Letter 16 - Happy Anniversary to us! 41 years!

 Dear Family and Friends, 

The weeks are flying by! I can't believe it is time for our weekly blog post! Happy Friday to you all! And happy anniversary week to us! We were married on May 5th (before we even knew Cinco De Mayo was a thing) 41 years ago in the Seattle Temple! Here is a quick recap of our week with more details in the photos that follow:

Saturday, May 3rd, we hung out at home, did some chores, went shopping, I got a Thai Massage which I will refer to as physical therapy. The most painful wonderful physical therapy I have ever had. It hurts terribly but then my pain goes away and I feel so much better! And did I mention how affordable it is? Come to Thailand and go to physical therapy with me!! :) We also went to a special choir performance Saturday afternoon. One of the workers in the country office (who happened to be in choir at BYU-Hawaii with Katrina years ago) is in this multi-faith Thai choir and he invited us to the performance. They were really fantastic. 

Sunday we stayed in town and attended church at the English speaking International Ward. 

Monday, May 5th was our anniversary! Yay! We spent the morning working in the mission office. And then we headed over to a sports club so that we could play pickleball! Sisters Taylor and Bullock joined us. After pickleball, we stopped for a very delicious donut at Dough Bros! Then we took the rest of the afternoon off. We went out to eat at EAT AM ARE for a lovely anniversary dinner!

Tuesday, we had some doctor appointments. And we worked in the office. 

Wednesday, I had my Thai language class and then we taught our English Connect class. We ate yummy Thai food street food for lunch. Wednesday evening we took a long walk in the hot humid heat to eat pizza and another donut! 

Thursday, we had some missionary apartment inspections. We love visiting with the missionaries! We stopped at McDonalds on the way home. And we did our chores Thursday evening.

Friday, today, we worked in the office, took a walk to the post office mid day and stopped at a burger place on the way home. Barney's burgers! Fabulous Smash Burgers! We went to the temple in the afternoon and had a lovely time. We love attending the temple in Thailand. There are so many people from all over the world coming to worship. We have met people from Indonesia, Cambodia, Germany, Russia, India, Singapore and more. There is often a language barrier, but love and smiles reach beyond that and it is so wonderful making new friends. 

That concludes another week in Thailand! We pray you are well. We love and miss you all!

Love John and Shelly (mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, friend and more)

Throw back from our wedding reception. May 1984. John says he is trying to take the knife from me. 

Seattle, Washington Temple USA. This is where we were married. 

The Thai Interfaith Choir. They were fantastic.

The Temple - view from the 6th floor balcony of the Annex (where we live).

Another view. 

The monthly Senior Missionary Gathering on Zoom Sunday evening.

What do you wear for a zoom meeting? Missionary attire on top. PJ Bottoms below! 

Anniversary Pickleball! 

Another great day on the courts!

Burgers and Chicken at EAT AM ARE! Here is what 41 years looks like!

I love this view on our walks to the market!

Amazing Thailand!

A&W with Thai writing! Thanks to our Mission Leaders for this yummy treat!

These yellow bumpy tiles are on the sidewalks everywhere! 

Would someone please tell us what they are? 

Donuts made fresh while you wait. We actually went here on our anniversary, but we didn't take a picture so we had to come back! This is a Biscoff filled donut! It was warm and delicious!

Dough Bros has pizza and donuts, so we needed to try the pizza too! And it was pretty good!

The inside of the amazing Biscoff Donut! 

Thailand is a mix of old and new! This fancy robot vacuum was keeping things clean at the train station.

Waiting for the train to go visit the Elders! You can see the train arriving!

Elders Sangrurgrat (from Thailand) and Elder Olson (from the USA). We did a "scan for relatives around me" from the Family Tree App and turns out Elder Brady and Elder Olson are 4th cousins! 

Walking back to the train. Behind me are motorcycle cabs waiting for people who need a ride. Some of them were resting in makeshift hammocks! I didn't get them in the picture unfortunately!

Walking to the train. You can see the station in the distance on the right. 

Still walking to the train. I love all of the flowers. 

We shared a smash burger at Barneys Burgers!

Yummy!

On the way home we stopped for ice cream because half a burger is really not enough! 

These cones were 45 cents each! 

This was our first Mixue ice cream cone! And I give it a 10 our of 10!