Serve, Serve SERVE

So this week was pretty much AMAZING!!!!! We had a lovely baptismal service for the most golden investigator ever!!! B. Art is soooo great!!! He was just so happy and excited to be baptized (and confirmed) haha we like to joke about the confirmed part now since we had our whole fiasco w/ B. Woot. But ya everything went great!! I don't even know how to describe how great brother Art is but he's just awesome!! And the elders here are already getting him ready for a mission!! Yesterday.. less than 3 hours of being a member they had him come help them teach... and then they called him again to help them later that evening!! Poor kid!! haha luckily we have already prepped him a little about service... but i don't think he realized that he will basically be the missionaries best friend from here on out... especially b/c the elders need a male member to help teach females.. and since there's about 10 male members in this branch he's about to get a whole lot of service in!! hahaha But he is so great and so willing to help! Other news for the week is we got permission from Biims mom to teach her!! YAY!!! we are sooo excited her and Ooh are just so great and love learning... I cant remember if i mentioned it already or not.. but they Biim moved out so they could keep the law of chasity which was a HUGE leap of faith for them.. especially b/c she moved back w/ her mom who she hadn't talked to in forever before this! We are just so proud of them! They have so much faith! We were talking to Ooh and asked why he wants to be baptized and such and he was soo cute and just said simply that he wants to show that he can be a better person and be a good example to his family! AHH!! So stinkin cute!! But ya they are so great and we are so excited for them!! This week we also taught Wan and gave her a baptism date!! She is scheduled to be baptized on Sept 22! She is so great! She just wants to find the truth! She is already christian so she's a little hesitant still b/c she really wants to have a solid confirmation that these things are true, which is so great and i think she will get an answer here very soon! This week we also began teaching Bing's dad.. Bing is cousins w/ Gap Giik and Goy and has already come to church for about a month but this week we were able to talk to her dad and it is going so great!! He is so open and he just wants to be happy and make sure that his daughter is happy! Mom lives in Brunei? Not sure where that is, but it's not in Thailand! haha But hopefully we can figure out if there are missionaries wherever she is and get her learning too! But Bing is soooooooo adorable! When we were teaching dad to pray and stuff she just went off teaching for us... "you have to bow your head" "start with heavenly father..." etc. etc.! GAH! We just have the mooosstt adorable investigators everrrrrr!!!!! She even helped us explain baptism and they said that when they know these things are true they will be baptized! yay!!! :) We also taught Guy Gap Giik and Goy and they are soo great too! Gap is like superman flying through the scriptures!! He's already on Alma 33!!! WHAAATT?!?!? He is so great!!! and the rest of the family is doing great too!! Goy actually took her BoM over to Bings house for a sleepover and they studied the scriptures together!!!! HOW CUTE ARE THEY????!?!? AHH!! I don't even know what else to say other than we have the BEEESSSTT investigators in the World and i just love being a missionary and helping them get excited about the gospel too!! ANYWAYS... That was my week in a nut shell! I just don't even know how to explain all my excitement and happiness for all the people we are teaching/baptizing :) Everything is great! Commitment this week: go help the missionaries teach... 2ce in a day if you can :) and just be as awesome as B. Art! :) Love you! Hope everything is going good! Love, ฃ. อิตรี

