was when Brother Saakha spoke. Earlier, Brother Duval has just said that thai people never show emotion. Brother Saakha started to cry and everyone lost it. What he was saying was just the surface of what he was feeling.. Brother Saakha gets sick a lot because he has a condition and his voice and words conveyed just a little bit of his eternal gratitude to Brother Duval, through apologetic tears. At this point, even Brother Duval almost lost it. I saw him hide a tear though. Then at the end, we sang God Be with you til we meet again... couldn't handle it. But the last line we all pushed through tears to sing powerfully. Brother Duval then said a beautiful Thai prayer and then we all took pics, met his wife and daughter, and saw him off. Was a bummer, but it was a real treat. It was one of the highest honors to be his last district.. 18 districts and almost 4 years later, we, the rowdiest district hes ever had, was his last. But he loved us. The teachers here at the MTC ARE AMAZING. With Brother Duval gone, Brother Saakha would have had to take over all the shifts.. which would be impossible for him. We have teachers from the noongthay district helping, and even the CAMBODIAN district helping.. all because they care about us. They are nervous to try and to take Brother Duval's place, but they do it anyway for us. Been quite amazing.

There was some other stuff, like the TRC where I wouldn't shut up! I spoke so much and finally i realized it and was like "Elder Hess im not shutting up, please take over." Oh well.. it was still a good learning experience. hmmm.. what else oh yeah.. said goodbye to Roach yesterday morning :(    Sad face. Dallas leaves on Monday and then me after! We should have our travel plans on thursday or friday. Ok what else..Oh Dad.. you said JK last letter.. if you want to say it in thai "laa len" with a high tone on the len. Its fun. Also, that photo album you sent me? Im filling it up and it broke! The plastic or whatever just broke! So last package so far:
-New photo album
-Vitamins. If you buy them there they are wicked expensive
-Back massager! Its nuts how stressed me back gets
-Pills.. for sleeping!
-NO food in the last package.. never thought id be saying it but the Bairds sent me a crazy package a little bit ago. By the way thanks Bairds! Ill send some love you way after this email!

Thats really all i got right now in addition to anything ive already said. I have to send a whole suit case home by next week so ill start packing that. I think thats about it for this week.. OH! You remember the Owens from Texas? Yeah Andrew owen is on my floor. Tell you more about that later. 1 minute left!

Love you all! Thanks for all your support. Anyone who hasnt written me.. if you want a response that doesnt take 6 weeks this is the last week to do it! You know who you are!!
Church is true ladadadada you know it is! K peace out!  

13 days!

Elder Gudmundsen

Notes from devotional

A few weeks ago in one of his letters (this one, actually), AJ mentioned taking some notes and how it really helped illuminate a few points for him.

I'm a slacker and am just now getting around to scanning these notes in. Enjoy.

WHAT THE?!

Yo what up familia. Yeah thats not thai, what of it. 

So.. Word of the Day: "naakliad": translated this means "ugly." But directly translated it means "face hate." So when the dumb little noongthays tried to say "party" which is extremely close to naakliad, they actually said naakliad to OUR teacher, Brother Saakha's face, who was so confused, and THEIR teacher was panicking cause he knew what they said and couldnt believe it.. they were corrected.. lawl.

Scripture of the Week: John 20: 2-4. So im gonna paraphrase this one for speed. "Then she runneth and cometh to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved... Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together; and the other disciple did outrun Peter." So sounds pretty normal right? Any idea whos speaking here? JOHN! HAHA I thought it was so funny that he refers to himself as "the other disciple whom Jesus loved." Also, that "the other disciple outrunned Peter." Rofl. Maybe im going to hell for speaking light of the Savior's resurrection, but John should get a gold star so he feels better for being fitter than Peter.

