MAHA SARAKHAM

 Hello everyone,

My week has been pretty chill. 

Basically we had a lotta service this week and I gotta do exchanges in Maha Sarakham. (For perspective on Maha Sarakham, both my trainer and follow up trainer came to Sakon Nakhon from Maha and talked about it a bunch so I've been waiting to see it)

Alright, Tuesday was In-Person District council so we went to Maha. It was super fun to be with the whole district in person. Then after that we had a district service project where we took down some grass and trees for a member on their property. After that all we had time for when we got back was English Class. 

Thursday was the Exchange back to Maha. Sooo fun, I gotta exchange with Elder Elliot who's actually just an absolutely goated Elder. We had a bunch of lessons and got to teach a lot of different visits with members and investigators. Then we ended off for some pizza for dinner with a member.

Thennn, Friday we went and helped the other elder's new members with some service. We took out a lot of weeds and plants in their yard so they can plant some more trees. Then we had to hurry back for game night.

Sunday was a good day, we didn't get many friends at church but we did get to teach one of our kid investigators. Then the Taylors made some absolutely delicious brownie Earthquake cookies that i gotts get the recipe for. They were freakin scrumptous, its been so long since I've had cookies like that. 

And todayyyy, we had a pretty chill pday. We did some fishing and some DIY pickleball in the morning with the senior missionaries. Pretty lit I will say.

It is honestly so crazy how fast this transfer has gone by. We'll have to lock in our finding for this last week and see if we can up our friends at church 🥰🥰 

Love you all a bunch

Halfway🏃‍♂️💨

 Hello Everyone,

"Days Never Finished" If you guys know what I mean. We've been out here working and I guess somehow that made transfer go by faster because were like techbically over halfway right now I think. 

This hasn't been the most exciting week, but we've had a lot of service which has been good and I love doing service out here in Thailand so can't really complain. 

Quick summary of the week Tuesday. So we had zone conference and then rushed back to go to english class, which was great.

Wednesday was a really good day for us. So I'll go in to more explanation on Wednesday. Start off the day by visiting two members that work at a school cafeteria. They set us up with free lunch (Theyre soooo nice) and then gave us a new investigator too. We like just finished eating and then the member was like "Theres someone who wants to learn with you" Literally just feeding us and setting us up with friends. Then, We went to go visit one of our finds from last week. This old lady that lives by herself and she was gone. So we visited her neighbors and they were great. They're maybe not the most interested in the gospel, but they said we could stop by again when we come to visit her.  And they were interested in english class and were willing to take our pamphlets and then after that, we kept finding through that same neighborhood and we met this other family and started talking to them, and they invited us to come eat with them. And so we didn't really have anything planned for dinner, so we just went and ate with them as well and they were super great. They super interested in english class as well said they'll be coming this week.  They were also willing to learn about our religion too. So we'll see if that comes of anything. And then after that, as we're just biking after this, just biking on this random street, this never happens. This random guy bikes up next to me and I start talking to him and he's super interested in like having us come visit and all of our different activities and stuff I was telling him about of him. So we make a lil pit stop and get his information and then we go to go visit our member who works at a grocery store and as we're on our way to go visit her.  Another person says elders and I stopped cause. I'm like what who knows the elders. And this person from I guess a decent time ago. Just moved back to Kalasin and they met with elders before and have gone to church. But they haven't seen the others again since they've been out of Kalasin. But this is like their first week back. So hopefully we'll be. Able to get him to church again and?  Meet with him again. So basically, just Wednesday was just following blessings for finding cause. That is, by far the most success we've had out of any day in the transfer so far. Really great day, even if a lot of these people don't pan out I was really grateful to see a lil more success then usual. 

Thursday we did some service and cut down some trees. That was the most interesting thing we did.

Friday my companion was sick so we were in the house. Most of the day, I was doing some calling and that was about it. We couldn't really go out and work because he was bedridden.

