Elder Jacob Wilcox: Thailand, Pakkret Week 1: First Letter from Thailand!

October 9, 2016

Hey guys!

I cannot even begin to explain how much cooler Thailand is than the MTC! The food is better, the living situations are kinda better sort of not really but its still cool, and the people are AMAZING! It's been a while since I've been able to email so I'll do a short little summary real quick of what's happened so far these last two weeks.

I almost wasnt able to come to Thailand with the rest of my group because I destroyed my ankle, but luckily I convinced the trainer to break protocol and not make me go to the doctor for clearance (he definitely would have made me stay the required 5 days). So what happened was I was playing basketball 1 on 1 with Elder Holland in my district (he played in college at SVU) on our last day of exercize time so it was the last possible day I could have injured myself. We were playing to 21 by 1s and 2s and at this point I was only down 17-5 so I figured I had a pretty decent chance to come back in the last 10 minutes we had left of gym time. I shot it and missed so I jumped up to get the rebound, and when I came down on my right foot, there was apparently another loose baskeball that I hadn't seen before and I landed right on top of it. I felt my ankle pop a couple times as it snapped forward and for a second I though "hey, maybe I finally broke a bone!" but then I remembered that that wouldn't actually be very cool so I started to worry a bit. Luckily it was just a gnarly sprain, not a break, so when I was being tested by the trainer I forced myself to have full range of motion so she wouldn't make me stay at the MTC for another week since I was leaving 3 days later. She just had me wrap it and ice it and keep it elevated which wasn't too bad because then me and my companion got reserved seats down on the floor of the auditorium for conference. It got super swollen and purple, but it's all good now (in fact in a couple hours we are going to go to a trampoline park and I'm 90% sure my ankle will be fine).

Speaking of conference, my last 3 days were crazy busy with meeting and conferences and stuff. On Friday I had "In-field-orientation" all day. On Saturday, we had Saturday morning session, Saturday afternoon session, Priesthood Session, and then district meetings. On Sunday we had Music and the Spoken Word, Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, departure devotional, regular devotional (Vocal Point from BYU came and it was actually way cool), and then movie night. THEN on all of monday and tuesday I was at an airport or on an airplane for 36 hours. Needless to say, I was very excited when I got to Thailand and was able to move around a little bit :)

I'm sure most of you have seen the video on Facebook of my group coming in to Thailand (if not, can you share that, Mom?). It was so much fun coming to this crazy country and experiencing this culture! There are so many things that are different and awesome! I'll list a couple of things. 1) everything is written in Thai 2) everything is spoken in Thai 3) traffic is crazy!! Not crazy as in super busy, crazy as in everybody just does whatever they want and no one really cares. Cars merge right into each other and the other cars just get out of the way and don't honk, motorcycles drive in between cars that are stopped super quickly and when there isn't room for that they just go on the sidewalks. Basically, if there is enough room for your vehicle to squeeze into a space then you do it and no one even cares. No body follows the rules here, but at the same time they are the best drivers I've ever seen. If anything that happens on Thai roads happened in America there would be totalled cars left and right and Anarchy would surely be immenent. Also, they have these nifty timer things next to the stop lights that count down how much longer the green light or red light has. It's actually super helpful. 4) The food is SOOOOOOOOOOO good!!! And super spicy too. Dad would struggle here. Literally everything that is cooked has at least a little bit of spice to it which is awesome in my opinion. I haven't had anything that isn't delicious yet and that includes pig intestines. No idea how they pulled that one off. 5) My bathroom experience has been changed forever. I'm gonna be talking a lot about bodily functions and bathroom stuff for a while, so feel free to scroll down a bit if you desire to skip this part. The Thai people do it right, let me tell ya. Not only is their toilet paper TRIPLE ply, they also have a butt-shower built into every toilet in the country! You haven't experienced "clean" until you have pooped in Thailand. Most of the problems I encountered in America came from the underlying feeling of being dirty after the restroom. That is no longer a problem. I feel pure and ready to take on the world. Mom would be so proud of me if she could see how much faster I go now. For those of you about to take a trip to Thailand (which I recommend highly) here's how you go to the bathroom with maximum efficiency. First, you wipe away the majority. After that you cleanse with the hose. It takes a while to get used to, but boy is it effective. Then you dry off with toilet paper again. Bam. You're done. HOW AWESOME IS THAT!?!?!?! Sorry for that bathroom rant, I just feel the need to share the things that I love now that I'm a missionary. And by the way, my return home is conditional upon the status of our home toilets and their hoses. 6) There are dogs running around everywhere 7) lot's of transgenders here. Very different from America in how they show it. 8) When we were at the park where Thailand was dedicated for missionary work by President Hinckley we went off to pray and ponder by oursleves and Elder Turley from our group had a guy come up to him and started yelling and throwing hot suace at him. So I guess that's a thing here.

Now about the mission! My first companion is Elder Gremmillion, Alli's cousin. What are the odds, huh? He's 6'7" and way cool. We are serving in the Nonthaburi area in the Bangkok North Stake which is awesome! The people here are SO nice. A lot of them speak English a little bit so they are very helpful with the language because they know how to correct me most effectively. We have tons of help from the members with lessons and we have been to a member's house for dinner twice now. It's so good!

A lot of our time is spent teaching lessons and inviting at or around the mall near our apartment. We also teach free English lessons every tuesday and thursday at 6:30 pm in a little room we rented out. Those classes are one of our most effective ways of getting ivestigators beacuse lots of people want to learn English so we have a decent turn out and then after the class we share a spiritual lesson with whoever wants to stay for it. English class was one of the first things I did when I got here so it was cool to get to do that right off the bat. We only speak English during the class so I don't have to worry about the language which is a nice break.

Our apartment is really small and it's only me and Elder Gremmillion in there which is different than the MTC. It's got a flower painted kitchen and flower bed sheets so it's pretty cute. We heard a gunshot my first night. Great neighborhood. It's crazy being a missionary, especially a tall, white missionary because everybody knows us! Especially at the 7-Eleven. The workers there are homies.

We have 3 baptisms so far lined up for this transfer and we are working on the 4th and 5th right now. Even though it is mostly Buddhist around here, people that are willing to listen to us are very receptive and excited about the gospel, especially the parts about baptism and forgiveness since there's nothing like that in Buddhism. Elder G baptized a cute little old man named brother Bah (nobody goes by their real names here in Thailand, everyone chooses a nickname for themselves). He is so happy and cute! Thai people in general are small which makes me and Elder G seem like giants.

That's really all that's happening right now! It's just Thailand ;) I'll try to send lots of pictures right now. I miss you guys like crazy but I know that this is where I need to be :) See ya in 2!

Love,

Elder Wilcox