I love yêu!

"I'm sending you emojis to tell you how much I love you and I miss you!" Phoebe explained to Rachel while pressing the heart button a million times. 

"You! You! You! You! You!" she said as she pressed it.

"FYI—she's saying 'you' because for us it says that under each heart she sends because it's coming from our account," I explained.

"That's really funny," Rachel said. "Because in Vietnamese love is yêu."

So I love yêu means I love love!

Here's Phoebe sending some clapping hands and...whatever the exploding cornucopia thing is (a "party popper, I'm told)...because she also wants Rachel to know she's doing a good job:

We do love and miss Rachel and think she's doing an amazing job! She posted a picture of herself with her district in front of the temple the other day and I almost started laughing because I was like, "Why...is she in this picture with all these elders?!" and then I remembered that her district is 12 young men (elders)...and her. So this was a district picture.

She said that she is learning more Thai than she ever thought she'd have to know because she's essentially a "double district" missionary. Because she is the only sister in her district, her two companions are in the Thai district. Usually they just drop Rachel off for class and then pick her up after (missionaries aren't allowed to go about without a companion), but sometimes it requires that her companions sit in while Rachel practices teaching discussions in Vietnamese...and involves Rachel sitting in while these sister missionaries teach discussions in Thai. 

The missionaries in the Thai district recently learned the word for "repent" and enjoy calling it out to each other: klab chai!

Anyway, Rachel is doing well. She's very excited to not be quarantining anymore (I don't know if I mentioned that she had COVID, but she did, and now she's on the mend). 

Ordinarily, missionaries are only allowed to call their families on their p-day (preparation day), but when Rachel was sick (and in isolation) she had permission to call us pretty much whenever, so we were getting one to two phone calls from her every day. 

"Rachel must be doing well," Andrew mused on Friday. "We haven't heard from her all week!"

"Because her p-day is on Saturday," I reminded him. "And she's not in quarantine anymore..."

"Oh, yeah..." he said.

We're always happy when we get to talk to Rachel though!