 Saturday. We took a trek out to visit one of our finds from Wednesday. And he's got like 60 plus guitars. So that was cool. Gotta talk to him about a little bit of religion too. So hopefully, after a little lesson we gave him, he'll be more willing to try coming to church possibly.

And then today P Day, I guess we had Sunday too Sunday. The other 2 elders had 2 baptisms. So that was really cool. Cool to see that, but not our investigators. So not as exciting for us personally. Today was a very chill p Day we really didn't do anything. We went to this cafe. It's literally out in the middle of nowhere. But it's really cool and I'll put some photos. 

That's about it for my week. Sorry for the more boring email. But it's more of an average week.

🔥Spiritual Thought🔥

Helaman 5:8

8 And now my sons, behold I have somewhat more to desire of you, which desire is, that ye may not do these things that ye may boast, but that ye may do these things to lay up for yourselves a treasure in heaven, yea, which is eternal, and which fadeth not away; yea, that ye may have that precious gift of eternal life, which we have reason to suppose hath been given to our fathers

Love you all. Stay Humble🥰

🔥Dinosaur🦕

What's up yall,

 Sorry for the delay. I've been super busy the past few P-days. And I haven't got a chance to send out an email. Yea I didn't mean to wait for 2 P days, but I just didn't get the chance to write. Kalasin is soooo lit though. So I'm gonna try and summarize these past few weeks. We got zone conference this week so thats pretty neat. Super excited, we get to combine with Ubon too so we'll have a lot of fun. 

 Alright, first thing you need to know about Kalasin is that there's a dinosaur park. Got these massive dinosaur statues and they have a bunch of different parks too. So definitely have to check them all out. I'll get a picture of me riding a dinosaur one of these days when I get the chance. But super hype

Right next thing is the members here are goaded. Super Great branch President and we got a lot of members support for the missionary work. So it helps out a lot. Our area doesn't have a lot of investigators, so we're definitely gonna be doing a lot of finding this transfer.

 I'll also go through summarize the past 2 P days that I missed out on talking about. The first thing I should mention, we have bikes in this area which is super nice. So it's great to be able to bike around again. But 1st P Day we went to Roy at super cool place. I gotta see elder Saunders again. From my first area which is hype and they have a massive tower there. It was so cool but also so sad. Because we couldn't go up it. They said that it was raining too hard or rain too hard the night before, so we weren't allowed to go up the tower.

I've heard its got a good view tho and they have a cool like window thingy you could stand on and there's no other tall building anywhere around here. I don't know why they built just this massive tower there but its lit. so that was 1st day. 

Alright and the next p day was also super exciting. A member invited us over to make Pork waterfall and sticky rice mango so good. It was so good and then after that, we gotta head back to the house. Place some card games with the other elders. And then we went and played badminton . So overall, Just a great P Day, but hopefully the rest of them will turn out equally as fun. I should also mention. We got to join a member's family for family. Hope meeting and they had some really good dinner for us. So that was also amazing.  

Alright, and then, for this last week before his own conference, we've been on the finding grind so I'll have to keep that up trying getting a little bit more. The members are super great here. Though super helpful, it's also crazy. My branch President is so good at ping. Pong finally met a Thai person that is really good at ping pong. So super fun to play with him and we.  Also.

Have a game tonight which is also amazAlright, and then, for this last week before his own conference, we've been on the finding grind so I'll have to keep that up trying getting a little bit more. The members are super great here. Though super helpful, it's also crazy. My branch President is so good at ping. Pong finally met a Thai person that is really good at ping pong. So super fun to play with him and we. Also, Have a games night, which is amazing. 

Today for zone p.Day we played a bunch of basketball and a few other card games.I played secret Hitler for the first time.That games pretty fun.Then we did the finding activity.And I gotta pair up with older mirror he's a goat , he is two transfers behind me , but his ties are really good and wToday for zone p. Day we played a bunch of basketball and a few other card games. I played secret Hitler for the first time. That games pretty fun. Then we did the finding activity. And I gotta pair up with Elder Muir, he's a goat, he is 2 transfers behind me, but his thais already really good. He actually is one of the elders in Roi Et too so I got lucky we got bikes. We gotta go around to bunch of finding it was great.