 

Okay dokay.. so this week was quite full, but its going by fast. What sucks? Brother Duval leaves on Thursday.. yeah, i hate it. We are going to have a wheep-a-thon or 2 by my next emails time. So we should get our itineraries before our next p-day, probably on Monday! Woot woot! We got 20 days left holy nuts! To answer your question Mother, im way more stoked than nervous. To answer your question (kind of) i aint cocky about the language cause i kinda stopped worrying a while ago. Sister Hirschi was the best of the best of our phiithays and she is in thailand already.. she can understand 10 percent of thais and 70 percent of missionaries. So if she cant do it, then we cant either.. but im still trying my best so dont worry about that. Brother Saakha showed us some more pictures and it just looks absolutely amazing. Sure, im a little nervous about the hit and the possibility of falling in a kloong, but im gonna go over with the best attitude possible. Gonna be so cool. Brother Duval told us another story.. he was riding home at night, in the pouring rain (so awesome) and he sees some ominous black figure in front of him.. now at this point he was hauling buttocks and he realized at the last second... IT WAS AN ELEPHANT! Just chilling in the road.. he skidded out and around it and barely missed it.. hahaha he almost broad-sided an elephant. Dont care if im wet and hot, if i almost broad-side an elephant im gonna be laughing so hard.

 

So we have had our noongthays for about 2 weeks now.. sometimes i really just want to punch them right in the faces! Gah! Yeah, ive got some anger issues, what else is new hah! But seriously, they are so annoying some times! Honestly, if you are going to ask for help from me, and then correct me after i tell when you THINK im wrong, just stop! Gosh they ask for help and do just that.. "no i dont think thats right.." "Oh really well i dont think you should be alive!" I dont really say that, but i might be thinking it rather loudly sometimes.. hahah dont i sound like a missionary? I apologize. Not all of them are the bane of my existence.. just most of them hah!

 

So this week in the TRC is was our first lesson on the "pheen heng khwaam rood" or the plan of salvation. WOW... what a mish. So hard to explain all the concepts in thai for this lesson. We did alright considering, but it was super di duper hard. And our investigator DID NOT role-play along. He was supposed to be an investigator whose wife died and what not.. instead he told us that he just got married 2 weeks ago.. which was true! And he was also supposed to have a problem with the word of wisdom, like drowning his sorrows in "bia" (beer) cause he wife is dead.. yeah, didnt do that either. So we didnt have much to work on and when we tried to put the atonement into an easy to understand example... we didnt. It just got confusing and he ended up trying to teach us hahaha... We tried to use a speeding ticket fine as an example of sins.. instead of saying "fine" or something we only used "ticket" which is "tua" in thai. But for thai people, that literally means A TICKET for like the bus of something. So we basically talked about elect ahahah. Good thing we did that here and not to some thai person over there.

 

OW MY ABS HURT!

 

So how is everything? Josh you butt munch you didnt write me this week? Ill try to get some more pictures off this week, but dont expect a letter cause i got to write a lot of people today.. who ARENT my family whom i still love so much :)    So some things... about money.. uhhnyuh. Josh knows what that means. I have 110 bucks in cash right now, but when i have to pull money out, like for that bike, should i do that out of the credit card? Cause it will be like 450 bucks i have to exchange for baad. Ill look more into to but im fine for now. So question... whens Aroc get home? Stoked for that. One of the Elders got a THAI CTR ring.. totally want one! I dont remember where people got it, but theres some ring store that does them. Ask the ward, we are all mormon haha. That'd be way cool. So people want to see my emo pic.. can i get that hahaha. Dont ask how we got on that subject but we did. I need a new flashlight.. mine broke some how. Micro beam is what it is.. with those sick LED's or whatever. Cool stuff. So im gonna send me ipod back so josh can love it up some more with whatever he pleases. Still gonna put a request in for some Josh Groban if possible! And that Hallelujah song? Its been stuck in our heads and its so good. K should be good. Saw the Joseph Smith movie for the first time.. love it, gotta have it when i get back. I cried. This work is true, and Joseph is true too. Have fun in SD! Say hi to everyone.. love you all!

 

Elder GUdmundsen

bodthii!

That subject line means "lesson" but i felt like yelling something in thai. Cause that's what Elder Hess and i do anyway every day. We pass people and they obviously have no idea what we are saying, so we can say whatever we want, and its never hello. Always something like "khrccbkhrua! (family)" or "phom uan!..." which is a particular favorite cause when people here another language they try and say it back to seem cool or what'er.. so "phom uan" means im fat, so when people yell it back.. HAH! Yeah.. we showed them. Lately Elder Hess and I have adopted a black-anese voice.. "Oh wazzup baby bboi.. i see you workin that walk.. you work that dear elder." I know, the MTC does things to you.

