Thailand, Pakkret Week 5

What's up, Family!?!

Oh man, I miss you guys so much, but I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world. Missions are just too much fun. We had such a cool week! Lots of weird stuff happening that I don't think I'd see in America. Also, I love the pictures you guys are sending! Please send as many as possible!!! Hayden and Aubree, I want you guys to send some too of what you guys are up to. I miss you guys a ton! 

Ok, first experience I want to share... Remember that lady that always makes us food that killed some guy? Well on Thursday we hadn't had dinner yet so we got back to our appartment and asked her if she'd whip up a little something for us real quick and just take it up to our apartment. So she made us some food (her food is WAY good) and she brought it up at about 10:15 ish. So the next day we woke up at 6:10 to go exercize and when we were walking out of the building past where she usually would be, we looked to our right into her resturaunt and the place was comepletely empty. No tables or chairs, her entire cooking set up was gone, the fridge, EVERTHING. There was jsut a couple of pictures of food on the wall and some rice and garbage on the floor, but other than that it was like she was never there. It was so weird. We asked the security guard what the heck happened and he said he had no idea. He told us the other guard fell asleep at around midnight and when he woke up again at like 1:30, the place was cleaned out. So the murder lady just packed up and left! What the heck?!? Are the cops after her again? Did she kill another person? She brought us up food at like 10:15, so that's not a super huge window of time to just go murder someone... Did she make us food after she killed a guy?!?!? My theory is that she never actually went to jail like she said she did. I think she's been on the run this whole time. Gotta love murder neighbors. Man, I miss her though, she was so nice. 

Second experience. There has been a 17 year old girl coming to our English class the last couple weeks and yersterday after church we had our first legit lesson with her. The Lord truly prepares people for this gospel, let me tell ya. She had a dream that there were two people in white shirts standing in front of the church and inviting her to go in. The next day we invited her to English class and then from English class to the church. She had been praying to be able to find the real church of Christ because the Protestant church that her family had been going to for a while didn't make any sense to her. Before we even started the lesson yesterday, she told us about how she wants to help people all around the world learn about Christ, and I though "well, we have the program just for you." This girl is gonna be a missionary for sure one day. The Spirit was so strong in the lesson and every time we would teach her something she had no problem with it and got super excited. I extended the baptismal commitment to her and she said "yes" so fast. She's gonna get baptized in 2 weeks on the 20th. I love being a missionary!!! We have a goal for this next week to get 12 people with baptismal dates and I really think we can do it. The feild is white and ready to harvest. These people are ready for Christ and his grace. We already have 8 people with dates so we have a bit of a head start. We had a girl not pass her baptismal interview last week or we would have had another one yesterday. She's kinda mad at us right now, but I'm confident she'll turn around. She's the one who made me that card for my birthday so she's way nice. 

Third experience. Today! We went adventuring and it was SO sick! Unfortunately I couldn't find my camera charger last night so I was only able to take a few pictures. We woke up at 3:00 AM this morning and took a taxi-van thing up to Lohp Buri with some other elders in our district. I was so surprised when we got there. It was like a normal city in Thailand EXCEPT there are freaking monkeys climbing around everywhere!! Like, everywhere!!! Monkeys in Lohp Buri are to pigeons in NYC. Crazy stuff. Also, there are just gigantic ancient crumbling ruins of Buddhist temples everywhere with monkeys all over on them. It was so cool. It was really nice to get out of "city" Thailand and get out more into the country. There are tons of fields and really beautiful mountains. We hiked one of the mountains today and it had a big cement staircase going all the way up. It had 3,790 steps that were similar to the steps on the incline in Colorado. It was way hard to get up, but it was cool because there were all of these mini shrines on the way up with big statues of monks and Buddha. Anyways the view from up there was incredible. I think I finally realized I'm actually in Thailand, not just some super dirty city or whatever. Way cool experience. Then, instead of having to walk all the way back down the steps, we bought these potato sack things and used them to slide down a railing that went down the center of the stair case the whole way. It was way fun! Elder Gremillion has a lot of photos so hopefully he'll be able to send them to me. And on the way up to the mountain we rode in the back of this super sketchy truck that we had to push in order to start and the tailgate had rusted away. Super fun stuff. Missions are honestly so much more fun than I thought they would be. I knew they would be "fun" cuz you're in a different country or whatever, but we actually do lots of stuff that I would have thought were really fun even before I came out. Our P-days are awesome and my District is pretty cool too. I love it here guys! Do all you came to prepare for your mission, it will be the best experience of your life. 

That's basically it from over here! Thank you for all of your support. It's awesome to have such a great family and to have had such great friends that have helped me to prepare for this opportunity. I'll never forget it and it has already changed me permanantly. I have no idea how some RMs go back home and go right back to normal. If I start to do that, hit me in the head with a shovel and try to knock some sense into me! I have seen this gospel change so many people and I have seen it change me in more ways than I could ever type out. I'll see you guys in 2!

Love, Elder Wilcox

How I usually study in the morning. Our AC is cold.

This cute little kid is n'First (pronounced nong-foot for some reason). I drew Pikachu cuz he loves Pokemon and he reciprocated.

This is a dog that we found at the bottom of the mountain and it followed us all the way up and down! We called him Nate cuz we wanted it to be an authentic Thai name. The cool thing about this dog is that his right back leg got messed up something nasty and now it's basically like a peg-leg. It was a cool lesson for me that if this 3 1/2 legged dog can climb a freaking steep mountain, I can do anything I set my mind to as well if I work that hard.

Some pics from the hike of the scenery at Lohp Buri (my camera died right after and before I could take any pictures with me in them, sorry. Maybe Elder G will send me some) 

We drove up in this bad-boy. So sick.