Haircut🔥🔥

 Hey everyone

Dont gotta lot of time this week so its gonna be really short with a few photos. Basically we had in-person district council this week and we had a valentines day activity on the friday. It was a pretty good week. I got a haircut today from a member for free. Its short and idk how i feel about it but it'll be nice for hot season for sure. I might need to get it trimmed up a bit again tho in a week or two.
Next weeks transfers tho so i won't have one of these next monday. It might not be until the monday after that i have time to send one so try and have a good week without one of my emails 😘
Crazy that i'm finishing my second transfer in the field. I'm def not ready to not be a greenie anymore. I'll probably be moving but we'll see, never know until transfers. Ill know next tuesday so ill give a lil thing for sure next thursday saying if i moved or not. If i do move tho i wont know where im going til friday.
Love u all, thank u so much if u sent me emails. I mean to respond to them but i didnt quite have time this P-day
Have a great week🤗

การประชุมโซน

 Whats up

This week was zone conference. Soooo fun. Thats what the การประชุมโซน translates to. We had zone pday last thursday tho so i didnt have a chance to right an email.

First wanted to shout out my friends Cole and Jack. They both just got their mission calls in month. Jack's going to Washington, Vancouver and Cole's going to frickin Japan, Fukoku. I love Thailand, but Japan is the dream call so super happy for him. He's def gonna have to take me there after the mish ans be my translator haha. Both of them will do great tho and i can't wait tk see their mission experiences.

Now for my week

Zone conference was sooo lit. Thursday was zone pday so we went down to Udon. After a lil bit of studies we got to play a bunch of basketball. And had pizza for lunch in between. After lunch we got to play more basketball and do a lil chair soccer which was fun. I'd never played it before but its 100percent better than normal soccer. 

Then at 6 we got the chance to do finding with a temporary companion. And booom i got to do exchanges with the one of the zl's. They must know i need extra help or something haha. I got to go with Elder Rassavong, he's super wise cuz he's only got 2 transfers left haha. I learned a lot tho and we got to talk to a few people who were interested. And then to finish off the dsy we got Mcdonalds😋😋 Its pretty similar to Mcdonals in america but it tastes a lot better when i havent had a burger in a while. After that we grabbed ice cream cones to go but then Elder Rassavong remembered that we were eating sundaes at the chudch soo double ice cream🍦🍦

Next day was zone conference and it was nice seeing what a typical zone conference is like, last time we were at a zoo. 

Sad news this week, we were going to do a basketball tournament saturdau with a member and some investigators and meet people but we found out that the winner gets 10,000 baht so bit of a no go for missionaries. We still showed up for a sec tho and we got some fire jerseys so honestly worth it. 

Then yesterday and today we've just been getting fire food. Last night we went over to Brother Chai's house for steak. Mmmm it was soo good. Then today after we played basketball in the morning we got some pizza and ice cream at robinsons. We got Pizza Company and Swensens so it was like american food. I did the Earthquake challenge and it was a lot of ice cream. it did taste good tho.

Spiritual thought

Helaman 5:12 And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.

This is a great scripture. I thought about it during zone conference and figured I'd share.

Oh and I forgot Chinese New years was the before last week. We got to do some firree finding.

Here's some photos

the ice cream is the before and after. Elder Saunders managed to finish his in 10minutes somehow🤮

Jesus Loves You

 Hey everyone,

Sorry im gonna have to keep it a lil bit shorter this week. I'm also not gonna be able to check any of my grammar so don't hold it against if it's bad. The Samsung keyboard sucks.
I didn't really have any particular reason for the title but yea Jesus loves you and understands you🥰
My weeks been great. We've basically just been going hard on the finding and we gotta have a few lessons this week but that oretty much sums it up. The biggest thing thats happened this week is that one of our investigator's mom just passed away. It was very sudden and I've basically been thinking about him most of this week. He's 18 so he's around my age and I can't imagine how I'd be feeling. He's one of the kindest and greatest kids ever. Please keep him in your prayers.
I'm so grateful we have the opportunity to teach him and i hope he can find the peace christ offers to everyone.
On a slightly happier note we've had another great pday. We got to go to the sakon nakhon island and play some basketball so what more can u ask for.
Here are some pices

🔥Transfers🔥

 Whats up

Sorry i didnt have an email last week but we had transfers and i didnt have a lot of time to write an email.

