This is May 6th to May 12th.
For pday this week...the elders slept over at our house, so we had some fun that morning, played some basketball, got some haircuts, got some good food... white person Mexican food. :) Then we went to this temple thing with a waterfall and a fun water park that we couldn't take part in, but it looked fun. Then after that we came home and got ready for the rest of the day. In the evening we spent some time at a Mugatat, a big restaurant, and had a YSA kind of FHE activity. Before that we taught our investigator, she's so good. We taught her the gospel and the word of wisdom and committed her to live the word of wisdom. She said that coffee's going to be really hard because she drinks coffee every day. But she says that she's going to quit by the end of this week and she's doing really good.
Tuesday we got up and we went to our RC's place where he is working. We reviewed what we talked about last week and my companion kind of went off on him again on the review but it was okay. After that we did quite a bit of inviting, came back to the house, did some studies, lunch with the district, studied some more, more finding, got some dinner and English class. That was the day. It went by faster than we'd like. It always does.
Wednesday we got up and we realized that we have to go to Roi Et for a switch off. We went and visited this RC named Sis Tepe, that sells this noodle raan at her shop and we talked to her. Well we tried to. I didn't really talk to her because Elder Milang did. It's like summertime here in Thailand, so the kids were off school and so I had the babysitter part where they tackled and ran all over me and he talked to the sister. It's all good. After that we went to the bus station and got some tickets. We stopped by a coffee shop where a member works. We wanted to talk to the owner but sadly he wasn't there so and we went and visited this LA guy. He's doing all right. I don't think he really wants us to go back though. He's a really old guy. Elder Milang likes to talk to him and likes to talk a lot. It's hard when your companion speaks the language a lot better than you do. You can't really keep the lesson on topic. As a trainer before I had complete control over the lesson, but now I have a lot less. Then we met with this different LA guy who's a very nice. His wife cuts neck ties and he's doing pretty solid, had a lot of questions today. After that we studied and then we booked it over to the bus station. We planned to take the 7:30 bus. We got there at six. We wanted to get there in time to get dinner and make sure that we could get on the bus. And so we get there about 6 and they're like, well the 7:30 is full, but there's a 6:30. They didn't tell us about that earlier. And so we shoveled some dinner down our throats and jumped on the 6:30 bus. On the bus I caught up on my journal and we talked. We got there on time and it's pouring rain, just absolutely pouring rain, but we got into the zone leaders house and everything worked out just fine.
We woke up the next morning and it was pouring rain. Welcome to Thailand. I switched off with Elder Todd. He had a scholarship to BYU and he was going to go run cross country and do track and field there. But now it turns out he's going to Utah State, so we're going to see each other a lot this upcoming fall and we might run together if I can make the team. He's trying to walk on also, but he's better at his event than I am at mine. :) Anyway, so that was a fun day to work with him, we studied the morning, got some lunch, then we went and got some bus tickets for a return journey home. We went and taught an RC, found an investigator who was way too drunk and his super drunk friend, invited in the afternoon, contacted some members and we came back to the church and we had dinner. Then Elder Milang and I left to the bus station. We got back way late. It was probably 10 o'clock by the time the bus got back to Ubon of course it was just pouring rain again. So we just came back home just drenched as drenched can be, fun stuff.
Friday we got up and invited in the morning and then we met up with other elders so we could get prepared for English class. We had this super big English teaching program at the hospital, which was super eventful. So interesting. We're just a couple of 20 year old white dudes that are missionaries and we also happen to teach English. They rented this huge room for us to go and teach English and it was a room for like a CEO of a company to make a speech and here we are just sopping wet, coming into the hospital all wet because of course it's raining again. This whole week it just rained a lot. So we go into this big old hall, just dripping, it was funny. Then we came back to our area, we did some inviting, did some studies and we talked about the 10 commandments with our dater, Sister Whale and she's doing really good. She's down to just keep on keeping on. That night we got sucked into sports night because no one was there and so we had to be there and man it, unfortunately.