If you stayed to the end you're a G. I'll try and keep up on writing my emails but this place is great. I love from hearing from all of you and I'll try my best to respond. love you all 

Here's some pictures

Off To กาฬสินธุ์ (Kalasin)

 Hey everyone, 

Not gonna lie, this last weeks been extremely busy. This last week has been transfer week and its been pretty crazy. Me and elder fowles have been going to work trying to help some our investigators progress and I think this last week was great.

It being transfer week, I'll start off with the exciting news, bumpbanaba, I Am MOVING!!

I'm writing this email as I'm taking a bus back out to the Eassan. We got the news Wednesday morning at 6:30, exciting right? To be honest I was kinda thinking I could be doing 3 in Bangkapi and I honestly thought that was gonna be chill. But I'm def okay to be going back out to the Eassan. 

The place that I'm moving to is a place called Kalasin. It's actually my old comps Elder fowles greenie area. Pretty chill. I will also be senior comp now. Thankfully its just one of my น้องไทย or just one of the missionaries 1 transfer below me. Haha we might still have to figure some stuff out but im pretty comfortable with it. 

This transfer was shorter with only 5 weeks, but me and elder fowles were fortunate enough to have a lot of lil miracles. We were able to see a lot more of our successes from calling and making appointments. To start the transfer we were around a lil more than 140 yellow dots or people that said they were interested in something with the gospel. By this last week we've got it down to under 30

Needless to say we had a lot of people to go through and see who was truly interested or just signed up on a whim. From those we had to 2 great investigators พี่ปัน(P Ban) and พี่โต๊ (P Doe). We put them both on date this last week and I really hope they'll be able to follow through this next month. Not to mention our English class has been picking up speed and we had another good turnout my final Tuesday. 

Bangkapi has been such a great area and I'm sad to leave for sure. I loved our church and building and amazing members but I'm excited to go see another area and get back on the bike. 

We did have an extremely sad thing happen this last week tho. Theres around 7 new members in Sakon Nakhon and a decent few of them are older ladies. We had a appointment scheduled with one of our new members Sister Yai (ยาย) at 3pm. Usually she calls beforehand to confirm our appointment but we didn't receive anything that morning. We called her around 12ish but she didnt respond. We didn't think too much of it tho and planned to go visit her at our original time 3 pm. Sadly though, when we pulled up to her apartments we were informed that she had passed away the day before. I wasn't quite sure if they were messing with us but they confirmed her floor and room and it was hers. Me and elder Fowles were truly stunned because thats not necessarily something we cover in the missionary 101 training. Sister Yai was around 73 years old. Older people really do have a limited amount of time tho. We called our bishop and let him know tho but we werent really able to help in any other way. We later learned that her relatives from a different province held a funeral there Sunday. We weren't able to go because it was too far. Please pray for our Sister Yai and her relatives this week. 

This was extremely sad as well because we finally had our ward temple trip this last Saturday. We were thankful to have 2 of our new members participate in Baptisms though, it being the first time for Sister Yada. 

Fast Forward to Yesterday. Lots of goodbyes and visits to members before i head out. I had to have everything packed last night because we had a plan already to go play pickleball with our Senior Missionaries at 9 a.m. Luckily I got my stuff away in time that we got to go play this morning and Omyyyy yeah I miss pickleball. Its sooo fun. The hour we had absolutrly flew by. This is prolly the last chance in a long time to play pickleball. Just maybe tho I'll get to play some pickleball or maybe Tennis in my new area 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Thats the most exciting stuff from our Pday. 

I love all of you and I hope your doing well. Sorry this one was a lil long but lowk I coulda packed even more stuff from my last week but these were def the major things. 

And yes I also will be sharing a scripture this week. Surprisingly enough I love my personal study and learn a lot. 

