sawadii tccn chaw!

Hello there everyone! Did you get my letter from this week yet? I sent it out kinda late so i dont know if you get it yet. So Dad are you in Hawaii right now? Fun stuff. So i have a good scripture of the week but since i am pressed for time of course, you can read it yourself. Its in Jeremiah chapter 4, verse 19 to 21(I think..). Basically we found this and loved it because it describes the food here at the MTC.. also Cannon at BYU cause guess what... THEY'RE THE SAME! It's a good one. Hope you lol. Speaking of scriptures I am in Alma 19 right now. Chuggin along and will be done soon. Where you at?

 

K so this week was pretty epic. After our devotional last tuesday i had a lot that i wanted to write to you about concerning that devotional cause it was quite good. I didnt write what happened in the letter cause i wanted to get it off soon enough  to get to you in time. So ill write it here. Basically ive been wrestling with the fact that EVERYONE here can say ," I know the BoM is true." As ive expressed before i never have really said that because frankly i dont. You all know that I have believed it was true, but up until last week i had never said it FIRMLY. I felt a little out of place because of it but my teacher helped me get rid of those feelings. That night we had  the devotional and after them we always have District Devotional Reviews (DDR from now on ) where a member of the branch presidency presides over a small testimony meeting about the devo. Now i said the devo was good.. and it was.. but it wasnt the devotional or the talks themselves that were so good; the awesome confirmation from the Holy Ghost came after during the DDR. I had my 1 page of notes and was looking over them thinking about what i was going to say that i liked. I underlined a few things that i thought were good. I thought, okay.. good; ive got what im going to say. And then i listened to the others for a while. And one point i looked down at my paper and noticed a pattern in my notes... the order of my notes from the top to the bottom, were actually out of order. By this I mean that I saw a pattern going UP my page according to the exact things i had underlined. Now, im not sure if this is making sense so ill send home a copy of the page for you to see. But basically as i looked up the page of notes from the last thing i wrote from the devo, to the first thing i wrote, it is an EXACT replica, or map if you will, of the things and decisions I have made since being here at the MTC. All of it lead up to the first thing i wrote that told me more powerfully then anything i have ever felt that the BoM is true. I saw it and began to literally shake and tremble in my seat. I was the last person to stand up speak about "the devo" which is a blessing in disguise because if i had been first to speak i might not have had the chance to see the pattern. I could barely stand up to say  what i needed to say. I dont know if you are all getting the power im trying to convey here.. IT WAS FRIGGEN CRAZY. Pardon my language but hopefully that helps... ill send the page home tonight cause you have to see it.

 

Whew.. anyway.  The rest of the week was pretty good. We had out last TRC session in english.. SUCK! This saturday is all in Thai. Elder Hess and I are not speaking to each other this whole week.. in english. We have to carry around our dictionaries so we can express ourselves. To our surprise, or mine at least, we taught Sister Nopomas last night. First, i dont think ive told you about her.. she is so cute! She is a native thai convert who normally teaches the phiithays but.. THEY'RE GONE! They left sunday night so its just us nongthays for another 8 days. Anyway, we taught her as a "whole class to 1 investigator" ratio in thay and i was really happy at how well i was able to convey feelings to her. By small and simple things are great things come to pass right? Good stuff.

 

Hmm what else... umm you said that you have or havent sent off the package? Thanks for putting that together by the way.. really 'preciate it. So we are still pretty far off from this point (although our phiithays said that once they got us in their zone the last 5 ish weeks FLEW by) but we should start looking in to prepaid phone for the traveling.. one of our phiithays said he got a pre paid cell phone sent to him just so he could walk and talk and not have to stand by a pay phone. What'er. Also, ill have to send a lot home at that point including some purple ties cause purple means gay in thailand. Also, if you havent sent off the package yet, where are my blue, yellow, red paisley, and black and pink ties? Those rule haha. If you already sent it no worries.

 

K well im gonna bail cause i want to go home and change out of my clothes. But I love you all and thank you so much for all the support and encouragement to get me here. This work is quite amazing and if you could see the change ive experienced you would be quite astonished. Dont worry though.. im still the same _______ (insert adjective here... take it easy josh) as before. Mom i was sitting on a grassy hill this week for gym ( i know nice workout) and i decided when i get home i want to get back into 2 things.. tae kwon do and piano.

 

Phom rag khun ye ye!

 

Elder Gudmundsen

 

PS: Go to lds.org and watch the mormon messages. All of them. They are sooo good! Also the videos for mormon.org are cool.