Can I Get a Woot Woot

Ok this week was a little crazy, but first i just want to say I'm sad to hear the Terry's dad passed away. I hope the family is doing well. How's his mom doing? Anything I can do!? As for everything here, it is going GREAT! I love being a missionary! We had one of our investigators, B. Art get interviewed for baptism and he passed so this week he will be baptized on Saturday!!! YAY!!! He is soooo great!! We have only been teaching him for about a month now but he is just understanding everything soooo well (which is very unusual in thailand b/c of all the Buddhist background) And he is just so ready to be baptized!! Which brings be to a question he asked... so he was reading in Jacob 5 and asked why is there in olive tree in a vinyard? (in thai in translates to grape garden, which makes it a bit more confusing) So that is my question... why is there an olive tree in a grape garden??? haha But he is so great! he has such a strong testimony already and we are hopefully going to be able to teach his family here soon! he told us he wants us to, they just live about an hour and a half away, so we just have to work that out as to when we can get out there (b/c that is still our area technically) haha it's funny we were talking about our area boarders and figured out that basically our area is all of central thailand... YAY! But we are so excited that he wants to share the gospel with his family too b/c that tends to be a VERY sensitive subject here. Then we have Ooh and Biim who are just as adorable as ever, except we have been forbidden to teach Biim by our zone leaders b/c we haven't gotten specific permission from her mom (who she hasn't spoken to in over a year +) so we are still trying to figure out that, she is trying to reach her step dad and work that way, so hopefully that will happen really soon! But they are still so great! they came to our activity this week and were at church yesterday.. which we were a little nervous that they wouldn't b/c we also sprung the law of chastity on them... but it all went really good! They are so cute! This week they also planted a little garden along the street we live, which about a couple months ago was a DUMP that the senior missionaries cleaned up a little bit ago and have been planting flowers and stuff, and so our cute investigators wanted to help out and plant some too!! HOW GREAT ARE THEY?!?! And now we have a new dater!! It is Gap! The cute 16 yr old boy (who reminds me eerily of James)! He is soooo great!! We gave mom a date too, but she is still struggling with the idea of coming to church on sunday.. and we were going to give the girls one too but they weren't there when we were teaching (b/c when we called Gap answered and said we could come w/o making sure the rest of the family would be there....hahaha) But ya we are so excited for him... and guess where he is in his reading.. oh ya he is in 2 Nephi 31.. and further now b/c that was on saturday.... WHAAAATT!?!? We just gave him a book of mormon like 2 or 3 weeks ago!!!! He is so great! and the rest of the family is reading together and just doing so great!! They were at church yesterday and they just fit in so well and they love coming! I am just soo excited for them!! And hopefully this week we will be able to date the rest of the family and get mom to come to church... We are hoping they can all get baptized on Oct. 13! But ya they are awesome! Ok so now can i get a Whoot Whoot?! This week was SUUUPPPERR confusing... so we have been teaching this guy Whoot, that was referred to us: the one who was baptized and not confirmed right? Then this week in District Meeting we were asked to show some of the less active work we were doing, so we brought the records and we were going through them and there was a record for Whoot... and a picture and it was the same Whoot we were teaching but it said he had been baptized like 4 years ago and had the priesthood, so we were SUPER confused thinking well did he get picked up again by missionaries last november with out them realizing he was already a member and they just baptized him again!? Like how on earth did things get that apostate right?! and the teaching record even said something to the effect of, we met whoot while inviting and it was super weird b/c he let us right in and was suupper accepting of the message and willing to keep all the commitments... and it was strange how easily he accepted it... So then we were thinking, well ya apparently he is already a member!!!?!?!? WHAT?!? and then to add to the confusion in one of our lessons w/ Whoot we had a member with us and he said he remembered baptizing Whoot so we called him and he said that that was just under a year ago that he did that! but in the picture we had it looked like it was an Elder that baptized him b/c they were both in all white. AHHHH!!! So trying to figure this all out, to make sure we didn't baptize the same Whoot twice we had to call in some help from S. Mink and we got it all straightened out.... there are TWO Whoots with almost exactly identical stories of why they went inactive and were avoiding calls from missionaries and such, and we were in fact teaching the LA Whoot thinking he was the "investigator" Whoot! AH! But now that we have straightened it out we are looking for the real investigator Whoot and will hopefully be able to teach him real soon here! hahaha So that was a bit of our craziness here in Phitsanulok for the week! I love being a missionary and i feel SOOO lucky to have such AMAZING investigators that are sooo ready to here the gospel... this week between us and the elders we had 17 investigators and church!!! YAY!!!!!! That is a new record I believe! So We are really excited to get the work to keep moving here! We were actually overflowing during sacrament and had some people in the hall and others in this little back room it was nuts!! Pray for us to get a church building here b/c we desperately need one!!!! But ya other than that things are awesome! My commitment for you this week is to be as awesome as all our investigators here... :) Love you all! Hope everyone is doing good! Love, S. Itri

