Week 48: Elder Funk and Elephants

This week we had "mission tour" with Elder Funk, who is the member of the seventy over the Asia area. He traveled to a few different areas of Thailand and gave training, which was very good. This event meant that we spent Wednesday travelling to Kongaan, and Thursday coming back. Then we had zone training in Surin on Friday, which took up a large portion of the day. So, while training was good, we only had 2 full working days and Sunday this week and I don't have a lot to report on.

I noticed something kind of funny that happened this past week: In General Conference, Larry R. Lawrence challenged everyone to ask God "what lack I yet?" and listen for an answer from the spirit. I tried it out, and was a bit disappointed that I didn't learn anything new, I just had some thoughts of things I'm already trying to do. Then we had the rest of conference and mission tour and zone training, and I was overwhelmed with things to change and improve. So, God does give us answers; often in ways we weren't expecting.

Elder Funk talked about some good things. He shared a neat experience from his mission: One day, he and his companion had planned to go tracting in one area of town. As they were leaving the house in the morning, Elder Funk felt like they should go visit someone who had been going to their English class. They prayed about it and felt good about it, so they biked half an hour out of the way and knocked on the door. No one was home. Feeling foolish, he apologized to his companion, and they biked back. He didn't understand how that feeling hadn't come from the spirit and had just led to waste an hour of their day. They headed over to the area they had planned and began knocking on doors. Shortly thereafter, a family answered and said they were interested in learning more, and had just gotten back from running some errands. The whole family of five ended up getting baptized, and Elder Funk said that he was convinced that that prompting came in order to put them in the right place at the right time. He introduced some principles to help us be where God would have us be when we need to be there, and there are things I will apply from now on.

For whatever reason, schedules were such that meeting with investigators was tough this week. Sister Ding Doi is on track for baptism next week though! Elder Quinn and I did some good inviting this week, and met a few potential investigators that I'm excited to meet with.

I mentioned that this ward has some issues with structure. We've been working with the bishop trying to get things straightened out. Yesterday we had ward council for the second time since I've been here. This time though, it was really effective, and we had ward members talking about and solving problems. I feel like Buriram can start to grow.

Elder Parish

1. The Elephant Village in Surin: We got see elephants up close.

2. Really close.

3. Really close.