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

Zone conference is litt

 You might be wondering why your getting my email wednesday, well had some conference this week so our pday got moved to wednesday. Its crazy that its only been a week since pday cuz it feels like we've done so much. 

The food here is great, most meals usually cost around 100บาท sometimes more but usually less, but thats like 3$ US so were eating good. I finally got a smoothie, soooo good. 

We've been doing a lot of visits and lessons so that's been great. Don't really understand what's going on a lot of the time but i share when it's my turn, hopefully they understand something i say.

Haven't done a ton of finding yet.  Last week we did table finding for a few hours. Basically we set up a table in the park and a bunch of english cards and pamphlets and boms and give them out to ppl as they walk by.  Theyve found a few interested ppl by doing it so we'll see if we get any calls. We also had english class twice last week. For the first class i actually had to make a test to see how good everyone was. My comp is on his last transfer (I'm killing him) and he wants to go to byu hawaii so he has this byu pathways thing that starts before he finishes. So while he was doing that i had to write this test. I had to get a few ideas from google haha but it actually worked out pretty well. 

Also got my haircut this week. The barber is one of our investigators so while i got my haircut elder oldem taught him the word of wisdom haha. Best part was i didn't even realize he had done it all until after when he told me. 

Another thing, we had sports night friday night so we went and played basketball with some our investigators. We have like 5 or 6 17 year old investigators,theyre really funny. We got to meet a lot of new people too. Me and elder saunders were undefeated with our konThai teammate. It may have helped that he played for freemont in utah so he's kinda nasty and could jus hit a ton of three's in a row if we needed points. 

Sunday our 17 year old investigators came to church so that was great. We got to teach them a lesson in second hour abt the gospel of jesus christ. 

Sunday night we made french toast with the other elders at their house and then they came over and slept over at our house. The bus came at like 3am for zone conference so they slept over so we could get picked up at the same spot. 

Def not the best sleep but its alright cuz we got to stay in a zoo!!! They have like a resort typeish section of the zoo with the zebras giraffes and ostriches, and then the actual zoo is a short drive away. we had the zone conference meeting with president, his wife and the aps on monday. Then we a white elephant and a nativity. Im lame and forgot to bring a white elephant so i didnt do ir, but i def will next year. All the food we had was sooo good tho. Somone from a stake presidency or something made all of it and it was delicious, pineapple here is so good. I got to see some of my mtc district also. Ive only not seen them for a week but it lowk feels like its been a month. Oh and almost forgot but this was a double zone conference and then tuesday was the other two zones in the east mission. So i got to see all of my mtc district that went to the east. Tuesday was when the other 2 zones pulled up so i got to see elder runia again for breakfast. After breakfast we packed up and went to the zoo at 9. I haven't been too the zoo in a while but it was cooler than i thought it would be. Its been years since ive seen all.the crazy animals, and the thai zoos a lot cooler. 

Then today we jus went with a college group of 19 and 20 years olds on this lil hike. Our ward mission leader is a teacher so he hooked us up. So weird that im the same age as all of them. It was super cool tho and we got to share a quick message abt our gospel and then hand out a box of book of mormons. The hike waa like this 400 step staircase which sounds like a lot but it wasnt bad. It looked super cool tho and we had a crazy view

Funny thing

-I got freakin pooped on by a bird.  In the zoo they got this like bird atrium thing that u go in and theres a ton of exotic birds. It was super cool, there were like peacocks walking around and stuff. Way fun up until i got freakin tagged with green poop by some random bird. Def not spending a lot of time in there next time. 

Love u all, wish i had more time to write but i love hearing from everyone.

Heres some pics

Wild peacock on the mountain

Random bug in the church

Stupid bird place

Its winter and its hott!!