This week one I liked was from Elder Belleza's finishing Devotional

Alma 17:23

23 And Ammon said unto him: Yea, I desire to dwell among this people for a time; yea, and perhaps until the day I die

Honestly it is pretty crazy that Ammon had the mentality like that. I love Thailand but until the day that I die is a longggg freakin time.

Final Shoutout to My POPS, best Dad Ever แน่นอนๆๆๆๆๆ

He turned 49 so he'll be old in a lil bit

Thats about it, here some final photos

🌧Rain,Rain, GoAway

Whatss up,

This week has been great. We've actually got quite a bit of rain this week but I'm not gonna lie I actually love it. I'm so down to have a bunch of rain over the blazing heat.

Sorry I'm gonna keep this one kind of short because there wasn't anything super crazy that happened this week..

Saturday was the day we had the most rain. About 4 o'clock in the afternoon is had a bunch of rain come out of nowhere. Streets for Loki, like kinda like a river like we were little just like walk through a bunch of water. Everyone is getting doused but we went and visited the shop of one of our investigators and got ice cream but he wasn't there. I think his employees were a Lil surprised though. That was funny, but it was super fun so much rain.

We had a few miracles this week Tuesday. We had a lot of people at english class. So it was super fun and we were able to have a really good class.

Another miracle was we were finding at a park down by The Mall Bangkapi. We were talking to different people when we had a discussion with this Burmese kid, he's like 19 and moved here 9 months ago. He only speaks a lil Thai and English so it was hard to communicate but he was nice.

I'm bringing this up because the biggest thing we had this week was we had 9 investigators that church, which was such a great blessing. We did not really expect to have that money. So that was great, but the Burmese kid that we talked about came. We had a few people that came last week came again. And then we had about 5 new people come to church for another week. So lots of people showin up, super great.

Thats abt it to be honest.

Soo crazy how fast this transfers gone by because its 5 weeks. Next week is transfers so I'll let you all know in my next email if I'm moving or not

Love you all and thank you all for the Emails

Also Love u mom and Happy Mothers Day

Elder Hansen

BYU Ballroom Dance

 Heyyy,

Yea so I think I'm losing it. This week we got to do a few different things but one fun thing we got to do was go to the BYU Ballroom Dance performance in Asoke this last Thursday. 

Thing is I like actually loved it!! But i know for a fact if i was at home you would have ti force me to go watch it. Basically my standards of entertainment have completely dropped. Literally show me anything with flashy lights and imma love it. 

It was actually pretty cool though and we got to go with a few of our investigators. There was also like half of the West mission there and some missionaries from Bangkok zone in the East so it was great seeing everyone. 

Other than that we had some other cool things this week too. 

This week we've gone hard trying to organize our yellow dot problem. Basically we get a bajillion referrals every week and we already had a bunch of people so we really need to organize. Soooo, wednesday night me and elder fowles went through and made a event in the future with all 125plus yellow dots. Then we went to town: Thursday we called 24 ppl, Saturday we called 85 ppl, and Sunday we called 33 ppl. Not everyone answered but thankfully we cleared out around 35 to 40 ppl that aren't interested in learning which is a major jump to our organization soo wooooo

This last Friday we had an exchange in Ramkamheng that was super fun. I got to exchange with Elder Tripoli, we went hard and did finding walking around an area he wasnt familiar with from lunch til Sports Night at 6:30, then we played 5 on 5 basketball at their Sports Night and it was soo fun. I clocked in 32,000 steps tho and ya my leg from zone conference the other day was pretty sore.

Miracle time, this Sunday we got more referrals to show up to church. Woooo

We had 3 new referrals come to church which is so awesome cause we've lowk been on the calling grind and its kinda hard sometimes when a bunch of ppl say theyre going to church and then we still get no one. Super happy, i think something thats helped us it that we've started calling them before church and reminding them. 

Thennnn, Last but not least we went to Wat Arun (This massive Thai Buddhist Temple) for Pday with the GOAT brother ต้อง. Super fun, we rented and got dressed up in the fire thai fit. I was super happy to get this done cuz wearing the dope monklike outfit and hitting one of the wad's is a must here. Also some fabric from Chinatown so I can finally get in on the Thai tie trading game going on here.