Study Study Study

OK wow so this week monday to thursday I basically just studied ALLL DAAY b/c my companion was knocked out on some muscle relaxers and pain killers from her accident... so my brain was a little fried this week, but it was still ended up being an awesome week! We were able to go out a few evenings while she was sick and got to teach some great people! And now she is great and back in action so i'm super excited for this week! We taught B. Art again and gave him a date!! YAY!!! I am seriously sooo excited for him! He is like golden investigator to the max!! He is always reading his scriptures and asking questions and just trying to learn. And we had a baptism this week for one of the Elder's investigators and Art came and we talked to him after for a bit and asked what he thought and such and he was just like, I'm just so excited to get baptized!! :D And on sunday at church i guess he was asking the elders a bunch of questions in priesthood about fasting, and commandments and such... so we're going to try and keep up with his pace, he is just moving so fast!! I love it!! This week we also got 2 more super great investigators, their names are Oo and Biim (sorry for the terrrriibblle romanizations of their names by the way) But they are a cute couple we met at English class that are super cute. Biim's mom is Christian so she is really curious about it, and Oo was funny b/c he began with asking what the commandments and stuff were (we immediately jumped to baptism) but then proceeded to tell us he really knows nothing about buddhism and such, and they are just both so interested. They came to church also and afterwards they asked US for a Book of Mormon and then they asked us if they could get a gospel doctrine book as well (b/c that's what we used in Sunday school)! And then we also found out that apparently they are our neighbors!! I guess they see our senior couple out all the time (that live across the street from us) and they recognized them after one of our lessons and found out they live in our little neighborhood!! So that's perfect as well!! Currently we are teaching/trying to teach 6 families in our tiny neighborhood and its going great so far! We're hoping to turn it into a little mini Utah and just have everyone be mormon! haha But anyways, we are super excited for them!! We also taught our cute little family: Guy, Gap, Gik and Goy! They are adorable... Gap is the one that reminds me SOOOO much of James, but he is adorable, he is always willing to pray for us and he came to church this week and was just sitting there reading his scriptures and such! He's awesome... and it was funny, in our lesson w/ them this week, at the end he asked us if next time we could bring the Elders with us to teach ( i think he was feeling a little out numbered by us, our sister member and his 2 sisters and mom.....) hahaha so that was funny... he met the elders at english class last week so that's how he know about them, but he is so cute and i am so excited for this cute little family! They're great!! Now for a little funny story... so in our investigator class for sunday school, we have a recent convert teaching and this week she was talking about how awesome it is that we have Elders and that they have the answers for EVERYTHING, and now God just gave them some little "helpers" aka the Sisters! AH! So now we have been demoted as missionaries to just the elders little helpers apparently.... hahaha me and my companion were trying to decide what was better, being the elders helpers, or the designated branch fellowshippers as we have also been called... thoughts? haha Another note for all you former missionaries... I never realized how "fun" fast and testimony meeting can be when you have investigators there! It is definitely a different experience sitting in the audience w/ your investigators and all the members getting up... I'm sure you missionaries probably understand this very well. But Church was great again we had 60 + people again which is AWESOME!!! We just need to get a real building now so that we can fit everyone!!! Hopefully that will come pretty soon!!! :) Ok, reason p-day is tuesday this week: We have our new mission president!!! YAY! So this weekend we went up to Chiang Mai to go meet him! He is super great! It's President Senior and his cute wife and they are great! They are super young! I believe Pres. Senior is about 51 and S. Senior younger. They are super happy to be here and i think i already told their story about their original call to North Carolina and then it being switched, but they were super cute about it and they are going to do great things for Thailand I can already tell!! We were all very impressed with his Thai speaking b/c he has only been learning for a little bit, but he sounds super good! But it was fun to go meet them (even if it did mean a 6 hour bus ride there and back on these buses that are made for tiny little thai people that blair thai kareoke the entire ride) it was great! So I think that's about it for this week! Let's see for a commitment i will challenge you all to study the scriptures for AT LEAST an hour every day but not just to read but actually UNDERSTAND the scriptures... it makes a big difference! Love you all and i guess have fun in Lake Powell?? Tell everyone I say hello!

