Monday, October 25, 2010

Funny Stuff

So this week sounds pretty eventful for all of you eh? Mom hitting a car, Josh passing out while trying to relieve himself.. what movie did he make you miss haha? Seriously, what happened with that? Did you hit your head Josh or what? Everything ok?

K as for me.. I have a very short scripture of the week.. its in 1 (or maybe 2nd?) Nephi somewhere but i forgot to write it down. Basically it says, "Behold, thou art little." Well first of course, i thought of you Mom.. teehee. And laughed.. but then i thought.. yeah, thats pretty true. I think this was Lehi talking to Jacob and telling him to hearken unto Nephi's words... well, we are kinda like Jacob right? We are just little people who need to hearken unto the words of those smarter or more wise than us. Its funny and deep.. beeyah!

Ok so this week was kinda crazy. There was some big leadership conference for the whole mission for about 3 days.. every district and zone leader was there to be trained or whatever.. so we had 2 extra people stay in Don Muang on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.. apparently up in Pitsanulog, Elder King and Merrel were companions hahaha.. bet that was fun.. 2 missionaries who've been out for less than 3 months. In Don Muang we had 2 greenies.. Elder Thompson (Chucky, from May hall) and Elder Bitupon from the Manila MTC. Went on splits with them, me with Bitupon and Komgrid with Chucky. Fun stuff... for a short time we had 4 missionares Don Muang.. work was done! Basically Komgrid and Thompson taught lessons all day, and Bitupon and I invited.. all day. We've got a couple of new REALLY promising investigators.. Bii's neighbors really opened up to us last week, and most specifaclly the Mother of that Family.. she talked about how her lifes been pretty tough and her parents passed away when she was little, and she wants her kids life to be better. Her (names like the "au" sound in "taught"), her son Bon, her other son Nay, and their friend Nat, had the opportunity to go to Wisits house for FHE... all of them are opening up more and more, and they have all quit smoking.. a lot of that goes to Bii and his example.. awesome! They should be going again tonight. We have another woman who came out of nowhere.. her names Nud. She wants to be baptized already. We can meet with her so often, which is great, and she is really into it. We watched the Joseph Smith restoration vid, which by the way is hilariously horrible in thai, and i think it did work for her. Wud, the Laotion man, should have a better visa and we should be able to teach him this week, legally. He wants to be baptized and he came to Church yesterday without us asking.. oops.. maybe not the best sign cause that means we forgot to ask, but hey.. he still went. He gets back on Wednesday and we will start teaching him too. Fluk, the 17 year old baptist (oh wait! Hes 18 now.. birthday on Saturday), is way cool. He is kinda quiet sometimes but I (we) have been able to open him up more by being more than missionaries.. i guess technically being "less" tha missionaries and joking around with him.. depends on how you look at it i guess.. i say more :) Anyway, he has to leave this week, but we made some good progress with him and I like that he actually asks good questions.. like for instance, "why does God love us so much? More than himself?" Seriously.. thats a good question right? With my broken Thai i couldnt really answer it that well, but i tried to explain that thats just the way God is.. he wants us to be happy and if hes selfish, we probably wont be super happy. I said, "hey fluk... if i just go around telling everyone how great i am and dont do anything for anyone else, are people going to like me? No of course not. They wont feel my love, because im not showing it." We can say we love people, but unless we show it, no one will believe it. Love this kid. As far as Pat and Da... not too much progress.. we wanted to meet with them this weekend but its some big buddhist festival so they didnt go to Church. Pat was home one night when we thought we would only be teaching Da, and he expressed that he likes what we are teaching, who we are and what we do.. but "there is something blocking his thoughts." SATAN! Jk. But seriously. He wants to find out this is true, so we will keep pushing. As far as Bii goes.. hes still going. I think he will be ready for the 14th. Brother Pii should be starting up the lessons again cause he will be able to be baptized in November.. November will be a big month.. hopefully.
K i dont have much else this week cause i forgo to write things down as the week went on. Other things that happened.. we have to move haha. The Landlord came over to inspect the house, as requested from the office, and then said he was going to move back in with his family.. hah so we gotta house hunt. What else.. dunno. Gotta peace though. Love hearing from you guys this week.. josh try not to do that thing anymore.. thats not a good activity. Keep up the faith everyone! Saw you in the back of a picture Whitey.. you look nice and fat :) Church is true... datta datta dah, you know the drill.. haha, how irreverent i know but thats what it is. Love you all

Peace!

