What's up everyone,
Sorry for a bit of delay in emails. We've just been really swamped here and our Pday was week was Songkran so pretty crazy and I didn't really have time to write an email.
Basically being here in Chaiyaphum has been super awesome. Elder Freedman is the Branch President and we've definitely got plenty of work to do. We've seen some really cool miracles here these past few weeks though so I'm excited to keep it going if I stay here next transfer. I'll go over some of the main people we're teaching and helping and then I'll talk a lil bit more about Songkran.
Our first amazing group of investigators is actually this group of kids in a neighborhood that Elder Freedman and Elder Pan. The original one's they were teaching were BaiBoon, DewDur, and Cyndia. Then my second sunday here they were able to come to church and BaiBoon's brother Bo was able to come to. They're all about 9 years old and Bo is 12. They are some of the sweetest kids ever though and like all of them live with their Grandmas who are also really nice. They're making lots of progress though and hopefully they'll be able to get baptized sometime next transfer. It was so funny, they came to our english class this last week as well and when we asked them "What historical figure would they want to have dinner with?" Bai Boon responded with "Jesus Christ" in Thai, and then DewDur said Heavenly Father. They're super funny and we got big hopes for them.
The next cool miracle has been these 3 guys from Ghana. Still not sure how well they'll be able to progress but they're really dope. It was actually really funny we invited them to go out with dinner us 2 weeks ago and right before this Elder freedman was like "Are you sure we're not gonna be paying for dinner?" To be honest I didn't think about it, but comes time after we had a great spiritual discussion with them and they take up their stuff and leave. Now totally understand it's just a culture thing and it wasn't much at all so we were happy to do it. Buttttt, it was pretty funny. Luckily this week they are supposed to be providing with some Authentic African food which is supposed to be Gasss so I guess I'll see how it is.
Another miracle from this week was a referral and his daughter. His name's Tong. They came to church and they enjoyed Sacrament meeting a lot. They weren't able to stay for 2nd hour, but they said they would be coming back next week. And they said they would be coming with food to share when we eat together as well so Littttt.
Okay last little cool thing since I've come over to this area was this one day we had a little extra time to find. Elder Freedman was wondering where we should go find and I picked out 2 spots and then he said we should go hit the neighborhoods on the East I had pointed out. As we were biking over there we went past the Walking Street and there was this drink truck up. Total flashback for me, my first day in Chaiyaphum I was pretty confident I could remember my way back to the Chaiyaphum Elders house since I had been there on exchanges so much. Needless to say my memory wasn't quite as good as I thought and I got us to walking street and then once we reached there I couldn't seem to figure out which direction the house was. I didn't see this as too much of a problem figuring as I would just borrow Toog Toog driver's phone and give Elder Freedman a call. Turns out tho, the Toog toog driver's phone was broke haha. Sooooo, I had to go over to this random Drink Truck and ask to borrow their phone so that I would be able to get back to the house. My last words were I told them I would take a visit over and get a drink another day. FastForward to this last week as we were biking over and I saw the Drink Truck again. I called Elder Freedman over and we were able to have a good little conversation with them and also have some freakin gooodddd coconut smoothies. They're progressing right now tho and even tho they're a pretty average find it was a cool miracle for me.
Last but definitely not least, Songkran was LIttttt. Sadly we didn't really have anyone to play with, but we just walked around and played with random people and it was fun. For anyone who doesn't know what Songkran is it is the Thailand New Year. They don't actually have it as their New Year anymore, but they wash away the old year by having an absolutely massive water fight. Everyone just stops work for like 3 days and then any time after 1 or 2 pm you just get buckets of water thrown on you. Sadly it doesn't make for the most effective missionary work but it is super fun. As me and Elder Freedman were walking tho we stopped and played with these people who took pictures of us and a video as well. Come to find out later in the week and the video has got millions of views and exploded in Chaiyaphum cuz there aren't like any Frangs playing here.
Overall tho Chaiyaphum has great things going for it tho and I'm super excited to see how things work out if I'm here next transfer. I'll let you all know about transfer news next week but I love you all.
My spiritual thought today is something I really like but it's combination of quotes from A talk given by J.B. Haws called Wrestling with Comparions.
To paraphrase tho, he shares a quote by C.S. Lewis which explains how Humility isn't thinking less of ourselves, but thinking less about ourselves. He then shares and ends with a thought I really like of a mom who would tell her daughter that she can worry about how she looks before she leaves the house, but the second she walks at that door the greatest thing she can do is stop thinking about herself and start thinking about others. I love this combination because before this I had never thought of Humility in this way. When we're trying to think about "Oh am I being to cocky" or start worrying about our accomplishments look we miss the bigger picture which is we really want ot be humble we should stop thinking about how hard were trying to be humble in the first place and maybe start trying to think of the ways we can lift others a little bit more in our everydays lives.
Love you all so much tho and thanks for reading my longer email.
Elder Hansen
Here some flics
