February 10, 2013

Hey Family and Friends, how's it going? It's going great here in Thonburi! So many great things happened this past week, the Lord just keeps dumping miracles out on us (hopefully we can keep up with him haha). Where do I even start? Last Monday we were able to go and visit Dan again. I'm thinking that I wasn't as clear as I should've been on the situation with him. He's about 25 and mentally handicapped (had an accident playing sports when he was younger or something). He's the son of the (former?) Thai ambassador to the U.S., and we've been assigned to just go and talk to him in English every week. Just visit. We aren't allowed to teach him anything about the Gospel. Sorry to those who were confused! Anyway, on Tuesday we were able to meet with Boom again. She hadn't prayed or anything unfortunately. We talked to her about why it is important to pray, and committed her to try it this past week. We followed up with her and she said that she hadn't felt anything. We're meeting with her again tomorrow, so hopefully something changes, but she just doesn't seem to have much of a desire to learn right now. Maybe sometime in the future some other Elders will have the chance to help her. English class was solid. We didn't have a ton of people there that time, so we combined the two classes, which was actually a lot of fun. No new people, but we're hoping that that was just an off week, and that we'll get some new students (and investigators) tomorrow. Pray for us! Wednesday was good as well. Elder Oakeson taught his first District meeting, which went really well. The two sisters we have in our District (Sis. Campos and Sis. Wiganda) are really good missionaries, and will be easy sisters to deal with in our District. We won't be working with them that much since their area is about 45 minutes away. That night, we were able to meet with Soda and review the Restoration by watching the DVD (we've been using the DVD a lot lately, it's money). I think she definitely felt something, and is starting to build a good testimony. She's still uncertain about some things, but she's always willing to read, pray, and find out for herself, so what more could we ask for? For dinner that night, we went with a few members to another member's house and did the Muu Gratat thing that I used to do in Udon a bunch (the bbq thing?) We'll definitely have to do muu gratat when we come back here, mom and dad (and whoever else feels so inclined to join us, because it is awesome). We were going to meet with Neng, but he never showed up. We called him and he said he was going to be out of town until this week, so we're shooting for a meeting on Wednesday. Thursday was really good. For studies that morning, I had a question and felt prompted to do a patriarchal blessing activity that Sis. Senior had suggested to us (write down every blessing, caution, and thing that we need to do). I found the answer EXACTLY the way that I needed it. I've found several more answers to other questions the past few days as well in scriptures and other places. I have 100% faith that God hears our prayers. We just need to trust in him, ask, study, and we will receive. The rest of Thursday was spent planning and clearing out a bunch of old records that we had at the house. Pres. Senior emphasized record-keeping quite a bit at transfers meeting. Apparently there's about 26,000 members in Thailand, and we're missing the records for about 10,000 of them. So we're trying to do our part to help fix it. We were actually able to call a few less-active members that we found, and one of them committed to and came back to church on Sunday. For some people, all it takes is an invitation. Friday was a LONG day, but if everything works out I'll be really happy with it. We were finally able to go house-hunting again. For the first few hours, we found absolutely nothing. So we felt like we should go back and check out a big apartment building close to our current building. We found a room that would easily fit four (or maybe even 6) missionaries. We're going to call Elder Jones, the senior missionary over finances, about it today, so hopefully he goes for it. That night we were able to teach Soda again. We taught the first 1/2 of the Plan of Salvation, focusing on the Atonement and faith. Those are probably my two favorite subjects. It was a really great lesson, and she's starting to develop solid faith in Christ. Pray for her! We're also hoping to be able to meet her parents sometime soon and teach them, so pray for them as well! We followed up with Dukadan that night, and she's received an answer! She had a dream about baptism, so hopefully she really starts progressing. She couldn't come to church on Sunday because of work (lame), but should be able to meet this week. Pray for her! Saturday was tiring, but awesome. The Zone leaders came to Thonburi to interview Sis. Jiab. My Pa (trainer), Elder Raven is one of them, so it was a good time seeing and messing with him. She passed the first, but had to have a second interview with a member of the mission presidency. She did that one yesterday, passed, and will be baptized this Saturday! She really is a miracle. One of the most faithful investigators I've ever seen. Later that day we were able to meet with Jenny. She understands well, and is willing to keep our commitments. We gave her a baptismal date for March 10th, and I think she can make it. Pray for her! At the end of the night, we met with Sis. Donut, the recent convert that got baptized when I first got here. She hadn't been to church in a few weeks, because she's been sick, so we were able to give her a blessing. It's always a great privilege to be able to use the Priesthood. Sunday, she came to church, along with 3 investigators! Another solid week. A few LA's also came back, and we hadn't even talked to most of them, so that was a good sign. Another miracle happened as well on Sunday. A girl we had never seen walked into Sunday School and sat down. Elder Oakeson met with her after church while I was teaching another lesson and found out that she had gone to Relief Society the week before, but we hadn't gotten to talk to her because we had a meeting with the bishop last week. Her name is Run, and she recently moved back to Thailand from Hong Kong or somewhere close by in China. She had sought out the Elders there, and learned everything from them. She gave us a letter from the Elders and her teaching record. The rough thing is that she learned everything in English, so she probably didn't understand that much. But now she's here, she'll learn with us, and she'll get baptized! So sweet. I got to teach Sis. Fuse after church for the first time in about four weeks. We got permission to start teaching her again from the Zone leaders, she'll just have to get the paper signed before she gets baptized. She still reads and prays everyday, and is gaining a strong testimony! Hopefully she'll be baptized in early March. After that, we went to Bang Khae (sisters' area) so E. Oak could interview a guy for baptism (he passed), and then went home and did studies. Long week, but very successful. 

Love you!

P.S. Yeah, Jume got baptized a couple of weeks ago...didn't I say that?