love from home

Dear Family,

Soengkhran was amazingly fun. I enjoyed getting wet very much. It seems like everyone wanted to throw water on us and I made sure to give them the opportunity, it was way fun that way. There were tons and tons of truck loads of people with buckets of water driving down the road and dumping water on everything and everyone. Since we had little buckets when the cars would come up to us to spash water we would get up and use their own source of water to fight back. We returned home in a bus soaked.

Moves went very smoothly. I moved to Ayutthaya!!!! It's the old capital city of Thailand. For some reason it reminds me of Micheal... Probably because the roads are all very wide and long, there's hardly any stoplights at all, and there's very very little traffic. And I have to smile at Thai road designs because instead of making a four way intersection they love to make giant bridges that turn around for you so as long as you merge to the bridge and keep following the road you can turn around without ever slowing down. Neat-o.
Then there are old Buddhist temples everywhere. They are the older, mostly made of brick, and abandoned. There are fancy gates surrounding most of them and a name sign and that's it. They are beautiful too. In fact, Ayutthaya is probably the most beautiful place I have ever been too. There's green grass everywhere, organized and Lord of the Ring like houses, and unlike the thick of Bangkok where I started at, you can see the blue sky! Before I could look at the sun without blinking. I tried it too.

My companion's name is Elder Manop. He is a native Thailander from Korrad. He makes speaking Thai all of the time very easy. :) He's also teaching me in some of the ways of Thai cooking. I learned how to make Gaengmasuman. Mmmm

I live in a house connected to the main river. We have a nice hammock in the back and we can go fishing whenever we want to. It is a very sabbay house. It's only place of lacking is it has no oven. It's also a four man house and I'm rooming with Elder Willey and Elder McCoy.
The protests have ended as far as I know, and right now they are no problem for us.

Last week we went and took a visit to the Mortal Combat Temple. Or rather the Giant Temple that they used to screen the Movie Mortal Combat. I have some several excellent pictures that I would love to send to you guys.
And yes, there are Elephants Braden. Next week we are going to go ride them.

Conference was awesome. I especially liked the talks from Elder Christofferson and Elder Holland. I watched Elder Holland's talk again in zone conference as they spoke of the events surrounding Christ's Atonement and how most other religious specialists do not understand the reality and efficacy of Christ's Divine birth and the Atonement. We moved some couches together and watched conference and was able to see it with some investigators too.

Two days ago my Thai companion explained to me that I was sleep talking in Thai. I was having a bad night's sleep, but I don't remember what I was dreaming about. Sometimes I dream all in Thai. I actually think that I am progressing well in my language speaking because I feel like I am doing my best to learn it. I carry a handy paper around that I created to write down words that I don't recognize or words that I don't know and want to look up. The paper gets bigger and bigger.

Our branch is tiny compared to Bangkhae and we do not yet have our own church building built. Right now we have a rented building. But I am very excited and hopeful to build up the Church here in Ayutthaya.

Love you all,
and I'll get pictures in a wie bit.

Elder Lilly