January 4, 2014

Dear Mom,

It's time for another weekly letter! Excited! We had a good week, even though it's only been four days from the previous email. I'll start out by answering questions and responding to comments.

I don't remember much about my own baptism, or most of my childhood from that many years ago, but I bet it was quite similar to my experiences here. Something I've learned is that we can have those experiences again such as through baptisms for the dead. I reflected on how people who are baptized when they're older have to make more changes. They have such strength and they can also remember their experiences like baptism better. Just yesterday I wrote about how it impressed me that one of the first people at church was a recent convert, ซ.โช . She is an amazing example. She likes coming to church so, so much and has a great strong testimony. I still love it here and I'd say the highlight of my entire experience so far was our baptism - my first baptism. Actually, it was last week, but I think it's still okay. Just today, I heard someone's thoughts on baptism which were "I don't even know how to describe it or how to put it into words". It was actually an RC who baptized a friend - it was his first baptism, too. He said that he didn't know how to explain the feeling because it was just good. It does help your testimony. Not in a way that you can put it into words that you can actually say this happened or this happened. You just know you feel different. You feel warmer. You feel more at peace, more calm. It just made them happy, peaceful, and wonderful. That's actually exactly how I feel/felt.

It sounds like you've had a great holiday! That's awesome! All the little cousins are growing up so fast! If we want some dates to put on it, I can let you know all of the baptism dates we have. It's super exciting!

My time flies when I'm working, just like Kelton. He's such a great เด็ก เด็ก. When I put my mind (and heart) to a task, it feels like no time has gone by at all. For example, when we go out inviting, we can either just go through the motions or really desire and put all of our strength into finding people. When we do, inviting for hours on end go by fast and we have more success because our focus is in the right place. I have my journal now so I'll expound a little bit and say two things.The first is from that district meeting again about desires. Elder Klein said that we've all had the experience where we haven't had a lot of time, but we went out thinking about and focusing on inviting and have found success. I had that same experience just a few days earlier. We had less then an hour, but I had a lot of people I gave inviting cards to and a lot of people give me numbers. This was just after the baptism we had on Wednesday. He then contrasted this to when we may have a lot of time, invited a ton of people, gave out a lot of cards, but no one actually accepting. He explained how our desires/thoughts while inviting play a big part in our success. If we're thinking about back home, a TV show we wish we were watching or anything else, we're not fully into the task at hand. The second thought is that it kind of reminds me of the scripture about losing your life to gain your life. When we forget ourselves in the service of others or what we need to be doing, we will find ourselves or be able to put our whole soul into it instead of just one part (heart, mind, strength, etc).

That's so true about Christmas. It is such a great opportunity to remember the Savior. Christmas here was so weird not having any snow or special festivities. It didn't quite feel like Christmas, but we don't need any of that to remember the Savior each day. We had a super fun time bowling, but emphasis needs to always be on Him.

It sounds like Diana and Tygan are doing well, people ask me about that and when/if she's going to get married. Frappe! I totally miss that right now. We have members who are in their late twenties and aren't married, and because they're Asian they don't even look that old.

I'll do a quick synopsis of the highlights in the past few days:

Thursday: Passed a super drunk guy who was really loud.

Friday: Made a lot of calls. A miracle was we were supposed to teach someone last minute, but didn't have anyone to help us. We, along with the sisters, called a lot of people and we were a little worried about it. Just as we were in the height of worry, we found/remembered an LA, บ.เบส (B. Base) who worked near by. We were able to ask him and he helped us teach. บ.เบส is a cool guy. The sisters told us he has an interesting past of fighting and stuff but is actually a tender hart. We should be able to meet with him and help re-activate him. In our lesson, Elder Davis drew a small diagram to explain about the Bible and Book of Mormon and บ.เบส held it up to his arm to see if it would make a good tattoo. He's a funny dude.

Saturday: We ran into an interesting lady while contacting. She was basically bashing on our beliefs and when we tried to get away, she kept poking and wouldn't let us leave. It kind of soiled my companion's day a little and we weren't sure what to think about it. I just told her I didn't understand Thai, but I could speak it alright so if she wanted to just listen, she could. We had a coalition meeting with the bishop and ward missionaries. I honestly didn't understand much at all, but ช.พิณ (S. Pin), a really nice member who actually ended up being the Bishop's daughter - I found that out just a few days ago - helped translate for me. I thought the meeting was good/fun, even though I didn't understand anything. I wrote down that sometimes meetings feel kind of boring or pointless, but the work is important and the meetings are a part of the work. We played some Monopoly to close the day.

Sunday: Super good mix of things that I wrote in my journal about Sunday and Saturday. We helped บ.กาลู (Gaaluu), the member in the wheelchair, get ready. He's super awesome and we went over about and hour and a half early before church to help him. At church, we talked to two super awesome potential investigators that we have appointments with later this week. The first, we taught a mini-lesson to and committed him to be baptized in two weeks. He's super nice and we taught him with บ.กาลู. The second I sat by in sacrament meeting. He was also so nice and put up well with my lack of language skills. I gave him a brief rundown of what I new how to say about baptism and he also accepted to be baptized in two weeks, after we help him get ready. He had a Christian friend and knew that Christians were good, but just never came to church before. We taught two RC's who also came to church and we had another good district dinner. I'm sure you'll have a fun time reading my journal and hearing about more stuff if you want. I either write very little, or a lot of pages a day.

Now we will go to a zoo type place and hopefully be able to hold some monkeys and baby tigers!

Wish you the best of the new year! สวัสดีปีใหม่ (Happy new year),