Khon Kaen District Conference

Elder Landon J Watkins Week 71

Week Five in Sisaket

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Hello my friends!

Well I'm finally getting to email! Sorry for the day delay it was a crazy weekend for the most part!

I honestly can't remember much that happened before we went to Khon Kaen, but I'll do my best! Wednesday we decided to go inviting at the local University just to switch it up! It worked ha-ha in 15 minutes I got 6 phone numbers. It is awesome to get a lot of numbers for new investigators. Thursday we went on a switch off and I went with Elder Winsor we tore it up and got 17 new numbers together; it was pretty awesome. We were able to set up quite a few appointments for the following day and we got 5 new investigators. Two of the girls I contacted had an appointment at 4 with us and I tried to call them and her phone didn't work. It happens a lot where people just lie about their phone number. Next thing you know we are teaching a lesson and someone calls our phone 3 times during the lesson and I didn’t answer it because I was busy teaching. I called them back after the lesson and they asked if we still have an appointment and if they can come right now to the church. Of course we said you can! So they came and we were just teaching them the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I'm just going crazy about Baptism and the Holy Ghost and how important it is and one of the investigators named, Bee had a mood ring on a necklace and as soon as we are teaching her about baptism and the holy ghost her mood ring starts changing to blue which my companion says means she was getting happy and I'm positive she was just feeling the spirit; it was way awesome! It stayed blue the rest of the lesson: pretty cool! Who knows if the ring really worked, but it sure seemed like it did! We had quite the success before we headed out of town.

 

The Sun coming up...

Saturday morning we had to wake up at 4:30 am and head to the church by 5:30 am. for the bus to leave at 6! It took us 4 hours to get there. I couldn't catch any sleep because the members were just partying and singing karaoke the whole time; it was pretty funny though. We finally made it we had this massive booth set up where people would go to stations and learn about all the other branches. Every branch in the Sian came which are 3 full districts, there was tons of people. I got to see all my Nongkhai buddies though; so that was cool. After that I had my interview with President Senior which was pretty awesome I didn't have anything special happen; it was only 4 minutes so not much can happen! We had a bunch of performances by some of the branches of Thai culture and dancing. We had to play some Thai instruments, so you will see the pictures of us in our outfits with the girls in our branch; it was fun ha-ha! Reminded me of Halloween and you know how much I love to dress up... not! Ha-ha I still haven't changed. It was fun you just have to please the members, so they are happy!

As far Sunday we had more meetings and had our District Conference. Elder and Sister Gong came from Hong Kong. Elder Gong is the Area President here in Asia. The big news is we had 3 districts in the Sian and in order to create stakes faster here in Thailand they cut the Khon Kaen District in half and moved half of it into our district, the Ubon District and the other into the Udorn district which is pretty big. Next District Conference our district will probably become a stake and that will form the 3rd stake in Thailand; that'd be sweet. We are trying so hard to work for getting a temple here! You have to have 4 stakes for a temple. Everyone thought they were going to be creating the 3rd stake at this conference which was kind of a letdown, but it is okay, it was still way awesome. Everyone in the mission was thinking next conference a temple would be announced in Thailand. I don't think it will it will be until after my time being a missionary; it is okay though! This year our mission has around 1600+ baptisms year which is incredible. We had a special Devotional by Elder Gong on the Atonement it was incredible; the spirit was so strong, he is so awesome. It impressed me how consecrated he is. He had gotten special permission for Elder Holland (which is the Apostle over the Asia Area) for us to have a Sacrament meeting, so that was cool. After we partook of the Sacrament we had a testimony meeting.

Monday we had Zone Conference which was pretty cool and fun! We learned a lot. It was great to see all my buddies; Elder Crump, Keller, Batey, and Vandenberghe. It was a good day though. After we had to figure out a way to get back to Sisaket and it just happens there were no buses that stopped in Sisaket ha-ha so we had to take a bus to Ubon which is further than Sisaket and then take a taxi for 800 baht back to Sisaket. We didn't get home until Midnight, it was pretty brutal. I was tired but couldn't sleep it was nice though because I didn't have to sit by anyone I guess!

So that was my wild week! Hope you all have a great one; love you all!

Love,

Elder Landon J Watkins