WHAT?!

"I'm back in! I almost shouted for joy in the middle of the internet shop! Oh man. How can I not be trunky now? I have to break a lot of phone rules today and call a ton of people to tell them. I already called Elder Bryant and Elder Baier. Wow. I didn't realize how much I really wanted that news until I almost went to tears of joy right in the middle of reading that email. Had to use a lot of self control to refrain from hugging every little nerdy gamer in the internet shop. Probably would have been very scary for them. Thanks for that news Dad. Very relieving. I was begining to think that I might not have got in considering that April is almost over and I hadn't heard anything. Woo! Woo!(If you haven't guessed the reason for Aaron's joy it is becasue he received word of his appointment back to the Air Force Academy)
I don't even know where to start. So much to talk about.
I'll start with missionary work. That is simple. This week things should start picking up. Last week was Songkraan (more on those crazy adventures later) and we could hardly meet anyone. We did meet a lot of people who were willing to meet after Songkraan though, including a number of FAMILIES!! YES! We will be doing some massive follow up this week and are expecting some good results. I also retrained our branch council on the five families process, and we have already seen results. One less active family and a part member family are willing to meet us this week. We should finally be getting busy with teaching appointments!
Songkraan. Insanity. Thailand is such a respectable country, where the people are generally very reserved and well mannered. Until Songkraan. All stops are pulled. Let's just say I got kissed, on the cheeks, five times, spanked I think about three or four, and got my cheeks and nose pinched who knows how many times. The official dates were Tuesday to Thursday. People started lobbing water on Monday. All heck broke loose on Tuesday, and we participated. Then Wednesday and Thursday we were supposed to work. Ha! Impossible. Okay, so maybe I heard that other more diligent missionaries actually found ways to talk to people, but Elder Baker and I had little success. Mostly we just walked around the city getting soaked and letting people powder our faces. That's why we got kissed and spanked and stuff. It's part of the celebration, so if we didn't let anyone do it we would just ruin our image by making people think we are just robots who don't know how to have fun. In order to put powder on our faces though, people have to get close, and some of the older ladies (30-40) got really brave and tried to get some lip action but a quick turn of the face averted such an occurrence.
Oh yeah, before we went to the water fight Elder Charit and I went to our first muay thai lesson. Awesome. Really difficult, but awesome. A lot of finesse stuff that they had to correct me on a lot. Thai people really respect the beauty of the fighting, not just the simple knock out factor. We were on a cement surface though and you do it bare foot, so I got some wicked blisters. I'm going to buy some athletic tape before we go again today to prevent all that. The member who arranged it all for us had her camera out. I'll get some pictures for you."

                                                                                                          

From serving a mission for the Lord to serving his nation. I'd say Arron has found his "Man Card"