Letter 43 - New Arrivals, Missionary Choir, Inspections, and We Almost Moved!

Dear loved ones,

I didn't think we could get any busier, but the work is never ending! It is a happy work so that is good! 

This past week we had new missionaries arrive, we did house inspections, we spent days and nights rehearsing in two different choirs, and we almost moved! Oh, and we had 3 more patriarchal blessings. We are up to 45 since the very end of July! 

It is Friday afternoon and we head down to Rayong tomorrow morning, so I am going to try and make this quick! Hahahaha! Who am I kidding? There are tons of pictures. Read on for all of this past week's happenings!  

As always, we love you and miss you and we thank you for your thoughts, prayers, and kind words!

With love, 

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

We took this picture today, Friday! We are waiting in the lobby for the sisters to come down to the lobby to take us up to their apartment for an inspection! But let's go back in time one week to . . . 

Last Friday! This is our view in the mission home. 

Missionaries are gathered to eat breakfast (planned and delivered by the the Senior Missionaries). 

Scattered about are missionaries - new and old (well they are all young actually!)

Elder and Sister Brady enjoying breakfast. 

Elder Brady is dipping a Thai Donut Pantangko in Sweet Milk (Sweetened Condensed Milk). 

Hello beautiful Sisters! Sisters Faux (holding the camera) and clockwise: Sisters Pathoumma, Polsan, Elder Brady, Sisters Brady, Merritt, Cobia, and Brooks! 

Sister Brady and Sister Howard in our matching Costco shirts! Sister Howard is our new office missionary. She and her husband are taking the Belnaps place!

Time for training our new arrivals! Clockwise (not mentioning the Bradys who I just mentioned): Sisters Jasper and Malquist, Elders Park, Clark, Rurale, and Lewis! 

Another photo op with Sister Cobia and Sister Lundberg. We are hoping sister Cobia will someday be transferred to Bangkok! And we are sad to see Sister Lundberg leave Bangkok. 

This was lunch in the mission home and it was so delicious! I don't know how I am going to deal with not having this amazing food every day! 

All of our brand new missionaries with their new companions (trainers) posing out on the balcony in front of the mission home. I love this view of the city and the temple! 

We love transfer day. Missionaries come into the office and write kind notes to us office Seniors on the white board! We feel so loved! 

Did I mention we almost moved? On Friday we took our bedding over to the skyrise next door and spent the night. This is where the Belnaps lived and this is/was their amazing view. 

A wider lens. We loved the possibility of a gym, a pool, and a king sized bed. 

But we woke up Saturday morning and felt like we should stay at the Annex (the building below behind the temple). It is just so convenient to be there, especially with the amount of blessing requests that come in. And when I forget my EarPods that I use for transcribing, I can just hop on the elevator and go up to the 5th floor and grab them instead of heading down the block and up to the 37th floor. We are a little sad about the gym, pool, and bed, but we feel good about staying here at the Annex. So the Howards will be moving next door to the skyrise! 

Since we were not spending our Saturday moving, we ran some errands. Here Elder Brady is picking out some ground beef so we can make spaghetti with meat sauce for Sunday dinner. Yes, it's true, once in a blue moon we cook. Right behind him you can see a FREE SAMPLE stand. Yes, I had the sample and it made me so happy!! Things I miss from home - Grandchildren and Costco Samples! 

I saw this interesting shrine on the way home from running errands. 

Did I mention Elder Brady has a coupon for buy one Pizza get on free? After our shopping Saturday, we headed to the Pizza company for dinner. 

We ate some and took the rest home so we could wrap it up and freeze it. Elder Brady loves a piece for breakfast or lunch. After a couple of weeks, the pizza runs out and we do it all over again! 

This beautiful girl is Dolly. Here parents are President and Sister William. A few years back they were mission leaders in India and now are living in Thailand. President William is over Seminary and Institutes over all of Asia and also serves in the MTC presidency here in Thailand. Elder Brady gave a blessing to Dolly. She is very sweet. It was nice to get to know her family. 
Sunday evening, we walked the Howards up to their new home and gave them their keys! We had to take one last look at the amazing view at night! I love seeing the temple all lit up and the lights of Bangkok! 

Monday morning we woke up to these pictures sent to us by some missionaries! We are so grateful they are OK! The smoke alarm works and they were able to get the fire out before there was more damage! 

Counting our blessings that these missionaries were watched over! 

Monday morning (Sunday in Pocatello), we facetimed with our son, Kevin and his boys Dawson and Sawyer. We sang happy birthday to Dawson and had a great conversation! 

A picture of some of my office work. These are pass-along cards that the missionaries handout on the streets. Some of them have information about free English Conversation classes. Some of them are invitations to church and others are information on how to learn more about Jesus Christ. Thousands of these are ordered and shipped here and the office secretaries package them in packs of 25. 

I love to call family while I am packing them. 

Or if my family is all asleep, I will listen to a good book or talk on my phone :).

My office phone (the physical one on my desk) has only rung two times the entire time we have been here. Monday was one of those days! This cute couple had a package to give us to give to one of our missionaries for his Christmas!! 

They were coming to Thailand and hand delivered this baggie of treats!  