Saturday we got up and did our studies. First thing we went and visited an investigator named Sis T and helped her package some of her fried pig stuff. I don't know how to describe it. It's food, kind of a weird food. Anyways.... then we did some inviting and went to the church and cleaned. We met with an RC named Bro. Ploi. Before he had got there, there was a member that called and needed our help doing something. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I do remember that we never got to help him because we talked for too long with Bro. Ploi and had barely enough time to get some weekly planning done really fast before we had to go to the church and get ready for this fireside that we're going to have on Sunday with other missionaries. So we got that done. Then we booked it over to a member's house way far away to visit them and then we booked it over different member's house. Way far away. All in just absolute pouring rain. We got back to the house once again, just as sopping wet as sopping wet can be. It was a good day though.
Sunday rolled around and it was pretty good day. We got up in the morning, got to the church early. Got the agenda for our fireside ready. Church went as normal. Our missionary fireside happened and so we just kind of had this thing about where we talked about Elder Uchtdorf's talk from the last general conference and I ended up leading this whole thing. Super Fun. He talked about five ways to do missionary work, sharing what is in your heart. We talked about the five ways that we can be better missionaries and then we gave some ideas to members how they can be missionaries and then we challenged them to set a goal to be a good, a better missionary. The way we did this, is we have this scorecard with lists of points about how we can be good missionaries and it all aligns with these five things. So you get two points, if you read your scriptures every day; you get a hundred points if you bring a friend to church and introduce them to missionaries; 10 if you post a picture with the missionaries on Facebook, etc. etc. And so we passed out these scorecards and challenged everyone to set their own goal, for the amount of points that they are going to get, and if they got that amount of points, we would award them with something fun next month. So we're going to have another fireside next month. It was a really good fireside. After the fireside we came home and studied and then he came back to the church and got some errands done. I had to fix our scorecard, the formatting. And after that we left and did some inviting. We visited this LA member named bro. Uen and we helped him collect some barbers to go sell later. After that we went to Bro. Sun's house who is an RC. We are trying to teach his mom. We met with them and they just happened to be eating and we kind of just popped in because we didn't set up an appointment but we needed to meet with them. They wouldn't really make us any free time. So we did that. We just dropped in anyways. It was really good. We go in there and he's like, we have some extra food so here you go. So we sat down and we were eating some food and were talking and he is kind of a little bit ADHD. Not really, but just he can't sit still. And he's always trying to show us stuff and he's always trying to speak English even though his English isn't the best and he's really cute.
And so he pulls out this bike he wants to to ride and he's talking about all this stuff. And he's like, we can't ride it because it was broken and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, oh, well can I see? And so I get down and look at it and he's like, you want to fix it? And I said, yeah, I'll fix it. He is also a mechanic and so he's really good with mechanic stuff. And I guess this was just an opportunity for him to do it. Otherwise he wouldn't do it. His mom was like, no, no, no bother them. Let them go, let them do their thing. I said, no, no, that's fine. I'll take care of it. The problem was the chain and the gears were just full of gunk and dust and just garbage and grease and just garbage. So we used a bunch of gasoline to cut it all away and wipe it off and make it look like shiny and nice and by the end the chain was fine. It would move and he could ride it. And his mom was like, wow, that was really cool. We started talking to the mom and turns out that Bro. Son has a younger brother that was killed. We're not sure if it was suicide or not, but he was hit by a train and died and it was really hard for his mom. And so she opened up a lot. I don't remember how it came up. We started talking about that and she opened up a lot and we talked about the plan of salvation. And so that was really awesome. That was the end of the night.
My spiritual thought from this week is practice makes perfect. Elder Uchtdorf said, "The important thing is that you don’t give up; keep trying to get it right. You will eventually become better, happier, and more authentic. Talking with others about your faith will become normal and natural. In fact, the gospel will be such an essential, precious part of your lives that it would feel unnatural not to talk about it with others. That may not happen immediately—it is a lifelong effort. But it will happen." You've got to do something a lot and make sure you keep doing it. It's all about rhythm. You've got to get some momentum going. I know that if we just keep on moving forward, if we just keep on sprinting forward as hard as we can, that He will provide, He will make up the difference.
