Monday, September 29, 2014

Sapansung Letter--September 29, 2014

First I would like to say I am very impressed with Rachel. (Our niece Rachel broke her arm last week.) I hope her cast is a pretty color. :) Which arm is it?

Second, from all your descriptions of the house, I'm excited to see it. It sounds very different. I am happy that my room is—according to mother—the same. 

Dear mother, when you say the weather is still warm … around what temperature is that? I am slightly worried because during my time as a missionary, I have become very prone to being cold—something I no longer like. My current companion gets warm very easily and I get cold very easily. It's kinda funny. :) 

What did you guys get at the Thai place? Lorri, are the Thai restaurants in New Jersey close to the real stuff?

Mom, I like the talk—really I do. I like how you talked about how we keep the commandments because we love God. I also like how you brought up the commandments given by modern revelation—like food storage. That's a cool thought. Especially how the Liahona (and Ensign I guess) talked about that this month—I wonder what God is trying to prepare us for. 

Thailand has been really good. Sapansung is probably one of the most developed wards here. Yesterday we had 167 people at church, which is the highest I have ever seen. Usually this area has between 120–150 people. Most areas are just trying to get to 100. So Sapansung is doing amazingly. 
Also yesterday, an adorable investigator named Awy got baptized. I think the sisters have been teaching her for about 3 or 4 weeks. She has a two-year-old son. She is soooo sweet and very quiet. 

This week has been an interesting one.
Recently the mission has been trying to become more balanced, more all-rounded. Growing pains but good ones I guess. :)
We are starting to ask for referrals more. We are trying to support more member-missionary work. The method? We ask every new member we teach to think of a friend or family member. We ask them to pray every day for that person’s heart to open and for them (the member) to have an opportunity to share the gospel. We also pray for those people. It's actually been a lot of fun and really cool. Sometimes inviting friends to learn with the missionaries is an intimidating idea so we start with praying. Praying isn't scary. And it unifies us more with the members. We are praying for them and for their friends. They know that we care. We aren't trying to find people to teach, we want to help them feel comfortable and to help their friends and loved ones. I like praying. 

So Sapansung has been an area leading the mission in a lot of things. This also means that this area was hit really hard when the contacting method came out. There are so many people here that know who we are and really don't want anything to do with us, and that's totally okay and up to them. Despite that, we are still meeting a lot of people. This past week we met with six people that have been thinking about changing religions but didn't know how. Four of them are friends and called us. All six are really cool: a 21-year-old boy, 15-year-old girl, and then the group of friends which consists of 17- to 18-year-old girls. Now the only issue is finding time for them to meet with us ... 

What else? 
Today we helped translate for the primary presidency meeting. It was really interesting. The handbook is a very very very good thing. :)
We also learned how to open a coconut. Meat cleavers. Very useful things. I love coconuts. I really love fresh coconuts. It's really quite delicious. Do we have access to coconut water in New Jersey? It's really tasty. 

What else? 
um...
yeah I don't know. 
Being Sister Training Leader is fun. I really like following up with the sisters. They are really great. We don't follow up on numbers like district leaders do, we follow up on how the sisters are doing.  It's fun. I like getting to know them. We have our leadership meeting this week. That will be fun. 

I love you!!! =D

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