June 16 MTC email

Dear Family

I noticed that I misspelled a lot of words. It made me kind of laugh. So here we are another week into my mission. I don't know about at home but it went past in a wink. Truly on a mission the days go by weeks and weeks go by in days.

Thank you for the money and I will be sending photos home through the mail now. I think you'll enjoy them. One is of my district, which is one of the largest they have ever had going to Thailand. Another is of my companion, Elder Brown, and me.

I haven't had the chance to weigh myself for a while so I don't know how much weight I gained in the last week. Thank you also for the package. You have no idea how happy I was to receive detergent and fabric softener. I have been struggling with wearing garments all week because I didn't use any fabric softener last week with my clothes. Although it is quite entertaining to see the shocking results in the morning ( yes the pun is intended). The food was nice too. It's nice to come home from class with a few snacks waiting for me.

The money system works like this. When I arrived I was given a blue card. That card is pretty much my life line. With it I get into my resident hall, get food from the cafeteria, pay for the washer and dryer. Then use the rest of the money for any other thing that I want. The card gets 6 dollars put onto it every Wednesday and you can save up the money every week. There is a pretty big discount for the missionaries. but still I bought a lot of things for class.

Did I tell you about the large amount of books they gave me when I walked into the MTC. I was given two dicanarys(yes i know that is wrong) two new Preach My Gospels. One in script Thai and one in romanized Thai. Then several other books for learning mission Thai and a set of scriptures in script Thai. It felt as though I was going back to school with all the books I got.

Well I was planning to tell you that the swine flu seems to be disappearing but a very interesting thing happened. On Friday morning two elders in our district walked into the classroom late during personal study time. One of the elders was as pale as his white shirt. He sat down for a few moments then suddenly got out of his desks and ran out of the room. The other elder followed. the elders spent the next two days in their rooms trying to recover. On Sunday one of the elders walked in to priesthood to grab and talk to our district leader. One of the two elders had been diagnosed with swine flu and has been in quarantine since. The next day we had another elder from our district report to quarantine, this one however was from a different companionship. Anyways to make a long story short,there are 2 elders from our district in quarantine at the moment and 1 from the Phii Thai's or older Thai's district and there are several elders at the moment from both districts being tested for the flu. never fear though. They handed all the healthy elders drugs in order to help fight the flu. So I get to take a pill once a day to fight it. All the commotion has actually made some funny jokes. So beside in the MTC how is the outside world fighting the flu? We heard news from our teachers that there were several deaths over the last weekend from it because people had immunity problems before they got the flu.

That reminds me my teachers are awesome. One is a native Thai. His name is Brother Saakha. He is a short man in his late 20s who joined the church when he was 17. He tells really funny jokes and makes class fun. The other teacher we have is Brother Duvall. He is a married RM from Thailand and is just as good as brother Saakha.

we started learning the Thai alphabet. Its a lot like learning Deseret. Every character has a specific sound. many have the same. I'll write a little when I know it better. oh ya the phrase I wrote in my first letter was " until we meet again".

hope all is well.
your son, brother, friend and owner

Elder Holt

searching for those lost in the darkness.