Planting, Planting, Planting

November  9, 2014


Hello from Samphaan Suung!

Okay:

Ear Infection: Feeling 100% better- minus that fact that my ear is still way plugged up.. Way difficult to hear things. I literally cannot understand anything the khonThai say and on top of that I can't hear anything.. SO it's awesome. :)

Sister Jackson: I feel like last time I didn't say too much about my companion. BUT I need to because she is SO awesome. OH she is so awesome! We have SO much fun together. She is such a great teacher. I look up to her so much. She has been here for 17 months... So this is her last transfer! I am her last companion... :( I am kind of dreading transfers. :( But truly she is so so awesome. Love her! I can't remember if I already said this.. But she is from Salt Lake and went to Skyline. Yesterday was her 22nd birthday! We celebrated by eating way good fried eggs Thai style and toast.. With Nutella. :) We got to go to church with the most wonderful members! President and Sister Senior came! Wow.. They brought such a special spirit. President Senior bore his testimony.. It was so simple but SO powerful. I think that every one in that room could feel it. One of our investigators who has been learning for about a year came up to us after church and said.. "I talked to God... He wants me to be baptized this week." Whoa. Is this real life? And then another new investigator that we had given a pass along card too while inviting came! And we more appoinments schedule with him this week!! miracles. miracles. lesmiserbles.  miracles.

Thailand Bangkok Mission (TBM- The Best Mission)

Missionary Life: Everyday it is a rule/requirement to do 2 hours of inviting. Which is asking everyone EVERY PERSON we see if they want to go to church.. Or if they want to be baptized. And hand out pass a long cards, get people's #'s.. We will go to these HUGE HUGE markets where everyone is selling everything... Meats, shoes, clothes, waffles, weird looking treats, junk, more meat, stinky fish, rice, slimy things that I haven't been able to identify, etc.. etc.. And the markets are just PACKED with people. It is crazy! But that is what we do. We ask. We talk to.. EVERYONE.  Typical answers are (say in a very Asian accent :D) "my wawng!" (not free) "my mii waylaa" (i don't have time) "ben is-a-lam" (i'm islam) "ben mus-a-lam" (haha I'm muslim) etc. FUN. Even though majority of people so "No"... We are planting. Planting,  planting, planting. Planting seeds for these people.. Who will all one day hear the gospel.. Who will some day come to church. So even on the days that we don't get any numbers or don't physically see the success.. Heavenly father needs to be exactly obedient.. He needs us to plant these seeds! And from being exactly obedient He will bring us other blessings. We will find other investigators.. Or that less active we have been trying to reach out to will come to church or call us!!.. Just do what you are supposed to.. Even if it is not fun or if you don't know why. You'll be blessed. Just wait and see.

Training: Sister Jackson is an Sister Training Leader. Because of this I got to go all over Bangkok this week with her and the Zone Leaders to training meetings! There was a big meeting with President Senior where all the ZL's and STL's met.. And then for the next 2 days we went to the other districts and passed along President Senior's message! This month is "Bovember the 2nd" The "B" is for baptism.. We have a goal this month to get 2 baptisms per every companionship in the mission. So we can reach our year long goal of 2000 baptisms for the year. WHICH IS HUGE. So in trying to get us prepared for this huge goal... President Senior's message was on Obedience. I got to listen to the trainings 5 separate times.. I think HF really needed me to hear it that many times so that it would stick. My perspectives on obedience have definitely been broadened. There is one thing in my mission life that I for sure have 100% control over in terms of exact obedience.. And that is my schedule. Elder Holland said something along the lines of "If you can show me how your morning studies when.. I can tell you how the rest of your day will go, week, month, mission and life.." No matter what other people use there agency for- what matters is that I used mine exactly how I was asked to. This can be applied to everything. Just do what you are supposed to! Deny yourself of that little bit of extra sleep.. Deny yourself of lingering on one subject. 

Door Knob Miracle: This week... I shut our bedroom door. Not knowing before hand that the door was locked with our phone inside.... At the end of the day we had to have the Elders come break the knob off with a hammer... BUT the miracle of the story... (long story short.. so many cool details about this).. Had we not locked that in there.. We wouldn't have had to go to the Tesco (grocery store) to ask where we could find a copy store.. We wouldn't have been helped by this sweet sweet old man... Who after helping us find the copy store and riding off on his bike- we chased down the street and invited him to church! And he said yes he would come! Not only would he but he said he really wanted to! So.. Cool. Thank you Heavenly Father.

Our apartment.... We shower with lizards. 

Thai Lantern Festival!!!!: Yes this is the "Tangled" lantern festival! WE didn't go to a place where they sent the lanterns into the air BUT we were by a huge pond where they would send out these beautiful flower lanterns out onto the water. Seriously. It was like a dream. So many colors and SO many people. We went with the ward members who are seriously all so sweet. Seriously  cannot understand anything they say.. BUT they are so great. :)

The bus's here have wooden floors. This is an adventure for real!

Shout out to: Reagan and Serena! Happy Birthday on the 13th!! Love you both!

Tiffany. Have you had your baby yet? Do you still have Bronchitis?