Over and Out, Elder Ellsworth
For pday this week...the elders slept over at our house, so we had some fun that morning, played some basketball, got some haircuts, got some good food... white person Mexican food. :) Then we went to this temple thing with a waterfall and a fun water park that we couldn't take part in, but it looked fun. Then after that we came home and got ready for the rest of the day. In the evening we spent some time at a Mugatat, a big restaurant, and had a YSA kind of FHE activity. Before that we taught our investigator, she's so good. We taught her the gospel and the word of wisdom and committed her to live the word of wisdom. She said that coffee's going to be really hard because she drinks coffee every day. But she says that she's going to quit by the end of this week and she's doing really good.
Tuesday we got up and we went to our RC's place where he is working. We reviewed what we talked about last week and my companion kind of went off on him again on the review but it was okay. After that we did quite a bit of inviting, came back to the house, did some studies, lunch with the district, studied some more, more finding, got some dinner and English class. That was the day. It went by faster than we'd like. It always does.
Wednesday we got up and we realized that we have to go to Roi Et for a switch off. We went and visited this RC named Sis Tepe, that sells this noodle raan at her shop and we talked to her. Well we tried to. I didn't really talk to her because Elder Milang did. It's like summertime here in Thailand, so the kids were off school and so I had the babysitter part where they tackled and ran all over me and he talked to the sister. It's all good. After that we went to the bus station and got some tickets. We stopped by a coffee shop where a member works. We wanted to talk to the owner but sadly he wasn't there so and we went and visited this LA guy. He's doing all right. I don't think he really wants us to go back though. He's a really old guy. Elder Milang likes to talk to him and likes to talk a lot. It's hard when your companion speaks the language a lot better than you do. You can't really keep the lesson on topic. As a trainer before I had complete control over the lesson, but now I have a lot less. Then we met with this different LA guy who's a very nice. His wife cuts neck ties and he's doing pretty solid, had a lot of questions today. After that we studied and then we booked it over to the bus station. We planned to take the 7:30 bus. We got there at six. We wanted to get there in time to get dinner and make sure that we could get on the bus. And so we get there about 6 and they're like, well the 7:30 is full, but there's a 6:30. They didn't tell us about that earlier. And so we shoveled some dinner down our throats and jumped on the 6:30 bus. On the bus I caught up on my journal and we talked. We got there on time and it's pouring rain, just absolutely pouring rain, but we got into the zone leaders house and everything worked out just fine.
We woke up the next morning and it was pouring rain. Welcome to Thailand. I switched off with Elder Todd. He had a scholarship to BYU and he was going to go run cross country and do track and field there. But now it turns out he's going to Utah State, so we're going to see each other a lot this upcoming fall and we might run together if I can make the team. He's trying to walk on also, but he's better at his event than I am at mine. :) Anyway, so that was a fun day to work with him, we studied the morning, got some lunch, then we went and got some bus tickets for a return journey home. We went and taught an RC, found an investigator who was way too drunk and his super drunk friend, invited in the afternoon, contacted some members and we came back to the church and we had dinner. Then Elder Milang and I left to the bus station. We got back way late. It was probably 10 o'clock by the time the bus got back to Ubon of course it was just pouring rain again. So we just came back home just drenched as drenched can be, fun stuff.
Friday we got up and invited in the morning and then we met up with other elders so we could get prepared for English class. We had this super big English teaching program at the hospital, which was super eventful. So interesting. We're just a couple of 20 year old white dudes that are missionaries and we also happen to teach English. They rented this huge room for us to go and teach English and it was a room for like a CEO of a company to make a speech and here we are just sopping wet, coming into the hospital all wet because of course it's raining again. This whole week it just rained a lot. So we go into this big old hall, just dripping, it was funny. Then we came back to our area, we did some inviting, did some studies and we talked about the 10 commandments with our dater, Sister Whale and she's doing really good. She's down to just keep on keeping on. That night we got sucked into sports night because no one was there and so we had to be there and man it, unfortunately.