Good News!! Im staying in Sakon Nakhon wooo. The members are great here and I'm super grateful have another transfer here. Elder Oldem (My old comp) is joping so i thought i would stay but i wasnt 100% sure. Alsooo, my new comp is Phillipino again!! He's can speak english and thai so what more could i ask for. Lots of missionaries here get like a 3rd or 4th transfer missionary for trainers cuz our missions really young so im glad i got an experienced trainer. I still need so much help haha

Overall best things from this past week

-เบ็นซ์(Benz)

-Transfers in Bangkok

Soo go back 2 sundays ago and we got a investigator who came to church. We met him through finding and I didn't even realize we had. He came to church tho and then we started meeting with him these past 2 weeks. Benz is the bestttt. He's 18 and is interested in learning more. He had a great experience with prayer after our first lesson and the next lesson he brought a friend to learn too. Last sunday he was able to attend a baptismal service sunday. And then monday we put him on date and he has a goal of being baptized February 9th. We've been to teach him and have dinner with multipe times and he's just soo elect. We taught him the word of wisdom and he said he's already been following it his whole life. He wasn't able to come to church this past week tho because he's been feeling sick and his familys been sick so keep him in your prayers.

Transfers were crazy. We got so much free food before Elder Oldem left cuz he's super loved and they wanted to give him stuff before he left. I think we had like Mugatoff(Unlimited cook ur own meat) or shabu(Unlimited boil ur own meat) for like 5 days in a row. Our transfer meeting was on friday but all the joping missionaries leave on thursday so we had to go in a day early. We took a night bus and then got there ready to start the day thursday 😊

Thursday was crazy tho, elder wingrove came in early to cuz his trainers also dying. We were talking about how fun it'd be to do splits in Bangkok or even do splits with each other and have no idea what were doing haha. But thennn Wingrove asked kinda jokingly, when sister ganyaphan asked what we wanted to do, if we could go finding. And she was like oh thats a great idea you can go finding, be back at 1:30 for lunch. So me, Elder wingrove, and Elder boon got to go finding in Bangkok for 3 hours!!! I havent had a lot of finding opportunities so this was soo fun. Bangkok is just so different then my little town in the Eassan haha. We got to go walk around tje outside of a university and go through a market. Bangkoks crazy, can't imagine how my comps leading his area there haha, there were so many people

The first finding was only half the crazy tho. Thennnn after lunch prolly around 4, the greenies finish their orientation and sister ganyaphan asks what we want to. Wingrove jokingly said me, him, and elder boon could each take two fresh greenies and go finding for an hour. And SHE SAID YESS. I'm super glad that i got the opportunity but i had no idea what was going to happen haha. I still am no where near understanding everything ppl say and im horrible at finding (I've only had a few opportunites to find last transfer)

So anyways i get Elder Dollar and Elder Vang and i decide we'll walk over to the market we were at earlier. We took a quick stop at 7-11so they could see what all the hype was about and then went over. The market had actually already started getting taken down but we got to talk to these two moms who were watching there kids do a dance class. I wouldn't say they were interested but they were really nice and the two greenies she new a lil english so that helped too. We got to give them some cards abt the temple and invited them to check it out if they were interested. At this point it was like 5:10 but i wanted to make sure we were back at 5:30cuz Elder Oldem was leaving at 6. We started walking back and i honestly didnt expect us to have a great chance to talk to someone else. Im not great at starting conversations in english haha so put me in the busy city with thai and i didnt really have too much of an expectation. As we were walking back i decided to say high to this older guy who was sitting in a wheel chair on the corner. I started asking how he was and he said good and responded by saying elder. I was so surprised cuz i didnt expect any of the people who know us. I was able to have a full conversation with him and he's catholic and has already been to our church before so i wouldnt say he's interested but he was super supportive of the missionaries. He was telling me how 90% of thailand is buddhist and all christian religions need to share the word of god here. He said he knew god would help me learn thai and id totally be able to speak when i just give it some time. He knew some english too so that helped even more. I was able to share a plan of salvation pamphlet with him and he was just waiting to be picked up so we headed back. God def put him there for us tho cuz idk how there ended up being someone i actually got a full conversation with. It really helped me realize i avtually have improved my thai a lil since getting here haha. 