 I finally made it. Said goodbye to the mtc this tuesday night, it was fun but I'm glad to be in thailand. Worst part was def saying goodbye to my teachers and district, kinda weird spending like everyday with them for 2 months and then now we're off to Thailand. Other than that tho it was great. We had to be at the travel office of the MTC at 3:30 am Wednesday so aint no way was I gonna sleep. Plus I knew we were gonna have a 11 hour plane ride of Seattle to Seoul so I wanted to sleep on that for as long as possible, and honestly I think it was worth it. I was a lil tired on the bus ride over to the airport, but it ended up working out great. I slept the flight from Salt lake to Seattle, and then I slept 8 hours of the flight from Seattle to Seoul aside from when I woke up to eat a few times. So basically staying up was totally the move. Side note: I love korean airlines. Idk abt all the other missionaries who have to fly international, but korean airlines had some gas food.  Maybe it's cuz I was really tired and hungry, but they had some spicy sauce I put on my beef and rice and it was delicious. But yea we made it to Thailand late thursday night and that's where we had to split off from our West elders and sisters. We slept in the East mission home and they were in the west one. I didn't realize it til I woke up the next morning but I had a crazy view of the temple. Def the best thing to wake up to in the morning. I technically only got 5 hours of sleep but i felt great.

Friday was hectic and boring at the same time. We woke up and had a little orientation about some general info. Then we got breakfast which was mu bping, some fruit, and then some other stuff I can't remember. It was soo good tho. There's not a great mu bping place in sakon nakon apparently so I'll have to get some when I go on an exchange or something. After that tho we had a meeting with all the east missionaries and we find out our comps. I didnt realize that it was happneing in this meeting tho so i was surprised.  Im with Elder oldem, hes super funny and hes cracked at thai so its great. After that we had a few more meetings and then everyone chills at the mission home until ur bus or whatever is ready to take u to ur area. Only thing is ours was at 9 and it was a night bus so we were there for while. Anddd when it took 11 hours to get to our area so after sleeping on the bus we got here at 6:30, ready to stay the day haha.

Saturday was good tho,  biggest thing was we went took like a 45 minute drive to have lunch and a lesson with some investigators. The wife is from laos tho and my areas like as eassan as it gets so i didnt understand much (eassans jus like thai the east dialect so they say some words dif or like lao.
Sunday was crazy too. I got the chance to play piano during sacrament, but i also had to give my testimony and i honestly forgot like half the things i wanted to say haha.  We had some meetings after church and ate so that was nice. Then we finished at like 2:30and went caroling with the members. Christmas is honestly bigger here then i thought, bjt i guess it prolly helps that i interact with mostly church members.
Today was alsoo so fun. I haven't got the chance to get a smoothie yet but the foods been great. I forget that i basically jumped into the future coming to thailand so you'll all be getting this in the morning.  We went with the other pair of elders in sakon nakon and a member and saw a cave today for pday tho and it was sick. Then we got shabu which is basically jus like all u can eat cook ur own meat and it comes around on a conveyor belt. I didn't get a Pic of it tho so ill get one next time we go.   Then we balled with the other elders for like a good hour or two and then we had to prep a bunch of stuff for english class tmrw. Days have been kinda filled but its so fun. Ur a real one if u made it this far, i love all of u and thanks for all the emails and support.


Heres some flics


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Saying goodbye to the room
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See ya MTC

 I'm finally leaving. I got flight plans yesterday and we get to fly out at 8am Wednesday morning woooo. But we gotta be at the travel office at 3:30am to make sure were on time so I might be a lil low on sleep. This has been one of the funnest weeks of the MTC. I'm so glad its gone by fast and slightly sad. I love all the people here, but I'm so glad to be out of the mtc.

Tuesday was the first day that anything really happened this week. All the new missionaries came in, soooo Andrew's finally here. I didn't get to see him on tuesday tho so I had to find him Wednesday morning. Tuesday was devo day tho and it was great. President Susan Porter came and talked to us and it was one of the most spiritual devotionals we had. There really cool story she shared of a missionary who had nothing coming off of his mission, but the lord had a plan for him. Also, She shouted out President and Sister Craig!!! She shouted them out like 3 times and it wasn't until like the 3rd time I realized, "oh those are literally my branch Presidency" Actual Spiritual Giants.
Wednesday was jus the day before thanksgiving for me. We got the thanksgiving schedule for what we were doing tho so that was nice. Lame day other than I got to see Andrew in the morning☺️ I got to talk with him for like a half an hour during breakfast tho.
Thanksgiving was firreee🔥🔥 As much as it can be in the MTC at least. We got an Apostlic Devotional with Elder Quentin L. Cook in the morning. Then we got a Thanksgiving meal for lunch which was surprsing decent. We had to pack our dinners after tho and they were lowk mid. Andd thenn we were part of the first group so we got to go watch the Fighting Preacher. Had dinner. Then we got to do service from 5 to 7. It was run by Fight Hunger and we got to make oatmeal meals for struggling people. To end off the night we got a music devotional by John Schmidt at 7:30. He's crazy at piano. I wasn't sure why I felt like I knew the name but the dude has wrote like half the piano books that I learned from as a kid. It was actually siickkk. Finally we got to have snacks and talk with people around the christmas lights. Can't lie it feels a little weird talking about Christmas lights on Thanksgiving, but it was still fun. Side note I also got to talk to Fam on Thanksgiving so that was so nice, even though they were all over at my house for Thanksgiving hahah
Today we got to go to the temple. Soo nice. Our teacher Brother Dolbin came at the same time as us too. Sadly, we were in the Baptistry and he had joined an Endowment session but we got to talk after. Anddd meet his Girlfriend!! She's super nice. Other than that pretty lame day.

