Hello Everybody!
This is week April 15th to April 21st. This includes the rest of our water festival, Songkran.
Monday we got up and it wasn't like a normal p day. We didn't go to the computer lab or anything because we were too busy having too much fun. We spent the morning emailing (from our phones) and there was some time where my phone broke and I was afraid that it would be forever gone. But somehow around 11 o'clock it came back up so we were good to go. We went to a member's house and we played some Songkran, which really just means participating in the nation wide water fight. We used her hose, filled up a bunch of buckets and just soaked the people that were driving motorcycles and cars, not really cars because the windows were closed, but motorcycles on the way past her house... just soaked people, it was way fun.
At one point there was this old British man that was going by. At first I didn't hear him. So as he was driving by and I was getting ready to splash him. He said don't! But it was a little too late. I got him a little bit, not that much, just a little, little bit. Anyway, so he stops, flips a u turn and comes after me. Elder Ferrence was on the phone so he didn't really see what happened but he just heard someone yell and saw a motorcycle coming our way. The man stopped in front of the house, got off the motorcycle and that's when we realize he's obviously very drunk. It's about like noonish and he's really drunk. So he comes after me. He was yelling some of the worst language I've heard. I really can't understand the Thai curse words, but I understood every English curse word he was saying. He came after me, fists swinging but really couldn't land anything because he was drunk out of his mind. Eventually he just kind of gave up because I kept backing up and apologizing. Then the member, whose house we were at, she came out and started yelling at him and he's getting ready to start to fight her and that's when we were really worried because if he started fighting her, Elder Ferrence and I were like, well we're going to jump on this guy. That's when the other elders showed up (we were meeting some other elders there at the house and so then there were four elders). So by this time the British man is yelling at the member in English, she's yelling back in Thai and they don't understand a word the other is saying. Then he kind of realized he's surrounded, gets mad, guns his motorcycle and tries to knock over an elder on his bike. And then he was gone. It was kind of funny. Then we had some lunch, spent the afternoon spraying people like mad and went to a mugotat for dinner which is just a huge meat buffet and it was way good. We had to be home early because of Songkran so that evening we watched more General Conference and prepared for the next week.
Tuesday we had district meeting and English class with lots of working/inviting in between. After English class we came home and that's when I got the call from President Hammond that I'd be leaving Chiang Mai, way sad. President called me and he said, "Alright Elder, we need you to go open up an area in Ubon." Ubon is literally, like the other side of the country. I traveled 20 hours to get to Ubon. And I'm also training while opening a new area. I was like, all right, well here we go.
But sad day, I had to leave Chiang Mai. Wednesday we got up and spent the whole morning packing and cleaning the house. Then we had an appointment with a member, ate some lunch and then said goodbye to a couple of different people because I was leaving. We had a blur of teaching appointments and goodbyes and then I was on a bus back to Bangkok. Elder Morgan and I sat up front on the top level of a double decker bus. We had view of the whole road and everything the whole way to Bangkok. It was way cool to sit right up front.
We got into Bangkok Thursday morning and there was just a mess of people, bags, buses, everywhere. We finally found our van after waiting for an hour and trying to communicate with our van driver. It was a mess. He was stressed and we were stressed. We finally got to the Asoke church and got ready for our trainers meeting at 9:30. This is my third time training. So I kinda got in there and knew a lot of stuff that they would talk about it, I guess. But it is good. It's important stuff . And it was good to review everything. Then we got our greenies but guess what, we're not supposed to call them greenies. :) I got my new companion who's a new missionary, he's Elder Milang and he is from Bangnaa where I served last year for six months. It was way fun. His Dad was the ward mission leader, so I know him pretty well. That evening we met with a less active member from Asoke that I used to meet with when I was a missionary there. Then we got on the MRT subway and headed over to Bangkae where I was a greenie and met with an RC from there who's way awesome. She fed us Mcdonald's and that was fun. Then we got in the van with the office elders and headed out to the train station, got on the train and went to sleep. It was a way nice train. That was kind of fun and I liked that it was a lot better than a bus.
Friday morning we arrived in Ubon. We got some things organized that morning, got into our house, got our stuff in, got ready for the day and we met up with the district for lunch. We studied, weekly planned and went to work, which really just meant we invited. Later we went to the church to meet with some members for sports night and did more inviting around there.