K anyway, i couldnt find a  "good" scripture that i wanted to use in my scripture of the week, but i do have a Thai Word of the Week.

"Yiahaa" - translated it means a brand of anything.. clothing, shoes, etc. But it has 2 mountains tones on both syllables so its pronounced as if you were a cowboy and on a horse, cause i know I am not the only one who has wanted to do that. Scream it! I know you want to. So when we were talking about buying stuff we had to put this word with everything.. i say it loud and proud :)

 

So what's new... we have nccngthays! 11 elders.. yeah.. holy nuts right? The little ginger kid from my floor at BYU is among them.. he's having a hard time cause he hates his companion.. its normal. They will kiss and make up eventually. Jk. I certainly hope not. But seriously. The rest are all pretty chill.. there is one of them that is like 23.. a little late? Hah! Nah im kidding he's cool. Volleyball aint his strong suit though, hah! One thing you should never do.. or always do i guess, is respect your elders! And i am talking about myself and the rest of my district! Elder "Ginger" Thompson's roommate, Elder Merrel (yes another elder merrel) tried to correct OUR thai the first night he was here.. uhh... cing ruu? I was gonna smack someone. Not really, but seriously. I mean, im not against correction if its warranted, but he was way wrong and he had been there for a night! gah! Oh and he tried to give a super flowery explanation of our teacher, Brother Wilmore, during LGM (you remember brother Wilmore? Super funny laugh way awesome? I told you about him) and Brother Wilmore didn't say anything, but did that look where your eyes get bigger and you're kinda making fun of them with body language. You know the one i mean. yeah, that shut him up. Love Brother Wilmore. Too bad yesterday was his last day. Yeah, bummer i know. I shed a couple tears.

 

Ok so about the actual week this week. We had our 2nd TRC session in thai, and holy crap! We had fun! The task at first was to go buy clothes and stuff (yiahaa!!!) and for some reason we were just so natural and into it! The investigators were way chill so that added to it, but Hess almost died when one of them wouldnt break character (for anything) and was trying to tell us what he studies at his univeristy.. "phom may ruu.. uhh nay passa ankrid 'L-I-N-GUISTIE" (i dont know.. in english linguistics?). We finally got what he was saying and Hess just started dying. So we had a good time in that and then taught a solid lesson on the restoration. Solid. Brother Saakha loved our teaching.. dunno. Didnt think it was THAT good but he loved it. One of our investigators was our Branch President's son, who went to Thailand, so we saw him again in Sacrament meeting on Sunday and he finally broke the thai speaking (after 5 more minutes!) so that was fun. Speaking of Sacrament meeting, i gave my testimony in Thai and enjoyed that. Figured i had to say my testimony cause this is our last fast sunday. Yeah, you heard me, our LAST ONE! We leave August 30. Ish. Yeah, you are thinking right.. thats not 12 weeks. its only about 10 and a half. Dunno why but i dun curr. You know what stinks? Brother Duval leaves us in 2 weeks... dangit! We love him and he has to move 2 weeks before we head out. We will probably have a weap-a-thon. He told us the best story ive ever heard about a missionaries 1st day anywhere (yeah i know what you're thinking how many have i actually heard.. just this one but its hilarious). Basically after getting to Thailand and getting asigned to East Bangkok, and getting his brand new bike (rodcakrayan. which i will have to get too.. i think its 450 dollars so like 30,000 baad? ill look into it more) he was following his companion across a FREEWAY and into an alley that goes over a "khlccng" or, canal of sewage(!), and he didnt make it across. Yeah, he fell into the sewer on the way to an appointment, right next to a Korean restaurant and 2 thai children that were watching and then laughed while yelling "ferang bon khlccng! ferang bon khlccng!" The way he told it to us was just so funny it was ridiculous. Hess lost his voice from laughing so much.

 

K so im almost out of time. Hope you all had fun this weekend at Aaron's wedding! Tell me about it. Like the pictures i got. Dont have time to print them off, but i love em. Dad you look so "law" in that picture :)   Josh sorry again that i have no time to write.. this sucks! Ill try to write a small follow up letter with anything i got but dont expect much. To anyone that has written me a letter Im sorry i havent written back yet.. im trying! P-day's are actually one of the most hectic days ever! Dad, i give Josh permission to get on my facebook if he needs to. Give him the password. Dont abuse this Josh!!! I will punch you from thailand. I will send a "durian" fruit to your bedside (its a fruit that even THAI PEOPLE think smells bad). Anyway, love you all thanks for all the support you give me each day. Sup Enc 1. Stay sweet. Peace!

