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