Elder G

Monday, October 18, 2010

Bah

Whats up. Crowley moved.. WOW! Ive had to step up a little more cause ive had to know where everything is.. guess what, that thing you said i always had Mom.. what is it called... memory? yeah, serves me well in thailand too. We havent gotten lost once yet.. oh yeah my new companion is thai! Fastest thai speaker ive ever heard. He is about 22 and a 2 year old member. Elder Komgrid. Speaks pretty good english.. loves to say a few words that im not sure he knows hes not supposed to say.. kinda funny. Great guy.. just kinda charges everything. So last Thursday was epic.. we have moves meeting and pretty much the entire mission was there. Our whole district was there too from the MTC so i got to see Elder Merril and King too... the mission was completely changed.. districts expanded, zones changed, moved and dissolved, and missionaries who have been in thailand for only 6 or 7 months are trainers already.. my phii thay got put with his phiithay, and another phiithay of mine is with someone from their district.. crazy stuff. Elder Wagstaff and i got thai elders.. yeeah! Got to see our nongs too... they speak way good already too.


Okay so i actually dont have a phrase or word of the week.. but i do have scriptures. K get out your D and C's everyone! Gonna do some flipping... K so lets start at D and C 1 verse 38.. "whether by mine own voice or the voice of my servants, it is the same." K we all know this one.. head to D and C 29 verse 7: "And ye are called to gather mine elect [who] hear my voice and harden not their hearts." So.. the elect hear the Lords voice and listen intentely. D and C 68 verse 4: "whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy ghost shall be scripture.. shall be the will of the Lord, shall be the mind of the Lord, shall be the word of the Lord... shall be the VOICE of the Lord." So.. when you speak to anyone.. member or non member, and you have been doing what you are always supposed to be, it is SCRIPTURE. Yesterday was evidence of this.. in sacrament meeting we had 7 investigators there.. i said the opening prayer and asked to bless the speakers to help those who will listen (although whether me or someone else it would have been the same had they invited the spirit). Every speaker spoke about something that i wanted our investigators to hear.. and then some. President Wisan spoke about why we dont have crosses on our churches or around our necks.. yesterday night we met with Phat and Da and Phat said, "i went to church and wanted to ask why you dont have crosses.. wisan answered it already for me." So, remember, when you get up to speak in Church, or open your mouth to a friend, and testify with the Spirit, it is scripture, and it WILL help someone.

So.. speaking of investigators.. Bii had more trouble with smoking.. this was a nice experience this week. We told him about fasting a priesthood blessings.. asked if he understood both of them.. then we asked if he wanted to do a special fast on sunday. He immediately accepted, and also wanted a priesthood blessing from Wisan after church on sunday. Fasting was hard as usual.. but it was for a good cause. But the real deal was the blessing.. this was the first ive given since.. well, you Josh.. and i felt the power of the priesthood flowing through me once more.. it was surreal again! And Wisan has a way sick voice too.. especially when he does prayers.. like normally, his voice is hilarious cause he speaks so fast.. but when he does special things, its epic. It was once again, a privelege to be able to perform this blessing... in thai. Brother Bii says he feels much better and even uplifted.. and lets just hope and pray that he prepares himself for the 14th of november. Bii is our only dater.

