Week 43: Some Pig, and A Visionary People

I've mentioned before how missionary work tends to come in waves; sometimes we have very few investigators, sometimes (less often) we have almost more than we can handle. Last week was the rise, and this week felt like the fall. Bua moved to a different province (though may be coming back next month), and L and Noot stopped answering their phones. Kemtong is still very busy, but I think she'll keep progressing, albeit slowly. Dae came to church yesterday though. So did Doi Ding (more on her later), even though she said she wouldn't be able to go. This past week we had so many cancelled appointments.

Doi Ding: She's a 28-year-old woman we met her at a market a couple weeks ago and invited her to learn about Jesus. She's progressed really well, and loves learning about His gospel. We taught her once, and then she came to English class. We met her on Wednesday, and she told us that she'd had a dream about people dressed in white the previous night, and she knew it had something to do with our church. I've always been skeptical when I hear about dreams and visions and stuff like that, but a fair number of members I've talked to said they had a dream at some point that strengthened their faith and helped them make the decision to learn more or get baptized. I've heard it said Thais are a visionary people. It's given me a bit of a different perspective.

Wednesday's lesson was The Restoration. We talked about God's love for us, prophets, the life of Christ, the apostasy, up to Joseph Smith. I recited the first vision, being very careful not to mess anything up so that the spirit could testify. And it did. I was so focused I almost missed it, but we could see that she was touched and felt something special. God showed Himself to a young boy, and revealed His plan for all mankind. Now we're spreading that simple message to everyone who will listen.

Elder Hinckley and I invited a Protestant woman (Ung) working a pizza stand a couple weeks back. She didn't want to listen. The other day, a member (S. Nong, a former member of the same church, though they didn't know each other) went and got some pizza. Ung asked if S. Nong knew the elders, and S. Nong said she did. They started talking a bit, and Ung told S. Nong that she was uncomfortable with some things at her church, and wanted to see what we had to say. So, we'll be meeting with her soon and sharing that same message.

I noticed last week that so far, I haven't had to miss a single day of work due to illness. I felt pretty good about that. Then Saturday I got sick. Though we tried our best, we couldn't set anything up for Saturday and ended up with a 5-hour block of inviting. I decided to try and work through it, so I said a prayer and we went to work. I wasn't healed immediately. In fact it was way hard; I kept thinking "You could just go home. It would be easier." But then I found a new reserve of energy and was able to keep going. We stayed out the full day and got 8 new potential investigators. By the end of the day, I was sapped, but happy. We won on Saturday.

That was some of what happened this week. Thank you all for your prayers and support.
Elder Parish

1. Long awaited: a massive (docile) pig showed up in front of the church in Ayuttaya. A member finally got the pictures to me.


2. Asia(n).

2. continued (He didn't want to learn about Jesus).

3. That awesome member Brother Tiam playing a weird instrument.