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

Word of the Day, Scripture of the Week

Word of the Day (It's actually more of a Phrase of the Day): "Go out there and Give 'em Heaven and Baptize the Hell out of them." -President Briggs of my Branch

Scripture of the week: Alma 54: 11. This is Moroni and Ammoron trying to negotiate for the exchange of prisoners. What Moroni says to him is just awesome (Think of Family Guy if you watch it.. the episode where Stewie is learning to play an instrument). "But behold, it supposeth me that I talk to you concerning these things in vain; or it supposeth me that thou art a child of hell..." HAHA. My companion found this and laughed over it because can you imagine him saying this, or better yet, Ammoron reading it? "Well ammoron id love to stay and chat but YOU are a child of hell." If you have seen family guy then and are thinking of that episode i hope you can remember the sentence stewie says to the girl that i cant say in this email for obvious reasons.