Monday, December 9, 2013

The Language is Finally Clicking!!!

Elder Landon J Watkins Week 26
Week Seventeen in Ayutthaya

Monday, December 9, 2013

Hey Everyone! 

It was a crazy and wild week, but nothing as crazy as thing week is going to be. So first last p-day we were going to go tour this place but ended up not having enough time so we just changed plans and went bowling with Brother Nong! It was sweet; he had never bowled before in his life so it was a great first time experience for him. It was way fun and I ended up coming out on top pretty easily. A good old confidence booster for me, I still haven't lost my touch, right Dad? Ha-ha good times! We went and visited Sis. Mod and Bro. Boon to see how they were getting along after getting baptized, they were still doing great and invited us to dinner at their house on Wednesday. That is rare members never feed you here! After we went and visited Sister Boo and Baah and read 1 Nephi 1 with them. We are trying to get them to understand and be interested in the scriptures. So we've had almost all our investigators and recent converts start over in the Book of Mormon and it is working great. We read first Nephi 1 with her and followed up the next day and she had read chapter 1, three more times ha-ha it is so funny! 


 Tuesday was a pretty fun day just the usual English class, but I think we had around 26 people there. It is hard to tell now because we've split into two classes and I was teaching upstairs so I'm not sure on an exact number, but things are still going great in our English classes. 

Wednesday was awesome the Sowards invited us to have banana pancakes at the church and you know I'm not passing up on the opportunity to have an America breakfast, they don't exist here, it was delicious. We taught some music to Sister Jaah, one of our rescues we got last month and her Mom came too which is awesome because she is less active. We set them up to help us teach that night and after we taught a great less active lesson with Mod and Boon we taught Kwang about the restoration and word of wisdom. It was awesome because I was helping Kwang with her English homework and she had to write what she wanted to do in the future and she said she wanted to open a bakery and coffee shop and I was like whoa, hey you can't open up a coffee shop, we can't drink coffee. It’s against the word of wisdom. So I just cheesed her and taught her about the WoW and she is like, oh okay, well I better start keeping that commandment. She is like a golden investigator except for getting her to church is going to be really hard because she goes to Bangkok every Sunday for school. 
  


Thursday was wild we just woke up and cruised up to Ang Thong where brother Jamnong lives which is like an hour away by car so we went and taught his daughter-in-law because she’s LA then just visited with him for a while. Then we went for a cruise in his pod racer to go teach Sister Doom and we had a good lesson and we got a friend who is her neighbor to sit in on the lesson and we started teaching her and so now we have a new investigator, it is way awesome. After that we went up to Lopburi because Elder Gibbons had to interview one of Elder Wilamas investigator up there so we saw the Monkeys again which was crazy, those things are so annoying ha-ha, but fun to mess with. We had the interview and then some of their members invited us to have dinner after at their house which was awesome. We slept over in Lopburi and came back Friday morning to Ayutthaya.

Friday we had a lesson with Tuk and Nuch and it was way good we talked to them about their baptismal date and they wanted to change it from the fifteenth to the thirteenth. So they will get baptized Friday and receive the Holy Ghost on Sunday which is awesome! So we are preparing them this week.

Saturday was pretty crazy we had mutual and we just explained to them what Christmas was. I sat in the back and talked with Sister Sud which is sister Jaah's Mom, she is less active and I got to know her and she already loves me, which is great and I committed her to come to church on Sunday. She is getting fellowshipped so well by the members in bringing her back. We had a zone training meeting and learned about adversity with all of the success in the mission, President Senior released some training on how we can handle the adversity which is too come, it was really good. We had another lesson with Tuk and Nuch and they fed us an amazing dinner at their place which was sooooo good one of the best meals I'm been fed by members or investigators. Things are going great with them. We also had a switch off and Elder Gibbons went and taught Sister Dtaah the lady we met on the road that one day cruising by on her scooter. She said she knows that the church is true and we talked to her about getting baptized on the 15th with her two kid’s Pim and Non, it was sweet! 

Sunday was a great day to we had 61 people in sacrament which was awesome! Sister Sud came and I was way excited so we will probably rescue her next week. We had 61 people with 7 of the our usual members not there, but if they come next week we should be waaay close to our goal of 70 at church. It is amazing the work we have done here, when I got here we had about 35 people at church every week and now we are high 50’s low 60’s; it is amazing! Sister Mod and Bro. Boon both received the Holy Ghost! We had 7 investigators at church and all are RC’s, but one. Things are going great! It was also the primary program which was way funny! It was just like in America all those little tykes walking up to the microphone and talking way loud. It was good though because these kids don't even get help, they are way brave and just walk up and speak, it was awesome! We also had this guy show up and I was thinking he was the other Elders investigator. He was dressed up nice for church so we thought maybe he was from the District Presidency or something so after church I went and talked to him and he is a member here! He just moved here from Buri Ram, he is 23 and a Mel priesthood holder just what are branch needs!!! He is awesome too. He could be another Brother Nong in our branch which is exactly what we need. He also has a little brother living with him who is 19, but not a member. So we are going to try and start teaching him! It is a huge blessing to our branch because we have the least amount of Mel priesthood holders in our whole zone. It was great though, gets me excited. We practiced all our music for the Christmas party which is on the 14th down in Pak Kret. I went on a switch off with Elder Winsor and we taught four of his investigators. One is on a baptismal date and we gave the other three dates, it was soooo awesome! We taught Tuk and Nuch after and they are so ready to get baptized it is awesome!

This was a waaay good week! This was like my first click in the language also. I finally like had that moment of realization where whoa, I can actually understand these people and when I talk and they understand me, this is amazing! It was waaay good and I just feel like my language is progressing so much better! Such a great week though!!! Today we are just going to get our haircut and play some badminton so that will be fun! We are going to attempt to do the unthinkable this week and shoot for 6 baptisms, so pray for us because we need it! Love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Landon

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