Elder Bundy takes time to meditate
This was taken at the Buddhist WAT the Elders went to Sunday.
Elder Bundy reports that he is loving his mission, so far! He writes, "I am a little tired, getting used to the heat, biking, wearing Sunday clothes everyday all day and finding everything, but Elder Wright is an AWESOME trainer! And……we are always booked for teaching, which is totally awesome!" He writes, "that President Senior is seriously the coolest guy ever and he’s leaving next month! I’m sure President Johnson will be just as good." Kind of cool that Elder Bundy's Dads mission President’s name was also Johnson.
BEST EXPERIENCE THIS WEEK
The Sister Missionaries in the area have an investigator who is 86 years old! Her health is not very good at all and lives in the most third world circumstances you can think of. Elder Bundy has not seen her walk, or do anything for herself. Her daughter takes care of her. In order to be baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, an investigator must attend church at least two times. For this sister, this requirement seemed impossible. Elder Bundy writes, "so, we offered to give her a (priesthood) blessing and she accepted. Heavenly Father is so great! The next day, we showed up with a duk duk (a taxi, motorcycle three wheeled thing) and sure enough, she walked out that door unassisted, she hopped on up, sat herself on that duk duk and stayed all 3 hours of church! It was such a miracle! It was awesome."
This was taken at the Buddhist WAT they went to on Sunday.
It's way up on top of a mountain.
FUN THING WE DID THIS WEEK
Yesterday after church, Elder Bundy and Elder Wright went with the members to this world famous Buddhist WAT. The members and missionaries go every week and the Monks feed them. He writes, "I’ve never seen so much food! The Buddhist people do service to the poor by feeding them on that day every week, and we go participate."
This was taken at the WAT. Behind them are flat rice fields for miles, and buffalo too. Elder Bundy expressed how awesome and helpful the members are there. This is brother Lucas, Sister Dueyneuy, Brother Fluke, Brother Gap and us at the WAT.
This picture was taken in the WAT on the mountain. A member, Brother Gap has a truck and drives everyone there. Elder Bundy wrote, "like I said, it’s on top of a mountain and really nobody else comes and there is mounds of food and they are super nice and inviting."
Elder Wright and Elder Bundy in front of a SERIOUSLY huge Buddha Statue.
Elder Bundy thinks everything there looks like it came straight out of an Indiana Jones movie! Everything is all in solid gold and is so surreal. Again, he commented that the food was pretty unique too, including: squid, fish eggs, green noodles, chocolate rice and sweet beans. He added, "It was different but TOTALLY AWESOME"
Elder Bundy reported that the dragon warrior statues were his favorites!
HANDSTAND OF THE WEEK
For this week's handstand of the week, Elder Bundy decided to just do it outside of the church in the middle of the street. It kind of depicts what the streets look like in Thailand.
BIKING
Elder Bundy writes, "The biking is great, and a little scary all at the same time.... the cars don’t follow any rules here. I just have to be super forceful and aggressive, like cut cars off and weave in between stuff. I’m getting kind of use to it tho." He also stated that it gets so hot that everywhere feels like he is inside the wrestling room during a hard practice. He added, "We usually eat at least 1 sketchy thing every day. It just makes you have tccng sia once and you’re good."
P-DAY & SERVICE PROJECTS
They get up and do their morning routine of studying, eating, cleaning, exercising and then go to this gaming place to write their letters home. It is a big room with about 50 or 60 computers that you pay about $1 US for an hours worth of use. Elder Bundy writes, "We have to wear missionary clothes at all times unless we do something that we CANNOT do in a white shirt and tie. A month ago, a couple of Elders wanted to run a 5k in their town on p-day. President Senior told them if they wanted to do it, they had to 1. Win 2. Hand out pamphlets as they ran, and 3. Wear their white shirts, ties and shorts as they ran lol. They did it, so it was pretty cool they ended up getting a bunch of people to church from that." He reports that they haven’t been able to line up any service projects yet, but that they are always asking members for stuff to do. He adds, "I am like seriously a solid foot taller than ANYONE in this country. Seriously. So, Elder Wright advertises my size as a plus to help people out. So far, no one has taken us up on it." After they have taken care of all the things they need to like laundry, writing home, etc., they sometimes go to Dairy Queen get huge blizzards for like $.80 cents US! After 6 o'clock, they fill the evening with teaching appointments.
Elder Wright and Elder Bundy at the Church with some members
CLEANLINESS
Yes! They keep their apartment clean the best they can given the circumstances. Elder Bundy said that the worst things in their little huts are the lizards! They make bird sounds and keep them up at night. He said that these lizards are everywhere and in every house. They also are lucky to have a "laundry machine" in their house, but unfortunately, it stopped working this week. Elder Bundy actually bought a hammock for 100 baht and now sleeps in it so the lizards and bugs don’t crawl on him in his sleep. He doesn’t know if that stops them or not.
FINANCES
Elder Bundy wrote, "Everything is really inexpensive here. I use about 100 baht a day.. that’s like $2.50 US$ and we usually eat off the street and get snacks from 711. The mission allowance we get is more than enough for our needs."
PACKAGES & MAIL
It takes like 3 or so weeks for packages to get there, and then they sit in the mission home until transfers. Transfers happen every 6 weeks. So, anyone who sends anything should not send anything too perishable or fragile. Send packages to the mission home with Elder Bundy's name on it. But remember, he has to pay customs on anything he receives, so keep it small.
DIET AND EXERCISE
Elder Bundy writes, "I love the food and I have a pretty diverse diet, so don’t worry about that...."
Elder Bundy seriously loves the food there!
They get like all they can manage to eat for like 50 cents a meal!
He added, "I was showing Elder Wright my pictures of you guys and I flipped to my state pictures. I had this overwhelming sense of urgency that I needed to become more dedicated to working out and getting back into shape."
Elder Bundy using chopsticks
Elder Bundy writes, "So, it turns out they use chopsticks a lot in Thailand. The members make fun of how bad I am at using them."
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