Real Pruners

This last Thursday, I got a taste of how cheap stuff actually is here. I walked down the street to the Talat Sao mall and walked around under tents and aluminum rooftops for a few hours. They had a bunch of the typical made in China cheap stuff, and then they had the brand-name versions as well. A Lacoste belt—classy gold buckle with the alligator—was about 4 bucks without me trying to talk it down at all. I didn’t end up buying anything on Thursday because I just wanted to get a feel for what was in there and how cheap I could get it. When I was walking home, I took a wrong turn and go lost for a few hours. I wasn’t worried at all; everyone is really nice here and they all pointed me in the right direction. Once I got home I think I drank an entire water bottle and went to sleep for an hour.

Friday, The Luangrath's invited me to Lunch with them at KFC. I think it was better than American KFC.

Friday night I finally found out where all the foreigners hang out. My sister’s friend Cami Allen is here working for the World Food organization, so I met them for pizza along with Danny who just graduated from BYU and is working for the ministry of Finance for the summer. Really good pizza, and a really good mango smoothie to go with it.

Saturday morning, everyone got together at the church to do some cleanup work for a couple reasons: 1. Laos is hosting a big trade convention with Thailand in a few weeks and they want the city to look nice for it and 2. Elder Gong from the Asia area presidency is coming this Tuesday to talk with Government Officials here to hopefully get the church officially recognized in Laos. This doesn’t mean that there would be missionaries sent to Laos anytime in the near future—it’s still pretty illegal to teach about any church outside of the church—but this would be a big step toward that. Instead of meeting in the office of the Deseret International Charities, we could finally call our building a chapel.

Please remember that in your prayers this week. (And also that Tuesday here means Monday for most of you reading.)

I learned that in Laos, you don't have to be certified to prune trees, and even though they don't have tree-climbing competitions, these kids could probably beat any American tree-climber. Here's how it works: The guy realizes he can't really carry up the meat cleaver/machete he's carrying, so he leaves it on the ground. He jumps up the tree, barefoot with almost nothing to hold on to. Once he gets to a limb he can sit on, he reaches his foot down and someone hands him the knife which he pulls up with his toes. Then he picks out which limbs to get rid of and starts chopping away.

Coming up next time: In the afternoon and evening on Saturday, I was invited to a traditional Lao wedding. Some family friends of the Luangrath’s who have already been married in the United States had a trip planned to come out to Laos and decided to do a traditional wedding. This was an awesome experience on so many levels.