Sunday, February 22, 2015

2-22-15

Dear Mom,

Thank you for the emails and the day count update. It's crazy how time flies! Even it doesn't feel like I've been here for a long time, and I haven't, it feels like it's going by too quick already! It's crazy! My companion hit his year mark a few days ago and it freaks him out, too. I'll keep in mind what you post on the blog so I'll make sure only to send the best. The highlight of this week is the amazing success that is beginning to sprout from focusing on the families. We've had numerous RC's and people bring their friends and family members to church. Just this last Sunday, one of our RC's younger brothers was baptized. It's so exciting to see the family unit growing in the church! This same RC had their mom and daughter brought to church by a less-active RC. It's so cool to see the impact that all of this has. We had someone bring their younger brother, a younger investigator bring their mom, and another RC bring their grand-daughter. We can already see the 'doubling' affect that our mission president was talking about, and we've only worked with very recent RCs, too. It's great to see the beginning of the fruits of focusing on the family.

A lot has happened this week and there's no great way to sum it all up. One of the biggest events from this week was the Valentine's day activity we had on Saturday. We're still working hard and pushing through. The language is still hard and not a ton has changed, but as we focus on the work and take one day at a time, we'll meet success in all things.

Elder Sun

Monday, February 16, 2015

2-15-15 Picture 10

District dinners have been semi-difficult, but here's a photo!
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After baptisms, we 'Slam Tim-Tams'. I'm sure more on that later.
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We visited the Family again and they taught us some traditional dances.
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English was way good (the videoed one from this week).

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We found this creepy, life-like model at the mall last Monday.

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My companion loves them so, so much!

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Dinner at the church with the Pakistani Family!

2-15-15 Picture 3 Weekly Email (I'm not sure what week it is anymore)

Handing out food at the funeral.



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English class from last week.

2-15-15 Picture 1 Weekly Email (I'm not sure what week it is anymore)

There is so much more I could write, I'm sure, but if pictures really are worth a thousand words, I should have plenty of words covered (from last week, too).

Sometimes you get kind of sweaty/sticky when inviting all day...


2-15-15 Weekly Email (I'm not sure what week it is anymore)

Dear Mom,

Thanks for the Valentine's day themed emailed! I'm glad you had a great day at the temple! Valentines day here was pretty crazy, but the highlight was that we went out and celebrated my companions birthday! He got a lot of gifts for that special Valentines/Birthday day.

I'm so excited for the Meridian Idaho temple! In the training we had about the temple, they had a picture of the planned Meridian Idaho one! Idaho represent! I'm also super excited for Sabrina's mission call! That's so awesome! The same Japan mission as her mom, that's crazy! All of these homecomings make me feel really old, too.

This week as been pretty awesome! We're one of the only districts in the entire mission so far to get two baptisms per companionship and the Lord has blessed us so, so much in the work. We had five investigators get confirmed in Sacrament on Sunday and one baptism. One super cool thing is that one of our RC's from last transfer brought his brother to church and we're teaching him. He's going to get baptized next Sunday. We're so excited! We also had two people get baptized on Wednesday, too. It felt like a great week! It rained Sunday morning and when it rains, Thai people don't want to go out so we didn't have very many investigators at church.

The Pakistani family we're teaching is still trying to look for work and we visit them every week. We want to help them so much, but there's really not much we can do. They accepted a Baptism date for 2019 (when they may be able to get visas). The family is so awesome and are so nice!

English class went great and things are still great in Bangna! There are only two more Sundays left in this transfer and we're hoping to end it well! The thing I love most is the people, but the person I love most is the Savior. I want to make sure that everything leads back to Him.

I'm not sure what else to write other than I'm so happy to be a missionary and be doing this great work! If I was better with words and could somehow express how it really is, I would. But to sum it all up, it's so great! I echo what Hermana Sun said with stalking, loving, teaching and that we are the happiest and the best we can be when we consecrate ourselves and allow His will to become our will. I know that our Heavenly Father loves us and that He lives. I know that no matter what our trials, challenges, or goals may be, if we rely on Christ, we can overcome and accomplish anything that He needs us to. I have felt the most energy, most joy, and most satisfied when I try to put His work first in everything.

Elder Sun

Monday, February 9, 2015

Week of 2/2/15-2/8/15 Photo 2

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Week of 2/2/15-2/8/15

I also forgot, we went to an ice wonderland place. It was like out of Frozen. There were ice slides and sculptures and all sorts of stuff.


