DeathAndSadness

 Hey everyone,

Imma start off with news I just learned yesterday. The mother of the king of Thailand died Sunday morning. As you could guess I have been devastated, and as it appears so is the rest of the country cuz we will be having a 3 month mourning period. Which means the second biggest holiday here ลอย กระทง (Loy Gratong), with all of its pretty lights and boats will not be happening. So I guess I will have to wait til I come back on vacation to see it cuz the first year i was in the mtc. 

Aside from that though I've had an amazing last 2 weeks

We've had

-Exchanges in Chaiyaphum

-District Pday

-Exchanges in Khon Kaen

-District Council In-Person

-Mexican Food

And finallly Baptisms!!!

Yea so basically 2 weeks ago we went to Chaiyaphum to do exchanges. I exchanged with my DL Elder Fowles, one of my old comps, he's a goat. We basically just had a full day of finding but we got to end off with a lil bit of sports finding which was chill cuz I lowk haven't gotta hoop in a sec. 

Then next week we had District Pday. I didn't know what to do but i figured Pickleball would be fun so i looked it up in google maps and turns out we got pickleball in Khon Kaen. So we rented out a court and got to play with the District, soooo fun. But my skills arent quite what they used to be which is a lil sad 😢

Then Tuesday we did our second set of exchanges and this time I went with elder Redd. We got to teach some goated lessons and then we finished off the day at the resturaunt by our house with a bunch of members and friends from English Class. 

Wednesday was also lit cuz we had in person district council. Soo fire cuz now the ZLs have to come as well so we had 8 elders. After council we went and did some service for a member too, ngl we were using some of the more interesting tools I've seen for yardwork like kitchen knives but they kinda worked.

Finish of wednesday night was lit, we did exchanges with the ZLs. I got the chance to find with Elder Huber and we talked to some good people. Def learned a lot of things abt finding just from the little 1 hour sesh we had. Then we met up with our new member นิว right after and got mexican food. Omyyy idk how i didnt think to search up mexican resturaunts in khon kaen before. Big city eassan is the life, I haven't had a burrito ij so long and it was so good.

Finaleeee was this Sunday. Sister ไก่ (Gai) and จ๊ะจ๋า (JaJa) got baptized this Sunday. They've been investigators for a while now and lately have shown a lot more interest. I'm so glad I got to have the chance to teach them and I'm excited to see them continue to progress as members. This is prolly my first investigators that I felt like we got to teach a decent amount before helping them be baptized which was wayy cool. 

Love you all so much

Spiritual Thought this week is my thoughts from a talk called Unselfish Service

Its a talk from President Oaks where he discusses service in a few different aspects. He shares a story abt President hinckley that he shared from his mission that I liked. He talks about how he was talking to his dad about how he was frustrated and discouraged and thought he was wasting his time. His dad told him to "Forget himself and go to work". After that he recommitted to focusing on the people and prayed for the Lord to help lose himself in the work.

We all have shortcomings but its doesn't really matter how much success we have ourselves. We can't do this work alone and as long as we're focused on others we're whats needed.

Second Birthday🎉

 Hello,

Sorry I haven't emailed in a sec haha I just didn't find the time last week with zone pday. So far though this transfers been great. 

Some highlights have been

-Zone Pday

-Zone Conference

-General Conference

-Miracles

Sooo we'll start off with the fun part, zone pday is always just lit. Got to play some ball finally, honestly not my best performance but I'll take any basketball i can get. Then we had chair soccer and interviews. We ended off the day with the finding activity and I finally got my splits with Elder Stauffer 🔥🔥 For Background we we're supposed to do splits a few conferences ago but I was at the hospital and we didn't make it back to do them. Finally got it and it was great. We we're able to teach a few different some mini lessons on the BOM. We ended the night with a crazy miracle where we met this guy named Ert who definitely needed some comfort. We walked by and started talking to him and he pulls out a BOM and then just starts crying. I guess he learned with the Missionaries like a year ago, his lifes kinda messed up right now so we were able to share some words of comfort for him.

Zone conference was firee this transfer too. ZL's clutched with some actual gas food. We had mac and cheese and chicken nuggets for lunch pday, and then had Mcdonalds for lunch conference but like actually a lot, like a burger, chicken sandwich, large fry, large drink, and ice cream. The actual trainings were like all amazing. We watched a cool video of one of the first members in Europe named Francesca or something. All the trainings had great invitations and I'm excited to try some of them this transfer. Had to do a musical number with the district tho which is not ideal🤮 I'm def not the most blessed when it comes to singing whether it be Thai or English. 

Then Later on Saturday and Sunday I finally got the chance to listen to General Conference a week late haha. It was great tho and i loved a lot of the talks. Hoping some of our investigators had a good experience with conference.

Speaking of investigators, this week we got blessed by our friends that came to church. We had 13 pull up to conference at different points Sunday. Which 7 of them was their first day. 3 of them were people we talked to a month ago while finding at the walking street and at that time they said they weren't free but would go to church next month when they were. Well, it's next month and they showed up!! Thennn we had 4 other people come because 1 of them was visiting from Laos and wanted to go to church but not a Catholic one. Soo, she found our church in google and then had her friends take her. We'll see if we can stay in contact with them but so cool that they showed up. 

Finally, after both sessions of general conference, not necessarily cuz of conference but one of our investigators comes up to me and says her and her daughter want to be baptized. They also want to be baptized before either of us move so we're going to be reviewing a lot with them these coming weeks since a lot of the stuff they learned was a little less than a year ago. 

Overall its just crazy to me that we're coming up on 3 weeks of the transfer this Thursday. I still love Khon Kaen and I'm excited to help our investigators continue to progress. 

I love you all a bunch of hope you have the best week 🫶

I'll try and make more of an effort to respond to emails this coming pday 🫡🫡

Oh yea and last thing I had my birthday 🥳🥳 We had cake after English Class and it was sooo อรอ่ย 

Oh yea whoops, as with the title this is actually my second birthday as a missionary since i had one in Home MTC. As of my end date right now I will end with 3 birthdays as a missionary.