Baptisms in Nong Khai

Elder Landon J Watkins Week 30

Week Three in Nong Khai 

Monday, January 06, 2014

Hey Everyone!

Had a way good and fun week! Today we went to this mountain or hill, I guess you can tell from the pictures whatever you think it is, but that is why we are emailing late! It took a good 2 and 1/2 hours to get there so it was a good drive, but way fun and worth it.

This was a good week though last week on Tuesday Elder Batey was sick so Elder Vandenberghe was taking care of him so guess who had to teach English by themselves, me! Ha-ha it was way fun though we only had 10 people because it was New Year’s Eve, it was way fun. My companion just learns along because he doesn't speak good enough to really teach, but he is better than most Thai people I know that speak English, so that is good. We are getting along great!

I can't think of anything great that went on this week for some reason. I know we just taught a bunch of lessons like usual, but no highlights besides our baptism! It was way sweet. Bro. Em got baptized he is 19 and he got baptized on Saturday night and got confirmed on Sunday. The other Elders had 3 baptisms si 4 people just this week for our district, which is awesome. We had a zone training this week and the goal for the mission is 200 baptisms this month which has never been done in South East Asia so if we pull this off it will be great because the first in ASEA history. We hit 110 baptisms in November and I think the final was 93 for December, so we got our work cut out, but it is about 2.3 baptisms per companionship in the mission so we are working on that.

Oh and while we were waiting for the baptism we were just messing around really, but trying to stop people driving on the road in front of the church and inviting them to get baptized. We were really just doing it in fun and burning time until the baptism, but it was literally soooooo awesome! Because I stopped this car and who would have guess they'd stop and Elder Saedan and I just start talking to them and invited them and the lady and two kids hop out of the car and come to the baptism. The daughter is 16 and the son 13. After the baptism they just bolted out, but we invited them to church and who would of guess, none of us for sure, but they showed up again and left after sacrament, but it was just crazy miracle the kind of surprised us, it was cool!

One day my companion and I were just wandering around inviting people to be baptized and came to this big old field with a canal, next thing you know we are walking in the field taking pictures at the canal, it was way funny, but we just are doing some fun stuff here!

We have some more people lined up for some baptisms for this month so we are getting those investigators ready. The main ones are Ice, Nim, Gaw, Mik, and I think that is it. We need to find some more this week and I think we will, so it is all good, no worries! Things are going great.

This email is way short because I can't remember anything! Um... oh on New Years Eve we had to go home straight after English, but of course we had to celebrate with some Pizza Company for dinner and we also got Swenson’s during that day, so that was good. I couldn't even sleep on New Year’s Eve night though because our neighbors were partying so hard and just playing their eesaan music way loud. The next day for New Year’s we went to a member’s house and they had a bunch of fish and clams for us to eat, they were pretty tasty, I guess.

We've been doing some good less active work this week. I think we will be rescuing 3 people probably this next week. We just got to get them to talk with our Branch President. That is all I can think of this week! I love you all have a great week!

Love,

Landon