Monday, May 19, 2014

Bangna Letter--May 19, 2014

So, in case anyone is wondering why there wasn't a letter last week, our family had an awesome GoogleChat call with Sister Slaugh on Mother's Day (May 12 from Sister Slaugh's point of view) and so she didn't send a letter--maybe she didn't have time.
 
Subject Line: Guess who's on Facebook again

That's right, the missionaries of the Thailand Bangkok Mission are on Facebook. It's weird. Really really really weird. Facebook has changed. We also have rules about the Facebook usage so sorry but I cannot befriend any of you on Facebook. We can only be friends with President, his wife, the APs, and members and investigators from areas that we have actually served in.  It's so we can strengthen our RCs faster. And we can share multimedia stuff and talks and good stuff like that. Beforehand we were supposed to write letters but because there are just so many baptisms, that would be an insane about of RC letters to write. Hence, Facebook. We also can only go on Facebook Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday and for a max of 1 hour on those days. It also has to be after studies but before 1pm. So yeah, good stuff. Facebook. It's super weird yo.
In other news, I got a really depressing letter this week. It was from the mission office. It's my death papers or, as I like to call them, my "I Will Not Be Trunkie" papers. It talked all about finishing the race and enduring to the end and all that good stuff. Olympic runners have to run at a good fast pace the entire race and at the end run even faster. The letter said it a lot better but as everyone already knows, my English is degrading at an alarmingly quick rate. Let's just say my companion and I have some really good laughs about it every day. But yeah. Death papers. We have to make goals (mission-related and personal) for what we want to achieve in our remaining months. Also, I still die on Halloween in case anyone was curious. I think I am going to be a missionary again this year. :)

Other news...hm. The twins are adorable! :) 
God likes working miracles. This is part of my letter to President Senior:
"Literally Bangna is the city of miracles. I think my lesson that I learned this week is that God loves performing miracles as long as we have faith and work our butts off. 
"Miracle #1: Baptism of Brother George. We started last week having no idea who would get baptized that Sunday. We had some potential daters but no one really solid and none of the other church-goers seemed super promising either. But, we had faith that someone was getting baptized this Sunday so we called and tried to meet with every investigator that had gone to church. We started going through formers too. The miracle was that one of our church-goers was actually really really prepared from God. Brother George knows his Bible really really well.
"Miracle #2: We tried calling everyone everyday and contacting all the time but when Saturday came, I had no idea who to expect at church. No one seemed promising expect for the person getting baptized and one other investigator. Sunday came and as always, miracles happened. At English class, we invited three Pakistan families to come to church and they all did. 14 people. And Brother George brought 5 of his friends and his son to his baptism (they stayed all 4 hours). And then we also had some of our actual investigators show up,  each with their own miracle of how they were actual able to go to church. In total, 23 people at church. Granted, about 19 of them were non-Thai speakers but still. God truly does work miracles. 
"There were a lot of other miracles too but that would require a novel to record them all. Moral of the story: God can truly do seemingly impossible things. It's great. :)"

More on George. He is from Nigeria. He has been Christian his entire life but hasn't been able to find the "truth". He is amazingly well-studied in the Bible. Our lessons with him (we only had two) were basically us saying a statement and then him supporting it with tons of scriptures from the Bible. And then he would ask a question (citing again, tons of scriptures of the Bible) and we would answer with a scripture from the Book of Mormon and from the Bible. When teaching him, we had to support everything we said with scriptures, otherwise he wouldn't believe us. He told us that he has gone to many different churches but has never found one that he believed was completely true. There was also some doctrine missing or not being kept according to the Bible, etc. Two days before we met him he was praying to know where he should be baptized and where is the true church. Then he meets us and we are on a street holding these mini baptism pictures. God truly does answer prayers. Also, there was another miracle with him being baptized. At the end of the first lesson (which was on the Wednesday after he came to church for the first time), we invited George to be baptized that coming Sunday. He was soooo happy. He said that in other churches that he visited, they either never invited to be baptized or they said it would take him months to be able to do so. He quoted in the Bible when Christ was sending his disciples to preach the word. He told them to baptize those who believed. George was always confused on why he had to wait. Wait no longer George. Enter into the cleansing waters of baptism. 

I love you all sooooo very much!!! :) Sorry I don't have any time left. Love you!!!! =D

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