A little chilly this week!

Dear Everyone,

Well life has been pretty good to me here in Thailand. In the morning I about freeze myself to death getting out of bed and showering. After being here for 9 months now, the cold gets to you. I much prefer the heat now. Oh well. It has been cooler than usual and I get quite cold when we ride our bikes and there is a nice breeze. Ahh, life is good.

Monday: Pretty good Preparation Day. Got some good stuff done. Didn't teach anyone and we had to travel to Surin again for District Meeting on Tuesday. Oh and since Deang owns a food stand, she taught us how to make some dishes. I can now make a good fried rice and something called pad kra paw. It is meat, chili peppers, onion, and basil over rice. It is really good. I can also make a cool curry dish as well that is really good.

Tuesday: Good day in Surin. Had a really good District meeting by Elder Campbell once again. He is a really cool guy, but unfortunately he is a Utah fan (sorry grandpa, it is hard to pick who you associate with out here :) ). He was pretty happy about the last Utah BYU game. Oh well. We also caught a foot long lizard (me and Elder Chapman) from the Surin church. That was fun took like 25 minutes or so to get it out in the open and catch it. We caught it while Elder Campbell was doing interviews. It is called a dugkea (something like that). It can jump five feet and if it bites your finger, it will lock jaw and rip it off in a few seconds. Yeah...that was a fun experience trying to catch it. Plus we took it on an hour long bus ride to Buriram to give it a member in our branch who looks after animals. Found out the animal was worth about $200. Oh well :) It was fun! Then we had a good English class scaring everyone with the animal (Thai people are dead scared of these).

Wednesday: Had a good day teaching investigators. We have really shrunk in the amount of people we are teaching. We have Deang, Bee, Tuktaa, and Chai. Yeah...but they all have baptismal goals! It is way cool. Bee and her family own a restaurant that is really famous here in Buriram. They really like the Elders. It was a good day.

Thursday: Had the usual long planning for the next week. Takes about 2 hours usually to plan everything. Lots of fun. Found a new family to start teaching. Taught only 3 of them at first, but there are 9 people total. We will see how it goes. Another good day for us.

Friday: A not so good day. Taught only one lesson, right away in the morning to Tuktaa and Chai. They are doing good. We are trying to help Chai to stop smoking. He has a desire to stop smoking and drinking coffee, plus Tuktaa (his girlfriend), really wants him to stop too. It is great.

Saturday: It was a good day to say. Taught a couple lessons. Taught a Sergeant in the police force here in Buriram. Taught a 10 minute lesson and he wasn't really interested in learning more. Well, we did our best. He was still a good guy. Taught Deang finally again. She is doing well. Said she would go to church.

Sunday: We had only Deang go to church. Next week will be better. It was weird, the branch president sent us with the young men and didn't say why. So we had preisthood with the young men. There are the branch presidents son, 2 other sons of the second counselor, and another kid. It was fun. The branch presidents son is the first counselor of the young men and he is 18 and the president is 19 years old. It is way sweet. Still not sure why we were in the class...oh well. We got denied out teaching many times. Such is the life of a missionary.

That is all for this week folks!

Love,

Elder Ackerman