Funny stuff
-This was a while ago but it involves brother Dolbins girlfriend. On some random day at lunch we decided to all friend his girlfriend on facebook cuz way back in home mtc he accidentally shared his screen with us so we found out her name was Natalia hahah. We all did it at the same time and literally in like a minute he texts our groupchat with a photo of all the friend requests and he's like "what is this" It was pretty funny


Last thing I'm gonna include, I'm eating a Carolina Reaper right now because an Elder in my district got them and they really want to eat them as a district. It's like the hottest pepper in the world tho and looks disgusting so send me your prayers🙏🙏

I am Pi Thai Now

 I'm actually soo excited!!!! Were finishing up our last 2 weeks here, so you could say were an English District now. I'm a Pi Thai because our Nung Thai's just came into the MTC this last week. I love all the new districts that come in, but it's cool to have a new district of Thai's that are learning the language, some of them are already kind of goated at Thai but I have realized how much I've learned while being here. Def not jealous of them tho haha, they gotta go to workshops and stuff, and some of them were great but having an extra hour in the mornig is sooo niceee. I didn't have much exciting things this week, but I'll try and make it interesting.

Last sunday and monday were great. I've liked every go and do so far and last week was no different. The Sundays aren't as exciting anymore cuz we've had them a few times, but I actually love having a lot of time for personal study in the middle of the day. The best part about mondays is I gotta read everyone's emails. Shoutout to tucker, I loved the conference talk he talked about in his email and it was really cool.
Tuesday is devo day so its honestly one of the best parts of the week. We only have one class and we get to go to a Devo. Elder Budge came and spoke to us. One thing I liked that he talked about was "Don't Lament, Repent" We shouldn't focus on why were not enough, when we make mistakes we just need to repent and press forward, Jesus has already payed for it all.
Wednesday was the new arrivals day so me and my comps went and met all of the new missionaries. They seem really cool.
Thursday nothing really happened. I don't know if I can share this but spoiler Andrew isn't in my zone of new missionaries 😢 I found out that because of thanksgiving all new missionaries come in on tuesday tho so thats a plus for me☺️
Friday was also really boring. Best part was probably that we got to have a class with Sister Hendrickson again wooo. This last week we've had a lot of subs and some of them don't speak any Thai so having our teacher back was greatt.
And thennn today I got to go to the temple. We woke up early and made it over, we couldn't do baptisms, but we did confirmations and it was really nice. Also really surprising when out of no where our temple worker gets switched out and when the new one comes over, he realizes were thai missionaries and starts speaking with us. Thai was the last thing I expected to hear at the temple hahah. Apparently he works at the MTC tho and he's got really good thai.

Funny/fun stuff

-Lee was sick this week and friday he was really feeling it. They had an helping others appointment tho so I joined elder Giles, and I got to be Elder Lee. I just snatched one of his nametages, and introduced myself as him. It was super fun
-My mom sent me a pumpkin pie this week as a surprise!! Thanks mom. Problem was we had just eaten dinner and lowk our entire district was so full. Then I remembered Elder Giles and Elder have a massive mini fridge so now I've been having pumpkin pie and whipped cream everynight😋