That's about it tho

Spiritual Thought

Been reading in Jacob 5 The Allegory of the Olive Tree. I really liked verse 75

75. And it came to pass that when the Lord of the vineyard saw that his fruit was good, and that his vineyard was no more corrupt, he called up his servants, and said unto them: Behold, for this last time have we nourished my vineyard; and thou beholdest that I have done according to my will; and I have preserved the natural fruit, that it is good, even like as it was in the beginning. And blessed art thou; for because ye have been diligent in laboring with me in my vineyard, and have kept my commandments, and have brought unto me again the natural fruit, that my vineyard is no more corrupted, and the bad is cast away, behold ye shall have joy with me because of the fruit of my vineyard.

I definitely have noticed more blessings when I'm diligent in laboring. I also like that we will have Joy for our diligence and keeping the commandments. It doesn't say "And therefore, Whoso shall bring forth the most fruit shall have the most joy with me" hahah so yea I liked that

Here some flics

Transfers and SongKran

 Whats up everyone

Yeah, sorry I haven't written in a while. There's just been a lot going on and I haven't had time the past 2 weeks. 

Main things that happened the last few weeks

-Songkran

-Transfers

-Got a new Comp

-Zone Conference

-Pday at Bathuigon and Top Golf

Alright, to start off with song Kron. It's basically the Thai New years. There's a massive 3 day water. Fight where everyone just goes crazy. We got 1 day to play in it and all of the days we had to be home before 6 because everyone goes crazy. It was super fun.  This was also the same week as transfers. So thankfully, we got like a day to play songkran and a day for pday, so that was super nice.

Transfers was pretty crazy with. I'm staying as I thought an elder bridge moved to Sisaket, it's out in the Eassan but it seems pretty cool and he gets to go ride a bike. I got a new comp and his name is elder Fowles. He's from sakon Nakhon, which is the same place that I left from last transfer. So pretty cool. I went and picked him up 2 Fridays ago and dropped off. Elder bridge and then we've had this first week to work.

First week has been great. It's been weird since I've had to remember which buses we're supposed to ride to get to places. Because usually I just sit back and let elder bridge tell me when to get off. But overall it seems to be pretty chill.

Alright, almost forgot. We also had zone conference this last week. Pretty good lowk tho first week zone conference is kind of buns but it's all right cause this transfer is not as long so it was still fun to see everyone and our zone is super fun now. I kinda hurt my leg a lil bit on Zone pday to so i didnt even get to play basketball for long on thats all thay really brings me joy for pdays😢😢

I had some good p days tho too. So the P Day before transfers. I got to go to a massive thrift store in Bangkapi that's in our area. We just walked around, but some guy that we usually play Thai chess with gave me a free thai chess set. So that was pretty cool. 

Then today we went to top. Golf and top golf is actually free from 9 to 10, so all we had to do was pay for the taxi over there. And then we got a play for an hour for free and walk around the mall over there, so it was fire.

Overall this last week or 2 has been great. I feel like this transfer is going to fly by since its only 5 weeks instead of 6 weeks but we'll see. 

Last thing i wanted to share was our success this last Sunday. We finally got some investigators that we've been calling to come to church and got to teach a for me after church for the first time. It was one of our best Sundays. Some of our works been paying off so hopefully we get a chance to teach a lot of these new friends.

Spiritual thought- 

I read the new testament this last transfer and this was my first time reading through some of the books after the gospel. Super great

I liked this scripture in James 1

22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 

23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 

24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was

I especially like the first verse "be ye doers of the word" cuz if we gonna spend to time teach and listen to the word it doesnt have much benefit if we're not doing it ourselves.

Love you all and hope you have an amazing Heres some flics

1 decked out for Songkran

2 Last KFC run with Elder Bridge

3 Free Chess Set!!!!

4. NEW comp

5. Zone Conference goes hard