Working hard or hardly working?

Sunday was our first full day in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai is where we stayed the rest of the trip and where the worksite was. Sunday morning started off like every other morning: got ready for church, breakfast (at our amazing Eco resort, totally recommend),  and then scripture study.  Church wasn't till 2 o'clock so we spent the morning playing with some girls at the orphanage and this was most definitely one of the highlights of the trip. It took no time at all before the girls were hanging all over us, holding our hands, hugging us and taking pictures with the boys. The older girls LOVED the boys, it was hilarious. Im sure the boys felt like celebs. We played hours of games like missionary tag, the hand game, down by the banks, four corners and sharks and minnows. In between games we would chase the kids, throw them in the air and tickle them. At the time I guess it didn't hit me that these girls were orphans. It took me a few days of visiting and playing with them before I really thought about how they live. They don't have a family to go home to or even a home to go to. They literally lived there. They lived with all those girls and thats probably all they've ever known. They did seem to be well taken care of, but there's only so much a few ladies can do for all these orphans. There were so many that we met throughout the 2 weeks and it still breaks my heart to think about them. The one little girl that latched on to me was Wan (translates to "sweet"). She was so cute and in a game whenever we got separated she would look around and hurry and run up to me and hold my arm so tight. I would have brought her home in a second.  

After we got all stinky and sweaty at the orphanage, we headed to church. Church was awesome. We got to use head phones to listen to the speakers and it was super cool to listen to the prayers in thai. One thing that really stuck out to me at church was one of the speakers talked about going to the temple and in america - especially Utah - we have access to so many temples. We hear stories all the time about people around the world having to travel days and save up money to go to the temple. Ive always believed those stories and felt bad for those people, but Ive never really thought too much about it. Well, sitting in church surrounded by these members in Chiang Mai, listening to this lady talk about the temple and her experience it dawned on me that these are the people that have to take 2-3 flights or days of traveling just to go to the temple. These people that we hear about are actually real, and they love the gospel and it brings them so much happiness that they do make the sacrifice to go to the temple because they know how important it is. It was so amazing to hear their personal stories and how it has blessed them and their families. I then realized how pathetic I am. I live maybe ten minutes from a temple and I dont go as much as I should. I love the temple and I love the feeling it gives me, but for some reason I rarely make time in my schedule to go. I make up excuses each week and before I know it, I haven't been in weeks or even months. These members taught me that I need to step up my game. I need to be more appreciative of having a temple so close to home and to show that gratitude I need to go more often. Bangkok will be getting a temple soon and the excitement from the members was inspiring. Even though they will still have to travel a long ways to get to Bangkok, they are so excited to have a Thailand temple. We attended sunday school with brother Damrong and he was the greatest teacher ever. haha. Only my group will understand... but really he was hilarious and we loved him. Relief society was awesome as well. The members were so kind and loving towards us and really made us feel like part of the branch. After church each week, the ward has a potluck! It's a party. Everyone brings delicious food and they just visit with each other and hang out. This sunday was also special because we got to witness a baptism of a little boy in the branch. It was so sweet to see him be baptized and to hear his testimony. After all the festivities were over, we took a pit stop at one of the buddhist temples in chiang mai. We went to so many temples in the two weeks and I only remember one of the names, but this one looked out over the city and the site itself was covered in flowers, ribbons, bells and lights and of course a bunch of statues of gold buddhas. 

Cool pic of Hollis hanging off the back of the bus. We rode in these little busses everywhere and they were my favorite. We would hook up a speaker and jam while driving the streets of Chiang Mai. 

Our crazy group at the temple site. 

We were supposed to be quiet, but do those boys look quiet to you?

Looking over Chiang Mai. 

The next day was our first day at the worksite! We were all so excited to start working. There are 5 groups all together that will be coming to chiang mai and we happen to be the very middle group. We were lucky enough to see this first project be finished and we got to start the second project during our second week. Anyways, the first project was adding on a room to the local school. I worked a lot on the ceiling and we did a lot of painting. It wasn't too hard of work and I actually enjoyed it. We would turn on the music each day and get to work as we were dancing and singing around and usually painting each other while also painting the walls. We all loved the worksite. We worked along side some thai workers and I was most definitely Pong's favorite. He called me "professional" when hammering the ceiling. After that we were best buds. Each day at 12:30 sister Ning, a member of the branch, would bring us homemade lunch. She even made little menus and we got to pick what we wanted each day. Me and probably half the group ordered her garlic fried pork EVERYDAY. It was delicious and I could really use some of that right about now. We had that with some rice, of course, and then she would always bring these chocolate drinks that were my favorite things ever. I would drink mine and I would usually take jakobs too, because he didn't love them. So, you could say I always looked forward to lunch. Another reason we loved lunch was because we got to play with the kids. The kids would be on their lunch break the same time we were so they would come and play with us. We would chase them around, throw them in the air and play ball with them.  There was one afternoon where I played keep away with this group of little boys and it was so much fun. I would try and trick them by pointing at something and stealing the ball, so then they started doing it back and it was the cutest thing ever. The kids were so much fun to play with, but they wore us out! 

We also got to go into the classrooms a few times and teach a 

little english to the kids and play some more games with them. 

We fit everyone but 2 people in this little bus.

 Im just glad I was on the outside!

These are just a bunch of pictures from the week we had at our first worksite. One of my favorite days at this worksite was when we were starting to clean up for the day. I went to the sinks to start washing out some buckets when all of a sudden Jesse comes and drenches me with a bucket of water. Then Zac dumps even more on me and Im soaked. I get them back, but then it starts to rain anyways, so we finish cleaning up and then the whole group goes out into the muddy field and we play missionary tag. We are running around in huge puddles of mud and we are all completely soaked with muddy water. Running through the puddles I had a pretty good wipeout, but it was soo much fun. One of my favorite things about this trip was the fact that everything that usually matters in life all of a sudden didn't. You never cared about what you looked like or even what you smelt like, because you were there to work and smelling bad just kinda came with the job. You didn't care about what was happening on social media, you cared about really getting to know the people you were around and you cared about serving and working hard. It was so nice to have a break from "the world" and just fully immerse myself in the experience and service. It was sad to leave the kids at the school, but we were happy to finish the job and be able to start a new one.