BRADY MISSION TO THAILAND: Letter 7

Dear family and friends,

A friend asked me about a typical day in the office and she caught me on a very busy day. . . and since it has been a very busy week, I will copy and paste my answer to her here in the blog! Thanks for the question Pam Scotton!

Hey Pam! It has been a crazy busy day here in the office and even beforehand! I will give you a detailed description of a day in our lives (ha - I may even use this for this week's blog). (Sidenote - I wrote this last Wednesday! And I am indeed using it for this week's blog!)

So today, I woke up early and decided to put off my typical early morning stair walk to this evening. Instead, I got up, got dressed, and headed out the door to buy some breakfast for John and me. Street food! John has not been feeling good for 2 and 1/2 weeks, from stomach problems that morphed into congestion, he finally has an appetite and was craving a good Thai Breakfast! (Sidenote - late yesterday afternoon [Tuesday - the 4th] after being sick for over 2 weeks, John took a Covid test . . . turns out he has/had Covid!! I am fine and he is feeling much better finally - but we may have unknowingly infected half of Bangkok!)

Anyway, I went to get some Patongko (Thai fried bread that you dip in sweetened condensed milk) and Moo Bing (barbecued meat on a stick) and some sticky rice. I brought it back to the house. We ate some breakfast and then I headed back out to the door to head to 7-11 for milk (more like cream), Juice (this amazing 100% mandarin OJ), butter, eggs, and bananas. I took those back home and headed down to the office by 8am. (Sidenote - I love this simple life where we walk to the store to get a few things that we need, no big shopping trips, it is so refreshing! Although I do miss my Costco Samples!)

We had a new missionary arrive late last night. He did not come with the group last week because he had had the flu and had to wait a few more days until he was well enough to travel. So we had Flu and Covid in the office this morning (and praying no one is contagious anymore!!). I helped the new Elder sign some forms, made copies of his medical and mission card, etc., gave him some brief training, took a picture of him with his new companion, and then sent that picture and a letter to his parents to let them know he had arrived safely.

After the new Elder left, I finished preparations for our Wednesday morning English Connect Class that we teach at 10am once a week. I lead the lessons and John is the tech guy! We meet with missionaries who are learning English as a second Language (ESL) all over the country of Thailand via zoom. That class went from 10am - 11am.

My projects today included packaging pass-along-cards into little baggies of 25 (we just got an order of 1000s of new cards). I am getting those packaged and sorted for the upcoming zone conferences. The Elders and Sisters can grab packs and pass them out as they meet people on the street. The pass-along cards contain a spiritual thought or scripture and give them information on how to contact the missionaries if they would like to learn more about Jesus Christ and the church.

I have been setting up groups on Messenger for John and I to be connected with all of the houses that the Elders or Sisters live in. They can contact us via messenger when they have housing issues. So far, John is dealing with things like: a rat in the Sister's apartment - entering through a hole that needs to be fixed, Elders with bats coming out of their ceiling, Sisters needing a better front door lock, air conditioners not working in hot apartments, needs for new mattresses, broken bikes (he is over bikes too), the need for new water filters, and on and on and on!

I am compiling all of the baptisms and the stories of the people who got baptized (what led them to decide to follow Jesus Christ and be baptized, etc.) into a document that can be used for the mission annual history. And I am in the middle of creating a spreadsheet to keep track of the branches and wards weekly attendance and the investigators/friends who come to church each Sunday, also for our annual history.

On other days, I work with the other office secretary (the wonderful Sister Belnap), helping her collect the "miracle" stories from our missionaries off of their Facebook groups and we compile those in a book for the mission history.

And I always have to check my list of things that need to be done for the upcoming departing missionaries (like checking with their parents on what airport they will fly home to, working with church travel to book their tickets, getting their appreciation letters ready for their packets to take with them when they leave, etc.).

Sister Belnap works on the arriving missionaries and she will train me on that before she leaves in November. She also works on referrals and I will start helping her with that as well! Referrals are when someone sees an ad about the church on Facebook or maybe got a pass along card and they reach out to the church wanting more information. We help find the missionaries that live closest to that person so the missionaries can contact them!

I also use a little time during my "work" day to work on my blog, catch up with friends (like you), and create birthday newsletters for the grandkids (we are sending these electronically instead of birthday cards this year - and Venmo cash to parents to give grandchildren $$ or to buy a gift for them). I also hope to use some of my office time to work on family history and my Thai language study. And that about concludes our day. We usually have lunch around 12.

I left the office just before noon to go out to the fruit lady just to the left of the temple about 20 yards and bought some yummy fresh fruit and we had fruit and moo bing and rice for lunch. (we got full on the donuts for breakfast and saved the meat for lunch).

It is almost 5pm and time to finish up our day! We are going to head out and find some street food for dinner. Probably Fried rice and Som Thum (a yummy Thai salad). This meal will cost us about $3 USA. So . . . yes, my favorite thing about Thailand is I am not cooking! We are eating healthy fresh food for very reasonable prices! When we get back to the apartment, I will walk stairs and then shower, John will prepare a talk/lesson for zone conference (the mission president asked him to speak/do some training for about 15 minutes), we will do our weekly chores (which takes about 15 minutes in our tiny apartment), and then relax!

And there is a day in the office! PS - sometimes we are out of the office, walking to the post office, going to 7-11 to get treats for missionaries, taking public transit all over Bangkok to visit the Missionaries apartments, joining missionaries for lunch on zone conference days or transfer days, and so on! And each week in the evening we fit in one night each - chores, trip to the temple (it is all of 2 minutes from our apartment), and getting a massage (at $6 an hour this is now going to be weekly!!!!! ) It really is an adventure here! :)

The rest of the week was much of the same during the day. The Belnaps, our office coworkers were out most of the week. It was a bit of a challenge for John to do some of the housing assignments that were new to him like opening and closing some mission houses (apartments) without Elder Belnap to give him instructions. But he did it! Yay!

I enjoyed some time in the Temple on Thursday. It is such a peaceful wonderful place to be.

Zone Conference on Friday was great! We got up early to help make pancakes for the breakfast, John and I both ended up speaking during training, we enjoyed an amazing lunch, got to wear our Thai skirt and tie, and enjoyed mingling with the young missionaries!

I took a fun girls trip to a Saturday street Market with a couple of Senior Missionary Sisters - called Chatuchak Weekend Market. This is a famous - humongous street Market near Chatuchuk park. It would have taken all day to see the whole thing! We roamed around for a few hours and then headed back home.

The best news of the week is John is feeling much better! So we are back to doing important things like eating yummy foods and exploring Thailand, and of course, supporting our missionaries working hard all day long in the office!

We love and miss you all!

Love,

John and Shelly (mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, and so on!)