Saturday we got up and did our studies. First thing we went and visited an investigator named Sis T and helped her package some of her fried pig stuff. I don't know how to describe it. It's food, kind of a weird food. Anyways.... then we did some inviting and went to the church and cleaned. We met with an RC named Bro. Ploi. Before he had got there, there was a member that called and needed our help doing something. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I do remember that we never got to help him because we talked for too long with Bro. Ploi and had barely enough time to get some weekly planning done really fast before we had to go to the church and get ready for this fireside that we're going to have on Sunday with other missionaries. So we got that done. Then we booked it over to a member's house way far away to visit them and then we booked it over different member's house. Way far away. All in just absolute pouring rain. We got back to the house once again, just as sopping wet as sopping wet can be. It was a good day though.
Sunday rolled around and it was pretty good day. We got up in the morning, got to the church early. Got the agenda for our fireside ready. Church went as normal. Our missionary fireside happened and so we just kind of had this thing about where we talked about Elder Uchtdorf's talk from the last general conference and I ended up leading this whole thing. Super Fun. He talked about five ways to do missionary work, sharing what is in your heart. We talked about the five ways that we can be better missionaries and then we gave some ideas to members how they can be missionaries and then we challenged them to set a goal to be a good, a better missionary. The way we did this, is we have this scorecard with lists of points about how we can be good missionaries and it all aligns with these five things. So you get two points, if you read your scriptures every day; you get a hundred points if you bring a friend to church and introduce them to missionaries; 10 if you post a picture with the missionaries on Facebook, etc. etc. And so we passed out these scorecards and challenged everyone to set their own goal, for the amount of points that they are going to get, and if they got that amount of points, we would award them with something fun next month. So we're going to have another fireside next month. It was a really good fireside. After the fireside we came home and studied and then he came back to the church and got some errands done. I had to fix our scorecard, the formatting. And after that we left and did some inviting. We visited this LA member named bro. Uen and we helped him collect some barbers to go sell later. After that we went to Bro. Sun's house who is an RC. We are trying to teach his mom. We met with them and they just happened to be eating and we kind of just popped in because we didn't set up an appointment but we needed to meet with them. They wouldn't really make us any free time. So we did that. We just dropped in anyways. It was really good. We go in there and he's like, we have some extra food so here you go. So we sat down and we were eating some food and were talking and he is kind of a little bit ADHD. Not really, but just he can't sit still. And he's always trying to show us stuff and he's always trying to speak English even though his English isn't the best and he's really cute.
And so he pulls out this bike he wants to to ride and he's talking about all this stuff. And he's like, we can't ride it because it was broken and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, oh, well can I see? And so I get down and look at it and he's like, you want to fix it? And I said, yeah, I'll fix it. He is also a mechanic and so he's really good with mechanic stuff. And I guess this was just an opportunity for him to do it. Otherwise he wouldn't do it. His mom was like, no, no, no bother them. Let them go, let them do their thing. I said, no, no, that's fine. I'll take care of it. The problem was the chain and the gears were just full of gunk and dust and just garbage and grease and just garbage. So we used a bunch of gasoline to cut it all away and wipe it off and make it look like shiny and nice and by the end the chain was fine. It would move and he could ride it. And his mom was like, wow, that was really cool. We started talking to the mom and turns out that Bro. Son has a younger brother that was killed. We're not sure if it was suicide or not, but he was hit by a train and died and it was really hard for his mom. And so she opened up a lot. I don't remember how it came up. We started talking about that and she opened up a lot and we talked about the plan of salvation. And so that was really awesome. That was the end of the night.
My spiritual thought from this week is practice makes perfect. Elder Uchtdorf said, "The important thing is that you don’t give up; keep trying to get it right. You will eventually become better, happier, and more authentic. Talking with others about your faith will become normal and natural. In fact, the gospel will be such an essential, precious part of your lives that it would feel unnatural not to talk about it with others. That may not happen immediately—it is a lifelong effort. But it will happen." You've got to do something a lot and make sure you keep doing it. It's all about rhythm. You've got to get some momentum going. I know that if we just keep on moving forward, if we just keep on sprinting forward as hard as we can, that He will provide, He will make up the difference.
Over and Out, Elder Ellsworth
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