 

Elder Gudmundsen

Wazzup...

Why hello thur,

How is everybody doing? So dad you should probably stop hurting yourself.. its a good way to avert death AND death related symptoms.

So first things first, Word of the Week is "Sinspiration." I think you can figure out what that means. It was given to us during a fireside and the speaker hadnt planned on saying it but did, and then laughed at his own joke. Lulz. Scripture of the week is found in 2 Kings 2:23-24. Just read it, and remember to never make fun of prophets :)

K so thanks so much for the package.. i now have enough food to feed a couple of lifetimes. JK. But really, that was a lot of stuff. Good joke josh with the paper towel.. probably should have seen that coming. I appreciate the iPod but uhhh... dont want to sound ungrateful but someone missed the mark on what i selected haha. I was lookin through it and its all good but was just wondering where all the OTHER stuff went. Cool. So this sunday we are giving a District lesson on revelation so i figured, hey... send me farewell talk no? While you are at it, if we still have my talk from BYU that was on the fridge send that one too.. i want to see my thoughts again from each of these cause both have come up this week.

So this week was kinda crazy. Hess and I did successfully do the week of Thai. Of course we still spoke english, but we did a lot better than we thought we would. On top of that, we had our first TRC that was all in thai. The results? Not bad. It was difficult ESPECIALLY cause the volunteer we got spoke Eastern Thai, which is basically Laotian. Pretty much thai has a ton of "r's" and in laotion every R is replaced with an L. So certain things just werent clicking for us. But we did well anyway. Our lesson kinda got off track cause i was talking about the many different religions out there and why ours is different... the word for religion is "sadsanaa." The word for prophet is "sadsaDAA." So i was talking about religions and then she thought i said sadsadaa and then asked about those.. so i had to basically stop dead about religions and throw in an explanation of prophets. Basically we ended up just confusing here. Awesome. But for a first lesson it wasnt bad. This week we also learned SO MUCH grammar. Seriously.. we have a grammar game at the end of every week before the TRC and usually we have like a jeopardy set up with 5 rows and 5 columns. This week our game was 11 by 5! Took 2 days to do. Its all coming along nicely. My brain wants to explode every now and then, but whatever.

So big news as of last night.. 1 is that Freddie is already gone. Sad face. But before he left the 4 of us (Roach Dallas and Freddie) gathered together to open up Cody's Dear Elder with his MISSION CALL! Any last guesses if you dont already know? Romania Bucharest Mission! How insane is that? Only problem is that he enters exactly 1 week after i leave. Bummer. Either way, congratulate him on my facebook or something. Im sure you already have Josh. Speaking of Josh, he said that Inception was pretty amazing? That so? Did you see it with him Mom and Dad? Just one more awesome movie that will join the marathon when i get back.

Hmm.. trying to think of anything else.. oh! The temple opened up today so we are going for the first time since being here. We get nccngthays tommorrow afternoon. Thailand has amazing fruit! Brother Saakha went through everything with us and there are so many, some ive never even heard of. And on the street they are about 5 baad (baht) which is like nothing for us. Maybe a nickel, i dunno. Oh i almost forgot.. i was super excited for the SD card, but i dont know what you took it on cause they are only pictures on my camera. Ima send a different one back with some new pics for you and maybe try again? If you put them on the computer try draggin them over to it maybe? I dunno, but try again cause they looked funny.. especially the one with you mom and the hula hoop. Ugh.. i feel like im forgetting something again. Hope not.. if not ill remember soon and write another letter, but this week just expect the SD card with a little bit of writing.. since we go to the temple we have a lot less time to write letters. We'll see. Either way you will be in Utah right? Exciting! Make sure Aaron and the Powells know how much i wanted to be there! K well i gotta log off.. Hope you enjoyed the previous letter with my little doodle of notes. Meant a lot to me and that kind of stuff happens frequently. Ok seriously im getting off now :) Love you!

Elder Gudmundsen