Transfers!!! Big news people!!

Hello everyone!

This week we have big news!

Monday, we had a pretty normal pday. Nothing too exciting. Emailing in the morning, and then we headed over to the office to talk to President Johnson. He is so awesome, and seriously will be the next apostle, I know it. He is incredible. After the office, Elder Allen and I headed over to บางบัวทอง to meet an old RC of Elder Allen. He's a way nice guy, and we had a way good visit with him and his family that included some delicious food. If you ever have a chance to come to Thailand, you must have หมูกะทะ at least once. It's way good stuff. After that we visited a family with the other elders and had some dinner with them. It was way fun, we played pictionary together, and then shared a spiritual thought about Joseph Smith. Elder Allen did a way good job of putting it all together, but I don't exactly remember how he did it haha....

Tuesday, we had a pretty normal Tuesday. I swear our Tuesdays this transfer have been almost the exact same every week because we haven't been able to set appointments on Tuesdays. We had morning studies and then lunch, and then headed over to the church for district meeting. District meeting was way good as usual. Elder Allen has us do roleplays alot, and I think it's way awesome, definitely helps us improve our teaching throughout the rest of the week. This week Elder Allen and I were practicing teaching an investigator, who was Elder Torgesen, and I don't remember what the question he asked was, (acting as an investigator) but I responded in a way I had not planned to, nor had I ever before thought about answering in that way. I told him (the investigator he was acting for) that we as missionaries could not answer that question. He must trust God, pray, and search it out for himself. That is the way we learn gospel truth. At the moment I realized that was absolutely right. To learn and progress in this gospel, we must trust God, and develop a personal testimony. We cannot lean on the testimonies of others forever. We need to be firmly and individually rooted in the gospel. After that, Elder Allen and I went and found people to teach. Unfortunately no one was interested, but we played ตะกร้อ with some cool peeps, or Elder Allen did... I never jumped in haha just took video. After that we had English class which was way fun because we watched Johnny Lingo!! And worked on their listening skills by discussing what they understood and took away from the video. Way fun stuff.

Wednesday, I had a switch off with Elder Fillmore. It was way fun. We studied in the morning, and headed over to a lesson with one of their more solid investigators. But first, we ate lunch, and I had the spiciest ส้มตำ I had ever had in my entire life. It was sooo hot. I'm going to be perfectly honest here, I don't care who says what about Mexican spice back home, Asian spice is by far the spiciest thing I've ever partaken of. It makes liquid spew from every orifice on your face, snot, tears, sweat, you name it. It makes your whole mouth light on fire as well as your lips, face and stomach and yes it even burns on the way out as well. But I can honestly say I'm beginning to enjoy it more as a flavor and less of pain now. It's good stuff. Anyways, then we had a powerful lesson full of testimony on the first four of the ten commandments. For people in Thailand, giving up their idols and images to worship is the hardest thing to do because it's literally hundreds of years of their traditions that they give up, but we bore powerful testimony of the blessings that come when we keep God's commandments. It was way good. The spirit was there for sure. After that, we had a quick correlation meeting, and then had dinner. I got my switch off tradition meal. ไข่เจียวหมูสับ, made with 3 eggs. Its pretty good stuff. Then we had a successful BoM class on how God makes his power manifest in our lives. We also met some crazy peeps inviting today. Life of a missionary though haha.