I Hate Spiders

Hello Family! Ok well the thing most recently on my mind is spiders b/c this morning as i was getting ready i walked out of the bathroom and there sitting on the floor right under my bed was a HUGE spider!! AHHHHH!!! it was about the size of my hand and it was gross... So naturally I screamed, my companion came running and we got some bug spray, sprayed it and then trapped it under a bowl where it is currently still under b/c neither of us want to touch it/ deal with it... so there might be a fun game of rock paper scissors later today! haha But as for the rest of the week it was awesome!! We found out that our dater Art can move up his date! We originally had him set for November b/c we thought he would be in school on sundays until then so he wouldn't be able to come to church, but this week our great member, S. Mink apparently had talked to him about Sabbath day w/o us knowing (we hadn't quite gotten there yet) and so he had already switched his schedule so he now doesn't have anthing on sundays anymore! Now his scheduled baptism is the 21st of this month!! YAY!!! We are so excited for him! It was way funny when we were talking about it b/c he basically called us out and was like why on earth did you set my baptism for november, especially when you know that S. Maxwell will be going home in 6 weeks?! haha he is so cute! But ya so we moved his date up, but that puts pressure on us, b/c we have only been meeting w/ him for 3 weeks so we have to hurry and fly through the rest of the lessons with him.. but he understands everything so well so we aren't worried! But ya we are SO excited for him!! Then we have our cute family of Guy, Gap, Gik and Goy! They are soooo great!!! The kids were all at church again this week, sadly we still have to figure out what we are going to do about mom b/c she wants to come to church, but as is one of our biggest challenges in Thailand is the Sabbath Day, same goes for her and she "can't" not work, so hopefully we can build her faith up some more and get her to church, b/c with everything else she is progressing so well! But the kids are also so great! They even brought us a friend as a referral that really wants to learn! They are all just so excited to be at church and it's so great! Gap was awesome in church too, he came to the investigator class and was taking notes and such and i was so impressed! He's only 16 but has such a desire to learn! And last night we taught them the restoration and after we talked about the Book of Mormon he just was like OHHHH, now it makes sense what elder davies said in Sunday school. E. Davies made the analogy that we need food this live right? if we don't eat we starve... Well the Book of Mormon is the food for our spirits, and we need to feed our spirits by reading every day! So when we talked about how we got the book of mormon and that it is a sacred book and stuff he just got so excited and understood that we need it to help our spirits grow! But ya he is great and he is already to 1 Nephi 22!! how great is that!?! we just gave him a Book of Mormon last week, so we are super impressed at least! Then we have our cute couple Oo and Biim. We still don't know what to do about them, b/c Biim is only 16 but we found out that she is living with Oo and his family b/c her and her mom don't get along and they have had some major problems, So we need to figure out how to go about this b/c technically she is a minor so we need her parents permission to teach her but ya its an interesting situation but hopefully we can get that figured out b/c she is SOOO great and just wants to be happy and is so willing to just trust in Christ and stuff! I just want them both to be happy! So hopefully we can figure that out pretty soon here. This week was also transfer week! AHH the madness! 1st one with our new mission president. We didn't go to the meeting b/c neither of us are moving so we stayed here. I guess i should explain how we do moves here too cuz i hear it's a little different other places.. Here we get a phone call to tell us if we are moving areas, and if we are we trek down to Bangkok of the day of moves, sit in a big room where then the mission president will proceed to announce who is going where (and is sounds like w/ P. Senior he made a little slide show for it w/ pictures of you, and your companion and your new area, sounds pretty cool! ha) But ya so basically we don't know where we are going or who our new companion will be until that time. So i will tell ya how that goes next transfer when i do have to go! haha... PS has it seriously already been 6 weeks since i got in country!?? I still cannot believe that! I feel like i just got off the plane yesterday!!! AHH! But anyways this week we lost our district leader, E. Stott and our new district leader is E. King, and he seems like he will be great! (Losing E. Stott was also the reason Art found out S. Maxwell was leaving and why he was so distraught of the thought of her leaving and not getting to be at his baptism) Oh ya last Pday we went to one of the waterfalls around here... it wasn't the prettiest b/c it has been raining a lot here so it was brown, but S. Mink was cute and said it was like a big thing of Ovaltine! She's great we love her! But the best part of the day was the ride home! AHHH!! So we were waiting for the bus to come back, and it just wasn't coming and then this little old man pulls up in his truck and offers us a ride and we were like sure why not.. he was super nice, retired military whatever so we start going and then he starts FLYIIINNGG!! we were going around curves and passing cars and oh my heavens was it scary! And he kept making jokes about how well if we crash we just instantly die!! AHH!! So ya it was an interesting ride, the guys was super nice though and we were super grateful for the ride, but man was it scary... we got out and were like were you praying that entire time b/c i sure was!! hahaha The best part about it was he said he was driving cautiously b/c it's rainy season!!! I can't even imagine what he drives like normally if that was cautiously!! haha But anyways we're all safe and no harm done, and don't freak out over this but it was a fun little story so i thought i would share.. but for now i will stick to my bike and the tuk tuks (which are basically little "taxi" things here...) ha Anyways here are some pictures 1: Our district (missing our senior couple) but E. Stott is the shorter one but now he's gone then the other elder is E. Davies and then S. Maxwell and me 2: We love thaiglish here... slipper when wet! 3: Waterfall w/ my comp and S. Mink 4: me and S. Mink 5: nice little diving board right?? 6: Thought we'd go for a little tubing excursion too! 7: What I can't read that sign that says Danger Do not play in the water.. I'm a stupid Farang who can't read thai! haha Anyways Things are great here! I love being here and being a missionary! The people are all so amazing!! And for a commitment I want you all to fellowship people in your ward.. this week we had to coach people on how to do that so try and make sure everyone feels welcome! Love you!!! Love, S. Itri