Switching It Up

Elder Landon J Watkins Week 38

Week Eleven in Nong Khai

Monday, March 03, 2014

What's good everyone?

This was a pretty sweet week and went way fast for who knows why. But I've decided the farther I get into my mission the faster the time seems to go!

Anyway, since I'm bored of my old format of letters where I'd go through telling you about everyday I'm going to just switching it up on you all so you don't know what will hit ya. So first I'll talk about all the new missionaries we got here in Nongkhai. So the other Elders are Elder Smith and Elder Wheeler. Elder Smith is just a greenie and it is cool to see him developing and working way hard even though the language is just impossible to understand when you are a greenie. His trainer is Elder Wheeler who came here from Chiang Mai and has been out for just over a year. As for the Sisters we have Sister Zaug and Maughan. Sister Zaug has been out 11 months and Sister Maughan is just 2 months behind me. They are way good and fun to be around. They even had a baptism this week already. They are just cheesing because Sister Maughan stole this investigator from Udorn which is where she was before. We also gave them every RC in this area so all we have are investigators to work with since we don't have any RC to teach anymore. They also have another investigator going to get baptized this next coming week which was nicely handed over to them by the Elders. So we are just helping them out in their area a ton. My own personal thought is that next transfer one of the Elders areas is going to get closed down. This last week we had district meeting and just got to know each other better.  My comp and I who have been posting up here for almost 11 weeks now, just introduced the area and how to get places to the new missionaries. 

Short story of the week is about the Sisters baptism that they had. So usually whoever is having a baptism will turn the font on to fill it up and since it wasn't our baptism and we didn't know we were going to have one, we didn't think anything of it. Next thing you know the baptismal service comes around after church and there is no water even started, oh no! The font takes like 3-4 hours to fill up. So after stalling by moving branch council meeting to before the baptism and me filling up the mop buckets and then pouring them in the font for a solid 45 minutes,that was fun. It all worked out though in the end and he got baptized, so no worries there.

Our first English class as a new district was fun I just taught it all by myself like usual! We had some to new people show up which was good and got a new investigator for the sisters out of it. 

On Friday the Zone Leaders came up for a switch off. I went with Elder Smith the Greenie so I got to be the trainer for the day. My comp went with Elder Terry and Elder Wheeler with Cahoon. We just invited like crazy all day, it was nuts. We were able to get 28 new phone numbers this week, but only 1 new investigator ha-ha, that is alright. Better than the last time they came with 25 numbers and no new investigators. So right now we really only have two investigators. One is Naan and the other is Jaa who we found this week at our local seven eleven!

As for Naan she is doing way good! After we got her wanting to learn last Sunday we met with her a ton this week to teach her. We took time out of our p-day to teach her last week and we taught her Tuesday, Wednesday, and Sunday. On Wednesday when we were teaching her and she finally really wants to get baptized and we were like you have to come to church this Sunday. She leaving Monday (today) to go on her beauty pageant thing. I don't quite understand the whole thing yet, but she had an interview for it at 9 on Sunday morning which is right when church starts. All of a sudden she just pulls out her phone and calls her agent requesting to change it and he was getting all mad saying that she was doing it because of her boyfriend or something, but she doesn't even have one but she kept explaining to him the the Elders were teaching her and so she had to take pictures of us and our name tags to prove that she was learning from us, way funny! She ended up getting it changed and came to Church, it was sweet! She wanted us to teach her during Sunday school and since our investigators/rc class is just jammed with 6 missionaries now we felt it was okay to take her out and teach her. During this lesson we started teaching her all the big, way hard commandments for people in Thailand to understand, like the law of chastity, word of wisdom, 10 commandments and keeping the Sabbath day holy. She is just like taking it all in, saying she is just going to keep them all. Then she tells us she is trying to cancel her whole pageant thing and doesn't want to do it anymore. We are like, for real? So now she is all freed up again because she did cancel it, so she may be able to get baptized this Sunday. I'm way excited if not the next one for sure!

As for Jaa we had our first lesson with her after the baptism and she also came to the baptism. We taught her and she just has tons of questions but doesn't really want to get baptized way bad, yet. It turns out she is the little sister of a former investigator.

That is really all for this week, pray for our investigator Naan that she will keep progressing really well. Oh as far as my scripture reading is going, just to give you an update on what I'm doing. I am reading the New Testament and just finished Acts, it is way good. If you feel you are bored of the BoM a bit the New Testament is way good, as long as you can charge through Mark and Luke! 

Love you all, have a great week!

Love,

Landon