Thursday, we had a good day planned, and then the afternoon went nothing like we planned. It was interesting. This morning, we went to visit an investigator of ours, บ.พลาย and he is doing well. Still working on not smoking. And coming to church. We taught him with a great member though, named สมศักดิ์. It was way good, and บ.สมศักดิ์ also offered to help พลาย get to church, which was awesome. After that, we ran over to another members house with บ.สมศักดิ์ and talked a little about how to strengthen the ward in general and specifically the people in that area. Good times. After that, we went and ate lunch. บ.สมศักดิ์ paid for our food and ordered a TON of food for us. It was all sooo good too. It was way nice of him. After that, we went to find a potential investigator and this was way funny because we were standing outside his house, and his daughter was outside. We asked him if he was there and she says no. As she does, her mom goes inside. So we call his phone and he picks up and says he's not at home, but then we hear the mom come into the room and say (she wasn't very quiet about it either) those white guys are here again. And he still denied he was there haha so we probably won't go back there again. It was way funny though. After that, on our way home, we got a call from our landlord, whom I have never met before. Anyways we end up meeting her in the lobby of the condo we live in. Apparently the water bill for our place hasn't been payed in a year or so.... So she told us that if we don't pay it by today she was going to charge us 500฿ extra rent per day until we paid that. So we went and took care of that haha. After that, we grabbed some food and studied some before going and meeting an RC, ใบเฟิร์น. She is way awesome, but she is kind of the scapegoat at work, and so gets called in all the time to go fix stuff, and she's super busy learning English and tired and stressed all the time. So reading the BoM is hard to do most days, and going to church even harder, but we keep working with her. She likes meeting and talking too. Way fun visits for sure. After that, we ate dinner and then our landlord paid us another visit and came and inspected the apartment with some of her friends. After they left, we listened at the door as she walked down the hall, and we think that maybe we will be kicked out at the end of the month with the way she was talking with her friends.....

Friday, we spent our morning doing our weekly planning since our afternoon yesterday was kind of stolen. And let me tell you we planned for success!! This is going to be a good week. We've struggled numbers wise this whole transfer, but we made some good plans for this next week on how we are going to help people, and in the past couple of days I can really say I feel like things are starting to come together. 🎶There can be miracles, when you believe!🎵 I've definitely learned to be more faithful and depend and trust on the Lord more in this transfer, because nothing in this work can be done without Him. Don't get me wrong though it's not like I've figured it all out here haha, I'm still working things out. I feel like I've been a missionary for 6 months now so I should know what I'm doing right? Nope. Still figuring things out. Probably still will be on the week I'm going home too. Such is life I suppose. Anyways, after planning, we headed out to grab some lunch and talk to a security guard at the ตึกช้าง, or in other words, elephant building. After that we grabbed some ice cream, Thai style, which is way good. (See the video) Not nearly as good as my dad's homemade ice cream though for those of you familiar with that. After that we studied and then headed over to the church to meet with an LA. He's a way nice guy. He also asked us for a blessing since his eyelid was really swollen and he had surgery on it apparently. When we asked him what happened to it, he told us it was because of acne. We did our best to suppress laughter, but we both thought it was way funny. Giving a blessing is always way humbling too, being able to take part in the use of God's power is way legit. After that, we ate dinner, had sports night at the church and that was pretty much the day.

Saturday, we left the house without the most แน่นอน of plans... We went to the church right off the bat to meet an investigator by 9 in the morning. But she didn't end up getting there until about 10. So we studied for a bit waiting for her there, but she finally came so that was good, and she brought a friend too! He was way cool. His name is Farid, he grew up in Egypt but is คนไทยแท้ๆ (authentically a Thailand person) and anyways because of that he is fluent in Thai, Arab, and English, and can read and write in all 3. It was pretty cool. Anyways he had a TON of questions about how our religion is different and all that and it was pretty cool. He seems pretty skeptical, but it was a good lesson. He's a cool guy. After that, we studied and ate lunch. And at that point we kind of watched our afternoon fall open. So we went what I can FBI inviting. It's fun stuff. We have referrals from Salt Lake City on our phone but half of the numbers don't work, and the address isn't always correct, or have enough info. So we go out and hunted these people down... unfortunately we did not find any of them but we did get to have some wonderful conversations with other peeps. Then we got an appointment! So you already know that we high-tailed it out of where we were and got over to the mall where the investigator was. It was a good lesson. ซ หญิง has lots of questions and is also super busy and skeptical a little bit as well but we really think that she could be baptized, it will just take a while. After that we headed out for more investigator hunting, and then headed home to call peeps for Sunday and make sure everybody was going to show up. We got alot of people committed to go!

