Thailand Bangkok Mission ... สตีลน้องสาว

March 19, 2013

Sawadii!

OK sometimes the mail system is screwy here so i don't get updates until days later, or after i write this email, and then i have to wait a WHOLE week until i get to respond. so last pday i got the news about Mauritius that night! and it pretty much killed me to wait this long to say WOOOOOOO! yayayazyayyayayay i'm so excited. and jealous. but i get to go to thailand so that's ok. as long as we can go back and i can come. also, i got the package a few days ago and it made my day! everything i needed and more. and i absolutely loved the recordings haha. Grandma Steele's had me smiling and laughing for a while, and it was so cute. I'm glad she had a "scrumptious lunch" with her buddies :)

Well I tried to send some pictures but this computer was being dumb so you may get some later...if i can find an open computer. This week has gone by soooo slowwww compared to other weeks. It's probably just because I've been sick, but i think i'm finally on the upswing, so that's good. highlight of the week: SUNSHINE! even though it may be only 60 degrees outside, we try to study in sun every chance we get. It does a lot of good for my mood, and it just makes me really excited that i'm going to the land of sunshine, because i'm grumpy in the winter. i'm already starting to get a lovely farmer's tan, it should be pretty great when I get back. so the MTC is bursting at the seams, as usual, and last pday we didn't even get into choir, due to the HUGE amount of over-eager sisters to get there an hour early and take up all the spots. but we got a really good seat in the front, so i guess it wasn't so bad. today we heard that there's going to be someone "special" coming, and in choir we've been practicing a number that was arranged specificallly for the person coming, so i'm bound and determined to beat the crowds and get there early for devo tonight, even if i'm one of those over-eager sisters that gets there early...i'll probably just sit and write letters or something since it's still my pday.

so we've been learning a lot about thailand lately, and it rains pretty much ALL the time there! i'm not a big fan of rain, but i'm actually kind of excited to be biking in the rain, in the sun, getting soaked and loving it. oh and murm and durd, i'm super jealous of you eating thai food once a month because you tell me about all these yummy things and i'm sitting here eating MTC food. it makes me sooo excited to get to Thailand and eat! and EAT some more. apparently it's super cheap. oh and mom the dessert you're talking about is called mango sticky rice and they have it at Thai Drift too. my favorite. There's on Thai sister here in the whole MTC and she's going to Austrailia Mandarin speaking! We see her all the time since she's in the same building, and whenever she talks to us in THai we just stare at her like poor little greenies (because we have NO idea what she's saying hahaha). But my Dorles and I (SIs. McDErmott) were talking to her at gym yesterday and she told us her conversion story in Thai, and I was actually surprised by how much I understood! she the sweetest girl and she probably comes up to my waist...yep. i'm gonna the white giant in Thailand. haha but most of our sister missionaries in our district are actually pretty tall, which makes me feel better. another thing i learned about thailand: potties are usually holes in the ground. i think i already knew this because i looked back in my journal to see what i had written about it when we went there, and the only thing i had put was that it was HOT and HUMID and that the bathroom we used was a hole in the ground. Oh...and no toilet paper. Just a little squirter thing. that should be interesting. oh and apparently Thai's are very open with what they call thccngsia (diarrhea). They're not too ashamed of talking about their bodily functions i guess. haha funny story: yesterday i think a few of us ate something whacky, because we weren't feeling too good. me and my companions walked into the classroom and we were the only ones in there after dinner before everyone came in. i said that i felt like i could go puke in a toilet, and sis. yim said she felt like she could go bomb. and then i said, oh--my bowels have already been doing weird things today...and then i turned around and my teacher bro. mcckonkie had just come in the room...hahahaha well he now knows much more about me than he probably ever wanted to. haha wow. sorry i'm going on and on.

today has been amazing so far. we woke up as a district at 5am to get to a 6am session, and then had breakfast at the temple cafetriea. sis. yim had to activate her temple recommend, and Bro. Jensen (Lauryn Jensen's dad) helped us with that, and he recognized me from before. and then we were about to leave and he told us that next week when we came, we should stay in our temple clothes and come find him and he would give us a tour of the temple! he said to make sure it was just us 3 but that he would take us around places nobody else got to go! well i can't wait til next pday haha. we get our travel plans in 10 days!!! wowwww i can't believe it's so close. i'm so excited but it's gonna be sad to leave all my friends here. we've gotten really close to the cambodian sisters too, because they're in our zone. New Thai's should be coming in tomorrow! I can't wait! we're finally gonna be the older ones (phii thai's). oh and i forgot to mention that i finished memorizing the Joseph Smith account of the first vision in Thai this week! it takes me a long time to say it, but it's something that really comes in handy. it was our district goal and i was racing another elder in my district to see who could get it memorized first haha.

sorry this letter is long, i don't blame you if you started skimming. but i just wanted to let you know that i have a testimony of the Atonement. Whenever i've taken my last step, and feel like i can't go anymore, He carries me. I've definitely seen it this week like i've never seen it before. He gives me a peace and hope that I can't find anywhere else. and i can't wait to share that with people!

love sister STEELE