2-9-15

Mom,

Thank you so much for emailing and sorry for not having much time to email today. We've had a crazy morning and stuff like that. A balanced is when we have 2 investigators with a date for baptism, two new investigators, two investigators at church, ten lessons in a week and stuff like that. It's basically our weekly goal and everyone in our district got it. Only a handful of areas usually do. We're not sure when, but we know that Thailand definitely will have one - it's just a matter of when. We're hastening the work with families because we want Thailand to be ready for it and to help it get here faster. We want to raise the hype over the temple and focus on it more. The closest temple is in Hong Kong - which is too far way for members to get there, but it still takes a bit of planning and saving up for members. There are a lot of members who can go, but never have. The next closest is Philippines. Two of the people who've been baptised recently, just this week and last transfer, want to share the Gospel with their families so we're trying to work on helping them accomplish this. Right now, it's more visiting with families than teaching them. Helping them feel the Spirit in their homes so they will then be receptive to it.

We just found out that tomorrow, we'll have someone come and film our English class so I hope it's fun and stuff. We need to make sure we have lots of people and plan a great game that everyone can get involved it. It should be good, but also nerve wrecking, haha. I'm not sure where the majority serve, but two I've heard of serve in Australia and we just had two return from Utah - I think.

I'm excited to get some work done on this book when I get some time. I'm sure it's the same as Elder Saunders, so four generations. If you could do some real digging around and find some pictures from dad's side, that'd be amazing. Lots of people ask.

All my stuff is basically free roam. I really sold most of the real good stuff before leaving, but he's free to use whatever he'd like. If he wants to start up a good Nerf group going so when I get back there's something to do, that'd be awesome, too. Feel free to share my hobby around.

My favorite thing in Thailand is the people! น่ารัก มาก! (Very lovable) My favorite part of the day is getting to meet and talk to people and members. About being on a mission would be having the opportunity to help these people come unto Christ and having the opportunity to testify of Him. Everything is basically centered on this and there's not really anything I don't like about being on a mission. There are obviously ups and downs like the language at some times, but it's all about the attitude! About the people in Thailand...everyone is really nice, even when you don't speak the language very well. It's hard to do work when you don't know what's going on, but by taking each thing one step at a time, it gets easier. Some people won't listen, but others will work with you as you try to speak their language and when people see how hard you try, it really makes them feel genuine care. What I love most about the people is that I have yet to meet one that I haven't like, hehe. Thai food is quite interesting. There's quite a variety, but it takes some work to branch out to try new things. I ate a large, juicy, crunchy grasshopper once. That was gross. It was seasoned interestingly, too. I'm not sure what it actually was like, just that it left a bad taste in my mouth all day and I nearly couldn't keep myself together when I ate it. I like that the food is nearly always made super quick, kind of thrown-together-type style, but is really good. It would be easy to make once you get it down.

We had so much great stuff this week, but it all gets summed up in the baptisms! It was a great baptism and I got to baptize another of our investigators. Elder Lodwick baptized our other. The sisters had a baptism, too. It was super great!

We had a fun FHE Monday, Elder Bingham and I had a great time inviting on Tuesday, Wednesday we had a roughish English class where I ate a cricket, Thursday we had a funeral. How could I forget. It was a huge event at the church. We probably had over 200 people there. It was my first Thai, but non Buddhist funeral. I spent most of the time being an unofficial greet-er, saying hello, holding the door, then handing out food at the end and singing Frozen with some members. Friday we had a large zone training, a few hours, where we received some more instructions, guidance, and rules from President Senior through the zone leaders. Saturday we had sports night and played a bunch of frisbee. The jungle next door actually got mostly cut down so there aren't any jungle monkies or snakes, just a lot of mud. Sunday - baptisms. We hung out at the church a lot and today we journeyed around a huge mall-Siam. We also visited with the Pakistani family at the church. We made them food and we had a good time. We played pictionary with them and we plan to start teaching them and helping them find some jobs.

Thank you for all you do and the pictures you've sent. Feel free to keep sending more.

Elder Sun

Monday, February 2, 2015

2-1-15 Weekly Email 6

Dear Mother,

It's been another great week in Bangna! I love it still, even though this week has been kind of crazy. We've had a lot going on, but overall it has been pretty good. The highlight of the week was that our companionship had 15 investigators at church! We didn't have any baptisms and we're super sad and worried for the people that missed their baptism date(s). However, the Lord has blessed us and continues to bless us in all aspects of the work! We've almost had more people at church than my companion has ever had and we've been a balanced companionship every week so far! We taught a lot of lessons this week, too! I'm so excited for the work!