So this week we have 8 new investigators.. next to Bii is a family with 2 kids.. a couple days ago we were early to Bii, so we went over to talk to these 2 kids, 14 and 17, smoking outside their house (then another one of their friends came over too.. hes the one who tells me to go to Hollywood). We were just talking with them and made friends with them and asked if we could come back and share the message with them.. also to help them quit smoking cause they said they want to.. kind of. Simple enough we said, "just stop.. its not hard." They said we could come back... it was actually pretty funny.. 2 of the kids said yes, and their friend said no cause he was Islam.. I was about to say, "so what, they're buddhist" but the other 2 kids got to it first.. one of them hit him and was like, "what a dumb excuse! we're both buddhist!" I laughed. the kid still didnt accept, but he will.. cause the other 2 are into it and went to Church. By the way.. way to go Bii! We met with him after them and asked him to help them get to Church on Sunday.. sure enough, Bii pulled through.. he took them on his bike! Awesome. The 2 kids mom made sure we came back too, cause she wants them both to be better people.. haha. She is sort of interested too.. going to Wisats FHE tonight. Mom im emphasizing FHE more because of your story.. thanks for that. So that should be a good experience. Their names are OO (mom) Nat (14 year old) and Bon (17 year old). Who else.. we got Fluk (prounce the "U") who also has some problems.. not with doing what we ask.. but family wise.. his dad is like.. a playboy.. he has 3 wives.. so he missed Church yesterday cause his Dad isnt around usually, but he was yesterday. We went by their house to see if he was there, but he was out with his dad, but his Mom was there to tell us so much.. about how he was going to die when he was born, and hes a very reserved kid.. didnt really see that that much. Also, she has to go to school with him for some reason.. dunno. She was way cool. She said she would go to Church with him.. BEEYAH!

So phat and Da... gosh.. finally met with them last night.. went a little over time.. an hour and a half. Phat knows these things are important, but not enough.. he knows enough where he said, "i dont have a lot of time, and i know you cant come over if im not here, but i still want to ask you to teach my family even if im not here.. because i am the only one the works and i HAVE to provide for them.. can you still teach them and maybe teach me once a week?" For now weve accepted that.. last night we made big strides.. corrected a bunch of wrong ideas and answered so many questions.. and hey! i explained the need for a restoration by myself.. WOOH! So yeah.. we plan to meet with them at least once a week (phat anyway) and then meet with the rest of the family as much as we can. We got the baptismal comittment out there, but it isnt solid.. next time we meet we willl stress the need for more time, and that the Lord will provide as he makes sacrifices to meet with us.. cause the Lord will provide for sure.

Okay well i think this is it for now.. Can you make sure this gets to Brother Atkinson? My seminary teacher? He served here.. i want to know where you served! Anyone i may be able to visit? lemme know. One more thing from Elder Crowley.. it was about 3 am one night and i woke up for whatever reason.. think i had to pee or something.. i get back in bed and Elder Crowley ripped the biggest fart ive heard him do.. so epic. remember the movie Holes? like the first night stanley is trying to sleep and he cant, and that one kid is sleeping and just rips a nice one? Exactly like that. So loud. Crowley woke himself up from it.. cause he was actually asleep. Good times. K thats it for now.. ill try to think of more stuff that i need, but dont worry bout it. Sorry if i missed anything.. to Encinitas... give the missionaries referrals! Just find people for them to teach! And open your mouths to your friends.. whoever. Love you all, the Church is true for sheezy! Another week in Thailand goes by.. Peace!

Elder กุดมันต์เซ็น


(Wow that was hard to write)

P-Day Bowling pics

So yeah.. today we went bowling for Pday.. i know theres none of me.. everyone else sucks at taking pictures. yea thats you elder crowley whos reading my screen.


Oops

I forgot to upload a letter. This one's from October 11:

Oh wow... so this was a pretty quick week... they are getting faster! ahh! I realized this week that next moves i will have been a mission for 6 months... whoa! K first off.. is there any other ornaments that were, you know... cool? haha! jk. but seriously.. i like the dragon one, but Hiccup has that gay "yeah!" arm raise goin on.. not for me. haha. any other avatar ones? if not, just pick whatever haha. i alreayd have an iron man though :)


Ok word of the day: Posifine. What does it mean? Well, its an english student who was trying to say Positive, in his homework.. but as you can see, he failed quite miserably... F minus... MINUS.