Sunday, we woke up and woke up other investigators, inviting them to church. We were way pumped! It was going to be a great sacrament meeting! And don't get me wrong, it was, but we had 2 investigators that promised they would be there that did not show up :( we even talked to one of them that morning... BUT, we had a tender mercy from the Lord this morning! We showed up early to teach an investigator before church, well he didn't show up on time, but we got talking to this other lady we had never met before and turns out her friend invited her to church a couple of years ago, and she didn't have time until today! So she just walked on in, and bam! we've got a new investigator. Way cool. After church, we sat in a meeting that discussed the new 3rd hour curriculum and that was pretty cool. After that lunch, and talking with the investigators that came to church! We had 6! That's the most we've had since the first week of the transfer! We were way pumped. Then we left the church with a member to go and teach and meet his neighbors. That was pretty fun. We stopped at his house first and played some games and ate a snack and then pretty much went house to house, (for 2 houses worth) to his neighbors and introducing ourselves and sitting and talking. The last lady we talked to, we talked about restoration and how our church is the only church on earth that has the fullness of the gospel, and the power of God with it, but I'm not sure how much she understood, even though she was Christian already. After everything we said, she would say ขอบคุณพระเจ้า, which is basically praise the Lord in English. It was pretty funny. After that we headed home for dinner. And this evening, we got balanced as a district!!! It was so awesome, tender mercies all around today. We ended the day with 3 new investigators, meeting our goal for the day and balancing at 4 investigators for the week! It was a joyful evening here in the บางเขน elders house.

My spiritual thought for this week comes from the BoM. This past week I've had lots of time to ponder and think about why I came out here across the world to be a missionary. Because to be honest, I haven't been the most diligent about talking with everyone, I let fears of language barriers get in the way of speaking out. So as I was reading the BoM the other day, I had the impression to pray and ask if it was true to reaffirm what I already felt was truth. And I felt a distinct warmness in my heart. And so I have a couple of quotes and a scripture to share that I found these last couple of days that I really like.

This is from President Nelson:

"Whenever I hear anyone, including myself, say, “I know the Book of Mormon is true,” I want to exclaim, “That’s nice, but it is not enough!” We need to feel, deep in “the inmost part” of our hearts, that the Book of Mormon is unequivocally the word of God. We must feel it so deeply that we would never want to live even one day without it. I might paraphrase President Brigham Young in saying, “I wish I had the voice of seven thunders to wake up the people” to the truth and power of the Book of Mormon."

From 2 Nephi 4:19:

"...nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted."

And finally, Elder Holland:

"I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon, that the Book of Mormon is true."

I believe the BoM to be true, and I have found in the past week that the BoM is the foundation of my testimony. It is the word of God แท้ๆ and I have felt of the power in that book, not found in other places.

Have a great week!

Elder L

PS I'VE GOT BIG NEWS PEOPLE! TRANSFER CALLS ARE IN. THE THAILAND BANGKOK MISSION IS OFFICIALLY OPENING UP PHUKET!!!!! THE MISSIONARIES ARE ALL GOING CRAZY OVER HERE!!!!

also, I will stay in Bangkok this transfer. I am heading over to Bangkhae

Elder Ellsworth - เอ็ลเดอร์ เอ็ลสเวิร์ธ

for perfect love casteth out all fear

เพราะความรักที่บริบูรณ์ย่อมขับความกลัวออกไปสิ้น

Thailand Bangkok Mission

this week we have a variety of things going on...

we have shenanigans at FHE from Monday, 

some good rice fields

delicious wild boar

one of our rcs

Also, one of the videos I sent in the email I forgot to caption, so you should send this with the pictute email. The one of the street and the cars going by with the tree covered in dresses. Thai people put skirts like that on trees because they believe there are spirits in trees and so they please the spirits I guess by doing that. And so, people on the road honk to let the spirits in the trees that have a skirts know they are passing so the spirits will help the driver be safe. Interesting huh?

Or foolish, take your pick