Sorry kind of had a lamer email
I wanted to end with a poem. Ik I actually don't kinda like this one even tho I'm not a poem person.
President Monson shared it in his talk "What have I done for Someone Today" it goes
I have wept in the night for the shortness of sight
That to somebody's need made me blind;
But I never have yet, felt a tinge of regret, for being a little too kind"

Love you all

Heres a few photos

STILL HERE

 Lil late, but better late than never. Soo this week puts us at 7 weeks as missionaries or something like that. The days feel so long but the weeks have kinda been flying by. Krew and Keegan left at the beginning of this week. It's kinda surreal with both of them gone because I became a missionary the same day as krew, and Keegan literally got here yesterday but they're both gone. I'm gonna miss seeing them for 2 years, but I'm excited to see how we change. This week was pretty sad but one happy thing is i found out andrews coming to the mtc, WOOO😊 He'll get here my last week of the mtc so i get to end off with a bang. The reason this week was sad is because elder huntsman got sent home for medical reasons this last wednesday. He's got to get a second neurologist to check him out so plz keep him in your prayers. If u havent noticed most of my emails funny stuff is about elder huntsman so if i dont have as much funny content ite cuz we've been missing him. His comp was elder helquist tho so now he's in a trio with us. Its different then the duo but in a good way.

Sunday was a great way to start the week. I've loved every GO and Do study time so far and this one was great. We had a new devotional at night, it honestly wasn't my favorite but I still took some good things away.

Tuesday we had another general authority devotional. I think it was honestly my favorite one so far. Karl D. Hirst of the 70 came and spoke to us with his Wife, Sister Hirst. They were both so funny and had great messages. Sister Hirst shared about how we should focus on the millimeters we know and not the mountain ahead of us. Elder Hirst talked about having cheer in situations where cheer isn't need, and he had an analogy I loved about stress. When glass undergoes stress it breaks and becomes less under pressure. When a cricket ball endures stress it might become bent and deformed, but it's resilient and bounces back. When a hammer undergoes pressure it breaks the cause of the pressure. It's robust. However, Heavenly father wants us to be better than these things. If we try, we can let stress have the same effect on us as it has on a muscle. When a muscle undergoes stress it breaks, but it comes back stronger than before. He had another great analogy, but I'll save it for one of my spiritual thoughts. 

Wednesday was the day Huntsman left so that was honestly just a sad day.

Friday is always the busiest day of my week. We had service in the morning, then quickly had to run and grab breakfast. After that we had our first Trio HOA, (Helping Others Appointment) so we had to run over to that. Then we had an hour of gym time and our personal and group language studies. And by that time our day was filled cuz we had our regular classes. Honestly tho having a busy day before Pday helps because it makes it come faster.

Today was a great day. We woke up at 6 a.m.so we could go do baptisms at the Provo City center temple. We were able to walk in and do baptisms, it was a great way to start the morning. Then we got back and went right to class, but we got to have one of our funnest classes today. We made a trip over to the mtc store to learn how to say more things in Thai that we might want to buy. Then we did a The Price is Right type game, but in Thai. I wasn't able to pull out a win, but it was probably one of the funnest lessons we've done. 

Funny stuff

-I feel like I gotta share one last thing about Elder Huntsman so even tho he gave this analogy in a testimony a few weeks ago I'm gonna include

Don't be a chimp, be a bonobo.

-Elder Giles from my district can eat a lot of ice cream. He also happens to be friends with Nathaniel who's here right now from Timpview. They decided to have an Ice cream sandwich eating competition and it was pretty funny. Once they got past 10 they were starting to feel cold, so you'd think they'd only get a few more. Somehow tho they were both at 22 ice cream sandwiches!! We ended up getting stopped by one of the workers tho because I guess your not supposed to eat like 40 ice cream sandwiches between two people. It was gonna end in a tie, but Than was willing to keep going outside and beat Giles by eating like 3/4 of another sandwich. Giles about died after that, but at least he doesn't eat a ton of ice cream now. He was def averaging like 3 ice cream sandwiches at lunch and dinner.

-Something that kinda surprised me, but is honestly pretty funny. I got surprised this morning with a picture of my sister and one of my friends (cough cough Jack). At first I was like oh that's cool they saw each other at Utah State. Then came the surprise when I realized they were holding a true aggie card with both their names on it. Haha it def caught me woke me up from my morning slump.

Thats about it

Here's some