"If I didn't have faith I wouldn't be on this stupid bus!!!"

Hello Family! This week was good! A little bit hectic b/c we had Zone Conference so we had to go up to Chiang Mai again so there were some long bus rides involved but it was really good. Zone Conference was great! I'm really excited about our new mission president and for the things he has planned for Thailand! One thing he mentioned is that we can start to basically get as creative as we want in our finding new investigator tactics... apparently a few Elders tried the Dan Jones, Soap Box method just standing out there on one preaching! hahaha... sounds like that one wasn't too effective but I would love to hear some ideas from everyone! What were effective finding ideas on your mission? Or ideas you had but just never did! Let me know! Be as creative as you want! :) Ok so now back to the bus ride, as i think i have mentioned before to get to Chiang Mai is about a 6 hour bus ride of no leg room, blasting Thai music w/ obnoxious music videos to go along with it...So as we were on our journey's the senior couple were sitting by us talking about gospel stuff and faith etc. etc. and then as they were talking i hear the Senior elder, Elder Harris just say to his wife, "If I didn't have faith I wouldn't be on this stupid bus!!!" hahahaha he doesn't like buses much..... ha Another funny story... i don't think i've told it but the other week we were teaching these 2 guys and we were talking about baptism and showed them a picture, and so one asks, "why is his arm up?" and the other investigator instantaniously says.. "it's so he can whack him duh" hahaha so we got a kick out of that and it got brought up again this week so i thought i would share it. ha This week we began teaching some new people who have a Christian Background and man is it hard! You would think it would be easier than teaching a bunch of Buddhist that don't even know who God is, but nope! They are really great and they know their stuff, but when we tried to give them a baptismal date and explain to them about it they just kept saying, "we've already been baptized though...." AH! and then we went to authority and they just said their preacher had authority too! So they are going to be a little more difficult than we expected, but they are great and came to part of church yesterday so that was awesome! This week we also set out as missionaries and some awesome branch members to clean up our rented church building b/c it was DISGUSTING!! The room we had to teach in had stains all over, the paint was cracking and chipping and as we were cleaning we found mold of every color and variety so that was fun! White mold, yellow mold, red mold and more! But we were able to clean things up a bit, fix some leaks and paint it and it looks a million times better now! On Saturday the mission president and his wife came into P-lok and were able to come teach with us (president w/ the elders and S. Senior w/ us) and it was so good! S. Senior is so great and just really gave our investigators some great advice and such! Then on Sunday they were able to come to church and while Pres. was speaking he may have announced that he would begin to search for land for us to get our own building here in P-Lok!!!!! YAYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We couldn't even believe it! We are sooooo excited and i think that is really going to help the work here progress, b/c right now we can't even fit all our members and investigators in this little tiny building, it was funny afterwards President was like, I realized you needed one when every time someone came up to bear their testimony and go sit back down and everyone was playing musical chairs trying to find a place to sit!! hahaha So needless to say we are so excited to see how much this branch has progress and will continue to progress! After church yesterday we also were just hanging out talking to some of the members and one of the Elders had given our new Recent convert B. Art his Missionary White Handbook to read, and afterwards he was like so what do i need to do to save money to go on a mission, etc. etc.!!!! AHHHH why is he so great and so ahead of us? He like just reads our minds of the next thing we are going to teach him and just beats us to it!!! So this week we are going to talk to him about missionary work and help him prepare to serve a mission hopefully!!! :) So, we have come to the conclusion that our investigator, Ooh just is trying to stump us! He just comes with the best questions! haha This week he had "Why did Nephi's bow have to break, he was doing everything right etc. etc.?" and his other question was "do we believe in coincidences?" so what are your thoughts on these things? I know what we said but I want some other view points :) Well I think that is the gist of my week here! This week is my last week w/ my companion S. Maxwell, and she will be heading home next week! AHHH!! It's going to be soo weird! But ya hope everything is going well. Commitment: bring one non-member friend to church. Our mission president said if every member could just bring 1 person think about how great that would be! Our wards (branches) would DOUBLE if everyone just brought ONE person.. So that's what I will commit each of you to do :) Hope everything is going great! Love you all! PS you should all probably right me b/c i only got a tiny bit from J.dee this week. Ok that's all :) Love, S. Itri