Still not done with thursday tho cuz then we got to end off with the most banger testimony meeting ever. Basically we were chilling at the mission home. We were outside looking at the temple and i was saying that i wanted to get on top of one of the big buildings sooo bad. Then out of know where like 5 mintues later the APs come out and are like, we got something sick for tonight. WEE GOT TO GO ON TOP OF ONE😄😄 The senior missionaries live on the 37th floor of the apartmenrs next to the temple and we were able to go with thme and go to the top which is 44 floors. Theres a pool up there too (I might have to be a senior missionary one day cuz they said they swim in up there like 5 days a week). It was soo cool tho. It really put intk perspective for me howww bigg Bangkok is. Like its freakin massive. Oh and yea almost forgot we did get to do a testimony meeting after. Elder belnap our senior missionary, shared how he thinks of the how all the prophets go into the mountains to pray when were on a skyscraper like that. It was honestly a great spiritual moment, being up there jus like puts stuff into perspective more. Pretty crazy stuff

Funny thing

Todays Pday and we may have gone and played basketball and I may or may not have gotten absolutely smoked by this Thai basketball coach. He was prolly in his 30s or 40s but he actually cooked. He was like actually sooo quick. The last four points i tried to foul him so he wouldnt score but he still freakin made the layups somehow. AND THENN he freakin crossed me up, threw it between my legs, and still made the lay when i fouled him for the WINNN. So yea that was humbling haha

Here some flics 

Itss 2025🎉🎁🎉

 Whats up

Hope you all had a great new year. I can't believe it's 2025, having the new year in summer weather just doesnt feel real. I've had a great week though. I wont have another email until next thursday because we have transfers. My trainers dying so I'll get a new trainer. Crossing my fingers i get another veteran because with all the growth in the mission its been common to get a companion thats only been in the mission a transfer longer than me.
This weeks been great tho, we had a splits this last tuesday with our DL so we went to Nong Kai. We went to did their english class with them and got to have food with their neighbor. Some ppl were doing fireworks for the new year so that was sick. We got to exchange the wednesday for a lil but we only had a lil time cuz we had to make the 5 hour trip home at like 3:30 pm.
Rest of the weekdays were pretty normal. Friday we did sports night and we decided to bet with the thai kids that if we won they have to come to church and if we won would buy them dinner. Some of them were actually ballers this day so our first game ended was a 9-9 tied game. Dont even worry tho we clutched and Elder Saunders hit a 3 to give us the win. We pushed our luck a lil too much tho haha and challenged the next team to but score was 10-8 and one of them managed to hit his first 3 of the game to win😭 They havent cashed in their free dinner yet tho so we'll see if they remember. Too be fair tho the bet didnt get the other team to church haha, gonna have to try a dif method haha.
We had a new years activity this saturday that had a pretty good turnout. We jus had a lil meal and some members shared a few spiritual thoughts. Then got to finish off the evening with dinner with Sister and Elder Watts. Theyre the senior missionaries that are serving in Udon and were visiting Udon. They treated us to dinner at a frang (White person food) resturaunt. Theyre sooo nice and have they end next transfer so theyve been the senior missionaries almost the whole mission of my trainer.
This was my first fast sunday in thailand and it was great. Cant say i understood all the testimonies but we had a great lesson with sister จีน after and some of our new members. Then for dinner we went over to sister จีน's house and she absolutely treated us. She made this massive plate of cashew chicken for each of us, and a bowl of masuman curry. It was sooo good. Not to mention another member made these lil shrimp rice meals and i ate that right before we went over to her house so it feels like i jus ate the 3 meals i normally would fkr dinner hahah.
Todays been a fire Pday. We made the trip out to the 3 whales. Its like this rock formation that looks like 3 big whales. On the way we stopped at this big mountain surrounded by flat land and it was sool cool. The view was crazy and there was this lil buddhist shrine in the middle of a small pond. Anddd after i got to see my first monkeys!!! They were all over the parking lot it was crazy.
The 3 whales were sick too tho. We had to pay more cuz were frangs (foreigners) so its 100 baht instead of 20 baht but 100s actially not bad and it was so cool. It wasnt even really either cuz a lil truck takes us up and then we jus have to walk out onto them. The truck was kinda hauling on the way down mountain tho so also a bit of a roller coaster haha.

