Thursday, July 3, 2025

Letter 24 - Closing Apartments, Missionary Farewells, Thai Drivers License, and a Visit to the Aquarium

Dear Family and Friends, 

I hope this finds you well and enjoying your summer! Happy 4th of July to you! And a Happy 40th Birthday to our daughter Michelle (on the 3rd) and a Happy Birthday to John (born on the 4th of July)! Now that all the official business is over with, I'll get on to the blog. As always, the pictures tell the story so keep on scrolling for more details.

In short, we spent last weekend stuck in a lot of traffic, closing an apartment in Chonburi, making a trip to see a really cool aquarium - only to find out it was closed for renovations, and spending time with our branch family. Our week days were filled with another apartment closing, a Senior Missionary Farewell lunch, young missionary departures, and a special visitor!! (You will have to scroll all the way to the end for that surprise!)

We love you and miss you and pray you are well! Enjoy the pictures! 

Love, 

Elder and Sister Brady (Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, John and Shelly, and so on)

Beautiful beach in Rayong near the Rayong Aquarium. 
View from the top of the Chonburi apartment we closed. 
There is a gorgeous rooftop pool with ocean views in the distance.
The missionaries don't swim on their missions. So this was just cool for them to look at! 
We closed this apartment and moved the missionaries closer to the church. 
Their new apartment is more affordable too. 
View of a Golden Buddha on our drive to the aquarium.
In the aquarium parking lot we saw this little motorcycle vehicle. If you zoom in you can see the dad reclined scrolling on his phone while the baby is asleep in a little hammock! 
The aquarium. 
These boats were so colorful and cool looking. 
Fishing boats near the aquarium.
Did I mention we drove all the way there (about 1/2 hour south of where we stay in Rayong) only to find out the aquarium is closed for renovations. Note the empty parking lot and stray dogs. 
The front of the Buddha on our drive back to Rayong  . . . 
We couldn't go to the aquarium so we decided to eat some yummy lunch! 
Fried rice and papaya salad.
Remember the giant bag of squid chips last week? We found some more! These are tomato flavored! 
Time to relax by the swimming pool at our hotel.
Church in Rayong! In between meetings!
Rayong Branch. Our mission leaders came for a visit today. (They are pictured on the left.) 
They announced that Rayong is now an official branch 
and we are going to get to move into an official church building in a few months! 
We have been meeting at the hotel convention center! This is very exciting news! 
After church potluck! The food is always amazing!
Smile for the camera! Some of our missionaries are going to be leaving Rayong! We are so sad to see them go. But I am sure we will love our new missionaries! 
This leaf was stuck to our apartment window. And now it will be remembered forever in our blog. 
Traffic has been awful. Story time: We were on our way to close a condo in Bangna and we wanted to go early to do some extra cleaning. We got out on the road and it took us about 15 minutes to get 1/2 a mile from the temple. And then we realized we forgot the condo keys! It took us another 20 minutes to go back and then another 35 minutes to get to the Condo. We did not make it in time to clean . . . so actually that was a plus! Haha! Just kidding. We felt bad we did not get there to clean but we got there on time for our appointment and everything went well. 

Confusing sign at the Condo! So visitor? Or no visitor??
The West Mission Leaders hosted a luncheon for some departing Senior Missionaries. We will miss the Ellis' and the Ercanbachs. And the Mexican food was delicous! 
A view of the temple and he condo next door.
Good-bye to the Ellis and Ercanbachs! Pictured from Left to Right: Poons, Corbetts, Bradys, Ellis', Ercanbachs, Belnaps, Stepps, and Meekers! (West and East Mission Seniors)
Guess what! We got our Thai Drivers License! Here we are at the Department of Land Transportation! 
This took a few weeks and several steps, but we finally got it! I have yet to actually drive in Thailand but I am legally able to . . . so one of these days! 
Lunch in the mission home. It's missionary joping day. (Jope is Thai for finish.)
Here are some of our departing missionaries.
Happy birthday to Sister Endya and Elder Brady! (Elder Belnap in the background.)
Good-bye Sister Hill! (Sister Endaya and Johnston in the background).
Elder Wood and Sister Hill come to visit us in the office. 
Dinner in the mission home on joping day. Sister Nok cooks for our missionary departure and transfer days and the Thai food is amazing! So delicious!!
This noodle soup (pronounced Cow Soy) is out of this world! But the slurpy soupy noodles splash everywhere! Elder Brady comes prepared to protect his white shirt and Thai! Go Cougars! 
Putting clean sheets on the bed next door in anticipation of our visitor! 
Look who arrived Wednesday night!!!! Rikki flew all the way from NYC to spend a few days with us! Including her daddy's birthday on the 4th of July! We had a fun day with her today and we will post some pictures of her visit in next week's blog! 

I'm glad you made it this far! I don't know why my writing is blue and underlined! But I am too tired to fix it and I want to post the blog! We have a lot of plans for the next few days and I need to get to bed! It's transfer day tomorrow (a busy day in the mission) and we have some plans to see some sights with Rikki over the next few days! So that is all for now! Thanks for reading! 

2 comments:

  1. Very exciting about the branch becoming a branch and getting a church building. Happy, happy birthday Elder Brady! You've grown up so fast. You both look fantastic. I think the mission has been very good for you. We pray for you two, too. Have a wonderful week and be safe over there!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for the Birthday Wishes! And thank you for the Prayers! We hope you had a happy 4th! We've had a good week with Rikki visiting!

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Letter 25 - Happy Birthday to John, a Visit from Rikki, Moo Deng, and the Largest 7-11 in the WORLD!

Dear family and friends!  Happy Birthday to our daughter Michelle, Happy Birthday to John, and Happy 6 month Mission Anniversary!  It was a ...