Mingalaba! *SPIKE*

เฮลโล Hello! 

This was a crazy week. We had to stay in for most of the week, because of the smoke from the wildfires, but we didnt let that get in the way of having some fun! 

VOLLEY WITH POLYS We were given a tip from some Sisters in Seattle that there was a Thai person that played volleyball every day at this park in Seattle. Naturally, we had to go check it out. We get there and we see a group of mostly Tongans and a few asians playing volleyball, so we join in to see if maybe our guy is playing with this group. I havent done it since the MTC, so I forgot how fun volleyball with tongans is. It's very fun. After a few games of that, we saw a group of kinda Thai looking people setting up a net. We went and helped them set up and found out that they're Burmese!! We played some games with them and it was so much fun. They dont speak an ounce of Thai and maybe just half an ounce of english, but it was so much fun. We never met our Thai boy, but it was the best. 

DONT BE A PUNK, EAT THE BALUT We got to make a special birthday breakfast for one of the Elders in our district. We got to their Ward Mission Leader's house early and started cooking up some bacon and pancakes. While were cooking and getting to know him, he offers to cook us up some balut. For those of you who arent in the know, let me bring you up to speed. Balut is a food popular in the Philippines and many areas in southeast Asia. It's a chicken embryo still in the shell. He boiled them up for us and we got to give it a try. I kinda liked it. It's basically just a hard boiled egg with some meat in it. My companion didn't see it the same way and almost threw up a few times. 😂😂 I thought there was always a chance that I'd eat balut on my mission. I just never figured it would be in Renton, Washington. 

LET ME LEARN YA HOW TO ENGLISH We're starting to teach more english to Thai people!!! It's so exciting! We're getting a bunch of texts from Thai people around Seattle every day and it's so fun to actually be able to use Thai! We've had a few in person classes and I'll be honest, I like it a lot more when they dont speak much english, because then I get to try out some more Thai haha. My companion still struggles a little bit with his Thai, but were helping each other get better. One lady asked how I can speak Thai after just 3 months in Thailand. I told her that honestly, it's a blessing from God. She said yeah right ok I'll just guess it's because you studied really hard. But honestly, the gift of tongues is so real, so yeah not gonna act like any of my ability isn't coming from God. 

OH MY GOSH OK ITS HAPPENING We got one of our friends on date to be baptized!!! Her husband is already a member and they've been taking lessons so they can get married in the temple. They're the nicest people ever. So when we challenged her to get baptized, she said, "YES!!!!" She's so excited it's the greatest. So we're shooting for October 10th for her baptism!! 

LAST THINGS LAST - We got our transfer calls and I'm staying in Benson Hill! - Card games can and will ruin friendships. - We watched a member play a game for 4 hours. It felt longer. - Our wifi is betraying us. - No matter where you are or what your middle name is, I love you! 

เอ็ลเดอร์ไม่มีเน็ต (Elder without Net)

Elder Barrett