Saturday was actually really busy, more busy than we expected it to be. We studied in the morning and met with an RC at her noodle soup/restaurant. She's good, but she's got some struggles. Her kids are all kind of wild. We want to start teaching them and the dad. The dad's not too into things, so we're going to work with that. After that we went and visited an investigator who's way cool. But we don't want to teach her too much without her husband and her husband wasn't there. So we're working with that. We tried to find another investigator, but he wasn't there. So we invited around in the neighborhood. Later we met with an RC at the church who's had some struggles in the last little bit. I don't think very many members or missionaries like him very much and I'm worried about him. Then we served a less active member who has a lot of play props and costumes and fabric laying around his house and we helped him clean up and he gave us a lot of food. So that was fun. We also met with the kids of the less active member who is interesting. He started a yoga course. He wants to teach a yoga course, but first he had to take the teaching course. So he's taking a teachers yoga course which is only on Sundays so he can't go to church. It's all day, 9 to 5. But he wants his kids to learn about the gospel, but only kind of. He's just way passive. In Thai we say choi choi which is kind of like, "meh." It's really sad. And his wife is not really interested as far as we can tell. We're gonna keep working with him. After that we did our studies, spent some time with a less active member and got some dinner. We set up social media for my companion and then headed over to the church for a little bit and then invited for the rest of the night.
Sunday, church was great. We spent a long, long time, at the church that day and it was good. We met with all members. The schedule here is 9-11. About 10 am we had these three black guys walk into the church; it was a little bit into Sunday school. They walked in and they're like, "We're christian too! And we're way down to be coming to church." They all had their bibles, everything. They live in our area, it's so cool! They all play football and one of them speaks Thai way good, the other two don't really. The one guy speaks fluent French, Thai and English. I was talking to him and he translated to his buddies and spoke French with them. It was really cool. They're all from Cameroon, which is in Africa. We give them a French book of Mormon on their phone and asked them if they would read it and then we invited them to English class and they said they'll come. They're way christian and excited to learn. The one guy says he wants his buddies to be baptized. We talked to them over lunch. After church, we had a baptism of this little girl and the three black guys were way pumped about that. They're all in the pictures and everything. After the baptism there was this drunk guy that walked into the church saying that another person invited him to come. But uhhh he was drunk. We tried to teach him, it didn't really work out very well, but we'll see if he comes back. We gave him a Book of Mormon and told him to come back, so maybe he'll come back, not drunk? Then we had long correlation meeting. It was all good. We met with the sister missionaries and they gave us some advice about the area. Finally we got home and did our studies and then met with an investigator who has a really sad story. His wife died. All we could really do is bear a good testimony about the plan of salvation. Elder Milang did way good, he's a solid missionary. We talked about the plan of salvation and asked him, if you had the opportunity to meet her again, would you want to?
And he said, yeah. We talked about Jesus Christ and how it's possible. We have a return appointment for this next week. We met with another less active member who's also struggling a little bit but doing pretty good. On our way home we were inviting and I saw this guy on the side of the road. I felt the spirit prompt me to stop so we stopped and I sat down next to him and started talking. My companion is native Thai, but he's not from this area. And in this area there's a distinct dialect. So here's this guy talking in this language that me and my companion... neither of us can really understand. He's drunk out of his mind as well, but I still keep sitting there cause I'm like, well the spirit told me to sit here, so obviously there's gotta be something. I started catching a few things. He knows about Jesus, he knows about the holes in his hands and the meaning of the cross from what I can understand. He was upset because someone cheated him and he lost a lot of money. That's about all I got. And I said, "Well, we want to help. We know Jesus can help you and this message will help you." And he's like, "You want to help me get my money back!" I think, well we can't do that, but we can still help. We gave him a card and he doesn't have a phone. I dunno what will happen. It's one of those things I guess.
My spiritual thought this week comes from a verse that had a good friend of mine in this ward sent. Long story short... When I was a district leader in Bangnaa, there was a sister missionary that was a native Thai in my district. She's a really good missionary. Now she's a Sunday school teacher in the ward here and she sent me a scripture because she understands what it's like to open a new area and to kind of have to work on the fly. The scripture is D&C 123:17, "Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed." I was thinking about this scripture this morning and I had read it probably a dozen times but it didn't really have that much meaning to me. But now I see new things, I understand things differently. I think it's a really good scripture. It's really good for my situation and it has a lot of meaning since a friend sent it to me. Reading it by myself, it probably wouldn't have made the same impact. It was nice of her to send it to me and good to know that everything will work out in the end. We come and work, but we're not really the ones working. It's Heavenly Father.
That's it for this week over and out, Elder Ellsworth
Finally some pictures from him.
