Riley Parish's Mission in Thailand: Week 69: Cookies and Scorpions

So, transfers. Due to some irregular scheduling, transfers is on Monday next week. So our P-day was moved to today.

I will be staying in San Sai, Chiang Mai with Elder Cheney.

This week, Elder Cheney got sick and we had to stay in most of Tuesday. He took a few days to get back up to normal, but was a trooper throughout.

Last week, my tire got a flat. That's not too unusual, but this time I was out of patches. So we had to spend the rest of the evening walking home and getting it fixed (it took about 40 minutes). We got home just in time to meet a neighbor whom I've never seen before. He's Protestant, and actually met with some elders a long time ago in a different city, and was interested in meeting with us. So we went and taught him this week. It was a pretty good lesson, and he invited us to come back another day. Awesome! I felt like the walk was worth it, and I felt like we were placed to meet him.

This week we taught Chaad and Naht the Word of Wisdom. It'll be a challenge for them, but they committed to live it. Chaad's main concern is what his friends will think about him not drinking with them anymore, and he seemed really stressed about it. But I'm very confident that they will see the blessings of following God's laws, and I believe they can do it. I also gained an appreciation for the unashamed stance that the Church has on God's commandments, and the blessings that we can so confidently promise.

We've also got to meet with that one man we met at a stoplight some time ago, Att. He's a rice farmer but enjoys studying religion. We've had a couple lessons with him, and challenged him to baptism and coming to church. We'll see where it goes!

Thank you all for everything you do!
Elder Parish

1. I have a couple P-days to catch up on: cookies are kind of a rare commodity here, so we decided to make a huge batch of cookies and eat them until we didn't want to eat any cookies for another 6 months. We planned it out and got all the ingredients. But we ran into a couple problems. There aren't many baking materials in Thailand, so we had to mix it all in a rice pan, which was the only thing big enough.

2. We also didn't have any cookie sheets. So we substituted with wax paper. Except then the oven at the church didn't work. That's a problem, because ovens aren't a common appliance here, and the one at the church is the only one we have access to (in the background is Elder Cheney sick on the floor).

3. So then we had a ton of cookie dough that we couldn't bake. But, remembering pancakes and birthday cakes on my mission in the past, I threw a scoop of cookie dough into the microwave. It turns out that you can, in fact, microwave just about anything.