I don't have a lot to say this week. The crazy stuff going on is just some internal affairs type things that can be summed up by repeating that this transfer is so different from last.... What I can say is that President Senior now wants us to focus more on families. Part member families and to focus on the goal of preparing Thailand for a temple. We're going to try to work more with members and families because last year, the TBM had so many baptisms, but most of them were single people. Now we'll try to work with these people to help their families. President Senior said if we do this, focus on the family, we'll have more baptisms than we've ever seen before in Thailand. The President wasn't sure how we'd do it because it's a new change, but he said someone has to been the one to make it work and show how it can be done. My companion and I are super excited to take on a new challenge. Last week I may have seemed overwhelmed with the changes, which is true and I still feel that way, but now I also feel like there's a ton of good that can be good, too. With a focus on members and families, maybe we'll be able to repair any of the negative changes that may have occurred.

I'll sum up the week and then find a spiritual thought to share.

On Monday, we went to a driving range and hit some golf balls. We then ate lunch with some members and went shopping. We went back to the church for FHE which we didn't have a lot of people at, but it was still good. We had a ton of fun playing games together and I'm sure people shared great spiritual thoughts, but I still can't understand very much.

Tuesday we had a district meeting, ate at coldstone, and had a great English class. We had so many people, it was great! This week, we also had a class for children, a Thai class, an advanced English class, and a regular English class. I found out that I'm not very good at teaching English and it was pretty tough, but I think everyone had fun. While contacting, I even ran into someone from our English class who had come in the past and I remember that they said how fun English class was. I hope it was just as fun as this week, too.

On Wednesday, we gave a blessing to a member which was a cool experience, we street contacted, taught, and had BoM class. Sister Hatch led the class and it was good. We didn't play any game though and it was quite different from last week. We'll see if we can't get more participation from people next time.

Thursday we taught and invited the whole day. We also visited a pakistani family that came to Thai class. It was a really cool, interesting, and humbling experience. They believe in Christ and were forced out of their country. Their son was beaten, their daughter almost kidnapped and the dad who used to work in the Air Force were all forced to come to Thailand on a travel visa that will expire in a few weeks. The family has very little. They have seven people in their family all living in a room made for just one or two. They need help finding work and have a lot of language barriers. Only two of them speak English and are looking for work.

On Friday we invited and taught and also had a missionary homecoming. Saturday we taught a lot and had a meeting with some of the ward missionaries. We also played sports. We found a Frisbee this time and we had a pretty good sized group. After someone through the frisbee over the fence into the jungle, we played soccer instead.

Sunday was overall a good day. We had a lot of people come to church and we taught several people, we also had a four hour long training meeting with President Senior and this is when he told us to focus on families. It's another change for this transfer, but I'm super excited because I love talking to people. Random people off the street are awesome, don't get me wrong, but it's also so awesome to be able to help people in their families. We had District dinner again, too, but our companionship was teaching so we pretty much missed it. We got to do all the dishes though so we did contribute.

I know that no matter what happens, what's going on, or what people may do that is out of our control, Christ is always with us. We can always turn to Him and we can always have His Spirit with us when we focus on what is important and when we remember Him. No matter what may occur, we can always know that He loves us and He wants us to be happy, successful, and loving. We can always rely and turn to the Lord no matter our circumstance. Because He loves us so much, we wants us to love, to serve, and to turn outwards. I had to reference The Character of Christ talk again, but it is such a great talk of just how to become more like Christ. As we strive to become more like Him in all aspects of our lives, we will find it easier to love others and to build relationships of love and trust with those whom we care about. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is truly a blessing in our lives and one of the greatest blessings of the Gospel is being able to share it. When we share what we know, what we feel, and what we believe, we will be able to touch the lives of others. When we feel that we have happiness and we share that with others, our own happiness will grow as we help others come to feel of it also. I know that our Father in Heaven loves us. I know that He is familiar with us personally and He knows all of our strengths, weaknesses, struggles, hardships, ailments and illnesses, difficulties and frailties and I know that He knows exactly what we need to turn our weaknesses into strengths. If we us the enabling power of the Atonement everyday and work towards becoming what the Lord wants us to become, we will be surprised at what we can actually accomplish. I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church. I know that Jesus is the Christ and that He died for us and took upon Himself everything so that we could overcome and grow. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet, that the Book of Mormon is true, and that through reading, pondering, and praying, we can know the truth of all things through the power of the Holy Ghost. I know that these things are true because I have prayed and I have seen the effect that it has had in my life and in the lives of those around me.


Elder Sun