This is week April 15th to April 21st. This includes the rest of our water festival, Songkran.
Monday we got up and it wasn't like a normal p day. We didn't go to the computer lab or anything because we were too busy having too much fun. We spent the morning emailing (from our phones) and there was some time where my phone broke and I was afraid that it would be forever gone. But somehow around 11 o'clock it came back up so we were good to go. We went to a member's house and we played some Songkran, which really just means participating in the nation wide water fight. We used her hose, filled up a bunch of buckets and just soaked the people that were driving motorcycles and cars, not really cars because the windows were closed, but motorcycles on the way past her house... just soaked people, it was way fun.
At one point there was this old British man that was going by. At first I didn't hear him. So as he was driving by and I was getting ready to splash him. He said don't! But it was a little too late. I got him a little bit, not that much, just a little, little bit. Anyway, so he stops, flips a u turn and comes after me. Elder Ferrence was on the phone so he didn't really see what happened but he just heard someone yell and saw a motorcycle coming our way. The man stopped in front of the house, got off the motorcycle and that's when we realize he's obviously very drunk. It's about like noonish and he's really drunk. So he comes after me. He was yelling some of the worst language I've heard. I really can't understand the Thai curse words, but I understood every English curse word he was saying. He came after me, fists swinging but really couldn't land anything because he was drunk out of his mind. Eventually he just kind of gave up because I kept backing up and apologizing. Then the member, whose house we were at, she came out and started yelling at him and he's getting ready to start to fight her and that's when we were really worried because if he started fighting her, Elder Ferrence and I were like, well we're going to jump on this guy. That's when the other elders showed up (we were meeting some other elders there at the house and so then there were four elders). So by this time the British man is yelling at the member in English, she's yelling back in Thai and they don't understand a word the other is saying. Then he kind of realized he's surrounded, gets mad, guns his motorcycle and tries to knock over an elder on his bike. And then he was gone. It was kind of funny. Then we had some lunch, spent the afternoon spraying people like mad and went to a mugotat for dinner which is just a huge meat buffet and it was way good. We had to be home early because of Songkran so that evening we watched more General Conference and prepared for the next week.
Tuesday we had district meeting and English class with lots of working/inviting in between. After English class we came home and that's when I got the call from President Hammond that I'd be leaving Chiang Mai, way sad. President called me and he said, "Alright Elder, we need you to go open up an area in Ubon." Ubon is literally, like the other side of the country. I traveled 20 hours to get to Ubon. And I'm also training while opening a new area. I was like, all right, well here we go.
But sad day, I had to leave Chiang Mai. Wednesday we got up and spent the whole morning packing and cleaning the house. Then we had an appointment with a member, ate some lunch and then said goodbye to a couple of different people because I was leaving. We had a blur of teaching appointments and goodbyes and then I was on a bus back to Bangkok. Elder Morgan and I sat up front on the top level of a double decker bus. We had view of the whole road and everything the whole way to Bangkok. It was way cool to sit right up front.
We got into Bangkok Thursday morning and there was just a mess of people, bags, buses, everywhere. We finally found our van after waiting for an hour and trying to communicate with our van driver. It was a mess. He was stressed and we were stressed. We finally got to the Asoke church and got ready for our trainers meeting at 9:30. This is my third time training. So I kinda got in there and knew a lot of stuff that they would talk about it, I guess. But it is good. It's important stuff . And it was good to review everything. Then we got our greenies but guess what, we're not supposed to call them greenies. :) I got my new companion who's a new missionary, he's Elder Milang and he is from Bangnaa where I served last year for six months. It was way fun. His Dad was the ward mission leader, so I know him pretty well. That evening we met with a less active member from Asoke that I used to meet with when I was a missionary there. Then we got on the MRT subway and headed over to Bangkae where I was a greenie and met with an RC from there who's way awesome. She fed us Mcdonald's and that was fun. Then we got in the van with the office elders and headed out to the train station, got on the train and went to sleep. It was a way nice train. That was kind of fun and I liked that it was a lot better than a bus.
Friday morning we arrived in Ubon. We got some things organized that morning, got into our house, got our stuff in, got ready for the day and we met up with the district for lunch. We studied, weekly planned and went to work, which really just meant we invited. Later we went to the church to meet with some members for sports night and did more inviting around there.