Tuesday we got invited to have lunch in the mission home with Elder Johnson and his wife. They are general authorities (he just spoke in general conference last month) here for a mission leader training conference. They had a special training with our young missionary leaders on Tuesday. Pictured: Sister Gilson (holding the camera), Elder Howard (new office missionary), President and Sister Kanyaphan, Sister and Elder Johnson, Elder and Sister Brady, and Sister Henry!

Christmas packages! It is an exciting time of year! Pictured: Elder Htoo (from Myanmar), Elder Collado (from the Philippines), Sister Jenkins (St. George), and Sister Brooks (New Zealand). Sister Jenkins' awesome mom sent a stocking to Sister Jenkins and Elder Collado (our office Elder). 

They had so much fun opening these packages. When Sister Jenkins opened hers, a ton of paper butterflies flew out to everyone's delight! 

Butterflies! Also . . . is it true that there are less than 6 weeks until Christmas???

Picture time! Most of these missionaries are here for leadership training. We love when they come hang out with us in the office! Sisters Sanford, Brady, Furlan, Brooks, Pathoumma, Siri, Jenkins, and Cameron! Elder and Sister Brady and Elder and Sister Howard too!  

We were surprised by a visit from Elder and Sister Doxey (who serve in Hong Kong). Elder Brady has spent a lot of time emailing Elder Doxey regarding patriarchal blessings, but we had never met in person until Tuesday when they happened to be at the annex and came up to say hello! We learned that there are now 3 or 4 English speaking Patriarchs in Asia and nearly 300 blessings have happened this year! 

This cute sister is in the MTC here in Thailand. We found out that three sisters from India needed patriarchal blessings. They are in the MTC for missionary training right now here in Thailand and will be returning to India to serve as missionaries. This is Sister Raja and she has a twin sister! Sister Raja received her blessing at 4pm on Tuesday and was very thankful for the opportunity. 

I happened to look at the weather app on my phone and saw 65 degrees predicted for the low next Thursday! What??? I will let you know if it actually happens! 

Wednesday morning, we gathered in the chapel on the 1st floor to practice singing "This is the Christ" with the young missionaries for the mission leader conference. 

We made our way over to the Sheraton Hotel to sing. While we were waiting to sing, we observed this chef making this yummy wonton type of meat wrapped in steamed thin bread. 

These beautiful treats were filled with minced chicken and a peanut sauce. 

I know because he let us try one!

It was delicious! Amazing actually! 

Here we are singing! This was a very challenging piece that we managed to put together with only 2 practices. It was pretty good considering! I think angels were helping us sing! 

Elder Gibson, a talented pianist, played for us. And he did his best on a keyboard (after practicing on an actual piano). Elder Brady posted this picture on the all missionary messenger page and said that Elder Gibson was the GOAT pianist (for my older friends reading, GOAT stands for the Greatest of All Time).

I clicked on the photo and messenger asked me if I wanted to edit the photo with AI. I thought it would be funny to ask AI to make the pianist a goat and AI did and then I ACCIDENTLY POSTED IT TO THE ALL MISSIONARY PAGE!!! I was just going to screenshot the photo and send it to my husband an Elder Gibson . . . but my old fingers sent it to everyone and I could not figure out how to delete it! Fortunately, Elder Gibson and the missionaries thought it was funny! 

And Elder Gibson had fun with a little revenge! He said Elder Brady was the GOAT singer! Hahaha!

Here we are after singing! 

The floor outside the conference room was set up with yummy snack foods for the mission leaders. After they ate their fill, we were invited to snack. We enjoyed fruit and mango sticky rice! 

Elder Brady even had a hot chocolate! 

Smiling with Sister Siri! 

On our way back to the train, I saw this giant Christmas tree outside of the Terminal 21 Mall!

Walking with the missionaries to the train. 

Wednesday afternoon, we gave the lovely Sister Raja a patriarchal blessing. This is the twin sister of Sister Raja from the day before. She was a lot of fun and so grateful for the blessing. 

After the blessing, we went down to the office to type it up. Around 5:45pm, we took the elevator up to the 3rd floor where the MTC is to give Sister Raja her blessing and the MTC teachers invited us to come into eat! The missionaries were all done eating and there was tons of leftovers, so we said "yes Please! and Thank you!" Elder Meeker happened to be there so he and his wife joined us! 

Yummy! 

Sister Babu from the MTC got her blessing on Thursday at 4pm. It was so wonderful to meet this beautiful sister and be a part of her day. She was so happy to get her patriarchal blessing. We typed up her blessing and delivered it to the MTC and might have gotten another invite to dinner leftovers. 

Friday we headed across town in a Grab (Uber/Lyft type of ride). Elder Brady had meetings and there was not enough time to take the train like we normally do. I liked this sign in the car. No smoking, no eating, and no throwing up!! 

Waiting for the sisters in the lobby! We were here to inspect their house, but look what they did for us! 

They made us an amazing lunch. We enjoyed crepes made by Sister Jenkins! 

They were so delicious! And sisters Jenkins and Brooks did an A++ job cleaning their apartment!! 

We met this young man, Sam, on our way home today. He is visiting Thailand with some friends and told us he served his mission in the Northwest. He knows our friends the Garlocks! It is a small world!

And that concludes this week's blog!

Thanks for reading! 

Until next week! 

Sa Wat Di Ka!