Funny thing-
I tried to do a flying photo where u jump and pose like superman but then land back on ur feet on one of the whales today. Only problem was i kinda forgot the land on ur feet part and basically jus dove onto the ground hahah. Luckily im good other than some kinda bruised palms. Somehow how tho she didnt get the photo tho so i abt killed myself for nothing haha

I actually had a great spiritual experience this week. Ik surprising, spiritual experience on the mission like is that even supposed to happen haha. Im kidding ofc. Anyways, friday we had just finished teaching an investigator with a member. my comp told me I'd be leading this lesson. Only thing was we were teaching the temple and ive never taught about the temple. We never practiced a lesson abt the temple in the mtc and i had only done a lil language study that day for temple words. I didnt know how to start the lesson or what a typical lesson on the temple looks like. Needless to say i didnt have much to contribute this lesson and i was kind of annoyed that i wasnt given much direction. On our way back from this investigator we stopped to visit member who hasnt been coming to church recently. Shes super nice. We were jus visiting her when Elder Oldem told me to share a spiritual thought. Ive been making tags fkr scriptures i want to share. I felt like i should share one of my faith scriptures so i shared Alma 7:23-24. After we read the scripture i was already thinking of how i was going tk say what i wanted in thai, but i figured id ask her what she liked first. She said she liked how it talks abt ความอดทน which is patience. Even tho looking back thats part of the reason i had the scripture tagged, i hadnt even realized it talked abt that. After she shared that it reqlly jus hit me hard that i jus need to be patient with the language and teaching and it will come. Honestly my mentality abt speaking thai has been good most of the time so far but for some reason i was not in the mindset friday. It was nice to get a lil reminder on a day that i was struggling. Rest of my day ended up going great from that point on.

Sorry emails so long, thanks to anyone thats made it this far.

Heres some flics

First pics is theirs neighbors party, the other elders house is tje one right behind us
Next ones where we had the new years activity, sooo magical
This is the random mountain surrounded by flat. Its got a staircase all the way up it. Dont have romm for one of the 3 whales pics but the next pic is from the top of the random mountain

Last pick is WILD MONKEY!!!

Food's Good

 Thailands been treating me great. It feels like i was writing my other email yesterday but i guess it hasn't even been a week since my last pday. Not to much has happened tho

Great things this week, thursday we went to get dinner with a member before english class that i thought was gonna be a small dinner. But we get there and there's a ton of other members and it was jus a straight up feast. They gave us steak, chicken wings, ribs, fish, these beef kebab things, mashed potatoes, dragonfruit, and a bunch of other stuff. We tried to stuff it all in before english class. Oh and also earlier this day i had the opportunity to help with my first blessing. I did the annointing and it was a bit of a struggle with the thai name and the last minute memorization but overall it was pretty good. I Def need to get on top of it and start memorizing some of the other possible things i might have to do. 

Saturday was also great cuz we got to have a massive youth activity with a bunch of the members and investigators. It was a big turnout and we went on this cool waterfall hike and then after we had a picnic and thr missionaries taught abt prayer. Then a member had a lesson she taught to with an activity we all did. It was a great opportunity to see a lot of our investigators another day of the week. 

Sunday was crazzyy too. Sadly none of our youth investigators from the activity came to church😢 but on the brightside the other elders in sakon nakhon had a baptism wooo. His name pierote and he's been learning with the missionaries for two months. He gave his testimony after and it cool to feel the spirit during his baptism. 

More sad news tho, our mission president and his wife released that we will only be having english class once a week on tuesday and we when we talk abt english class we cant advertise that we teach english or call it ECG. We have to say we have a english class or english conversation class basically soo thats kinda sad cuz our english class has a big turnout. We'll be okay tho. 

Today was great. We went to nakomp panom to meet up with the 4 elders there and then our zls came as well. Which gives us like 10 elders. It was super fun. we gotta run some football and soccer over on a field and got lunch together. Right now were on our way back from the nakomp panom to be back before 6 and ready. 

Funny thing that happened this week. So i was playing and hitting a ping pong ball back and forth with a kid during the massive christmas parade that came thru sakon nakhon. Only thing was it hit his paddle and flew into the baptismal font and somehow perfectly went down the drain. Soo then fastforward to saturday night and it didnt seem the like baptismal font would drain, but they had a baptism so we had to fill it anyways. Then haha after the baptism it we had to get buckets and assembly line with water out witb our 4 missionaries. Hopefully by the next baptism itll be fixed haha. 

Quick spiritual thought

A scripture i liked this week was Alma 7:23-24

And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive. 24 And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works.