Saturday was actually really busy, more busy than we expected it to be. We studied in the morning and met with an RC at her noodle soup/restaurant. She's good, but she's got some struggles. Her kids are all kind of wild. We want to start teaching them and the dad. The dad's not too into things, so we're going to work with that. After that we went and visited an investigator who's way cool. But we don't want to teach her too much without her husband and her husband wasn't there. So we're working with that. We tried to find another investigator, but he wasn't there. So we invited around in the neighborhood. Later we met with an RC at the church who's had some struggles in the last little bit. I don't think very many members or missionaries like him very much and I'm worried about him. Then we served a less active member who has a lot of play props and costumes and fabric laying around his house and we helped him clean up and he gave us a lot of food. So that was fun. We also met with the kids of the less active member who is interesting. He started a yoga course. He wants to teach a yoga course, but first he had to take the teaching course. So he's taking a teachers yoga course which is only on Sundays so he can't go to church. It's all day, 9 to 5. But he wants his kids to learn about the gospel, but only kind of. He's just way passive. In Thai we say choi choi which is kind of like, "meh." It's really sad. And his wife is not really interested as far as we can tell. We're gonna keep working with him. After that we did our studies, spent some time with a less active member and got some dinner. We set up social media for my companion and then headed over to the church for a little bit and then invited for the rest of the night.
Sunday, church was great. We spent a long, long time, at the church that day and it was good. We met with all members. The schedule here is 9-11. About 10 am we had these three black guys walk into the church; it was a little bit into Sunday school. They walked in and they're like, "We're christian too! And we're way down to be coming to church." They all had their bibles, everything. They live in our area, it's so cool! They all play football and one of them speaks Thai way good, the other two don't really. The one guy speaks fluent French, Thai and English. I was talking to him and he translated to his buddies and spoke French with them. It was really cool. They're all from Cameroon, which is in Africa. We give them a French book of Mormon on their phone and asked them if they would read it and then we invited them to English class and they said they'll come. They're way christian and excited to learn. The one guy says he wants his buddies to be baptized. We talked to them over lunch. After church, we had a baptism of this little girl and the three black guys were way pumped about that. They're all in the pictures and everything. After the baptism there was this drunk guy that walked into the church saying that another person invited him to come. But uhhh he was drunk. We tried to teach him, it didn't really work out very well, but we'll see if he comes back. We gave him a Book of Mormon and told him to come back, so maybe he'll come back, not drunk? Then we had long correlation meeting. It was all good. We met with the sister missionaries and they gave us some advice about the area. Finally we got home and did our studies and then met with an investigator who has a really sad story. His wife died. All we could really do is bear a good testimony about the plan of salvation. Elder Milang did way good, he's a solid missionary. We talked about the plan of salvation and asked him, if you had the opportunity to meet her again, would you want to?
And he said, yeah. We talked about Jesus Christ and how it's possible. We have a return appointment for this next week. We met with another less active member who's also struggling a little bit but doing pretty good. On our way home we were inviting and I saw this guy on the side of the road. I felt the spirit prompt me to stop so we stopped and I sat down next to him and started talking. My companion is native Thai, but he's not from this area. And in this area there's a distinct dialect. So here's this guy talking in this language that me and my companion... neither of us can really understand. He's drunk out of his mind as well, but I still keep sitting there cause I'm like, well the spirit told me to sit here, so obviously there's gotta be something. I started catching a few things. He knows about Jesus, he knows about the holes in his hands and the meaning of the cross from what I can understand. He was upset because someone cheated him and he lost a lot of money. That's about all I got. And I said, "Well, we want to help. We know Jesus can help you and this message will help you." And he's like, "You want to help me get my money back!" I think, well we can't do that, but we can still help. We gave him a card and he doesn't have a phone. I dunno what will happen. It's one of those things I guess.
My spiritual thought this week comes from a verse that had a good friend of mine in this ward sent. Long story short... When I was a district leader in Bangnaa, there was a sister missionary that was a native Thai in my district. She's a really good missionary. Now she's a Sunday school teacher in the ward here and she sent me a scripture because she understands what it's like to open a new area and to kind of have to work on the fly. The scripture is D&C 123:17, "Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed." I was thinking about this scripture this morning and I had read it probably a dozen times but it didn't really have that much meaning to me. But now I see new things, I understand things differently. I think it's a really good scripture. It's really good for my situation and it has a lot of meaning since a friend sent it to me. Reading it by myself, it probably wouldn't have made the same impact. It was nice of her to send it to me and good to know that everything will work out in the end. We come and work, but we're not really the ones working. It's Heavenly Father.
That's it for this week over and out, Elder Ellsworth
Finally some pictures from him.
Comments
Post a Comment