Trying be full of patiencw as im working throufh the language and everything but im thankful for all,the blessings ive from god this week. 

Heres some flics

Sorry doing a new way and theres a lot of them, but forgot to mention we also went to the aquarium today. It was dope jus a lil small.

The other pictures our a vietnamese temple, our youth activity to the waterfall, and the surprise feast we had. The bugs were jus dish we had on sunday for dinner haha.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

 Whats up everyone, i added a lot of ppl this week that i should have added before, sorry guys🙏🙏

Luckily youll get my emails now🥰🥰🥰

My weeks been great, it feels like i was literally writing out my email yesterday so idk where all the time went.

To get into it tho thursday was great. Idk if it was our most successful table finding but it was def my favorite. 4 dif ppl i talked to spoke great english, soo you know nothing is better than that. I havent had someone in table finding yet who could speak english so having 4 for me is unreal. First was this tall konthai that walked by. Then in the most american accent hes like,"what's up, how are to doing?"caught me so off guard. Got to talk to him some more later, basically he was born in sakon nakhon and grew up in between Canada and touson, Arizona (shoutout miles, if u read my emails i expect a text abt this) anyways he's back in thailand and sakon nakhon for like a 3 month vacation. He wanted to get lunch with us tho so we should be trying to do that someone this week.
The next guy was this giant Norwegian guy. He has a thai girlfriend so theyre jus here visiting her family. She speaks in english and they met when they were both going to school in australia. Crazy, they we're super great to talk to tho. Got to give a lil bit qbt our church and gave her a BOM.
Then an kon thai that teaches english came up and started talking to us. She was super nice and really interested. She took a pamphelt and a BOM so idk if she jus wanted to practice her english or if shes interested but maybe.
Then, another kon thai who half thai half japanese came around with 2 friends. He speaks like 5 dif languages. One of them being english and hes 17!!!! Crazy. He also has fluent japanese so u know i had to pull out like the 2 lines i can remember from all of japanese highschool hahah. It's acutally bad how quickly i lost so much from learning thai.

Saturday we got to have our Christmas party, it was great.  We had a ton of snacks and treats and stuff and we got to have a ton of lil mini,shows from all the dif members. Only complaint that i had that like more abt america parties is we eat first haha. The party was from 5 until like 9 something and we didnt eat until like 8:45 oe something
Sooo fun tho

Monday was another wild day cuz we went to TaLey. Sakon nakhon jus so happens to be next to Taley which is the biggest catholic influence in thailand. 90% of them our catholic. So us and the other elders got a ride with brother Chai and helped one of his friends setup and then talked to a ton of ppl. It was great, theres were so many food booths and then a massive parade of floats. So cool.

Sidenote our pday got moved to christmas so monday was like a normal day despite the crazy parade.
Finally today Christmas Wooo, we woke up and one of the members hooked us up so we gotta go ride a horse. We each gotta take turns riding and it was so sickk. Ive never ridden one so it was a new experience but it was soo cool.  Makes me kinda want to be able to ride it well hahah. Then i gotta talk to my fam for a good hour and some change. It was their christmas eve night so it was great. I gotta talk to my extended family for a lil and see my family open a few gifts. Then we went and got shabu with brother Chai, if u havent noticed from the emails he helps us out a ton he's the goat. After that we got to ball for a lil and then have a lil christmas get together with some of investigators and members. I had no idea this was going on today (mainly cuz i dont understand thaj well enough haha) but we were having a dinner get together with everyone cuz the parade from talley plus and minus a few floats was comjng thru tn. This was news to me tho, so what a great christmas surprise. Round two was still soo cool,and there were some really cool extra floats.

Get a lil more spiritual from this week. Its been crazy how ive enjoyed personal study and reading the BOM while being a missionary. Genuinely studying the BOM is one of my favorite parts of the day.
If anyone could get the chance plz play for PiJan and PiDam. We had put them on date my first day but they havent come to church the past few weeks and we've had trouble contacting them recently. Really sad to not be able to help them tho.

Ive been reading a chapter from john and matthew everyday of december to line up with christmas. Shout out to Kathy and Mike for the idea with Luke from last year. Matthew and john didnt add up perfectly but ive loved reading the bible alongside the BOM, the small connections r crazy. One verse i liked tho from each

Matthew 5:19
"Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven."

And John 16:33
"These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

Love u all, hope u have the best christmas. I gotta get to bed hahah