I dont have a scripture of the week.. yet again... but i do have another line that ive added to my count... ive never heard this one before, until this week. The first time i heard it, the woman said it twice. Then, on that same street about an hour later, another dude said it. Then just yesterday some teenaged nugget said it outside of Bii's place. They said them different ways, but to put it simply... "SUPER STAR!" Apparently, "my face is handsomer than a thai-korean-hollywood movie star." *Shrug.* I dunno.. but its pretty funny to hear cause its just so random!

So whats new... well Dad you asked about my back? Yeah.. uhh... i may or may not have fell off of my top bunk. hah! Thats not even a joke... theres not really any dignified way of saying this.. but yeah, i just kinda fell off.. and of course, my back nailed the corner of my desk. Yeah.. it was painful. But its getting better. Frozen bottle of OJ on my back? Yes please. Dont worry bout it.

I did get your package/envelope thing with the pictures.. thank you much! Next batch of pictures: Me and my buds from BYU. Use my facebook. Brother Tawid wants to see my long hair too... i had a profile picture from my senior pics.. yeah.. that one is awesome. the one on the beach. And just kinda whatever you find on my facebook from the last year... those are pretty much all epic. For Mom.. ill start looking for things that i need.. i think im okay right now though.

So lets get into investigators shall we? First off... we have a threesome right now! The thai elders (and sister) from the Phillipines, got in a week early, so we got the same guy that was with us 3 weeks ago.. elder Atichat. Hes chill. So... Brother Bii. He smoked again. 4 days ago. As far as we know hes doing okay since then. Does he have a testimony? Kind of. Hes gaining one. Did we watch "Finding Faith in Christ with him?" Yes. Did he understand it? No. Does he have a mental illness that may or may not be minor schizophrenia that manifested itself about the time he was abusing drugs as a younger child and we only just found out about it last night? Yes. Awesome! Needless to say... hes not being baptized next week. Got some work to do. Phat and Daa and kids... yea.. we finally got to meet with them cause he came home between appointments... he had a bunch of questions cause since going to our church, he is now confused, not unlike joseph smith. unfortunately, when we tried to answer that problem with Moroni 10... he wanted to explain it to his family.. alright, why not? Yeah.. dont ever do that! He explained it pretty wrong. I didnt know what was going on or what he was saying exactly, but it was off. Anyway.. he translated it himself and i was like... yeah, this is why we needed a Restoration! Cause there were people like you who did this with the bible and things just came out horribly wrong! We didnt have time to correct him cause peaced right after for t he appointment. Then he bailed on Church...gah! Speaking of Church.. i enjoyed the first 3 words of every speaker and the singing.. haha (Get it?)! Dunno.. seemed really good though. I understand a lot more WORDS than i thought i would.. but putting them into sentences that made sense? Forget about it. We did however have a sick kid named "Foolk" at Church yesterday. Hes a new investigator as of saturday night. We found him at a park one night and he is already baptist but was interested in learning more. His family? Not interested at all. He came to Church and hes a really good investigator so far.. stayed the whole time and is diggin us coming back. Unfortunetely... hes pretty diligent about studies. Well, actually not unfortunately. We will meet with him on Thursday. He has exams today, tomorrow and wednesday. So hey! He is good about diligence already! We asked him what he was going to do when he went home after church: "I have to study a lot for my exams." Awesome. Hes only 17 but hes way cool. You guys remember Wud? The laotion investigator? Yeah well we cant teach him because he is on a tourist visa.. but we may or may not have anyway. He went to EVERY session of conference. Yesterday, after the last session, he comes up to us and says, "I want to be baptized." ?!%@$!@^&%!# Awesome! But, we cant. He has to get the correct visa or go back to Laos. But he wants to do it! Kinda funny.. him and Bii are like best buds and Wud is progressing far beyond him even though we arent teaching him. Thats pretty much our only investigators... we dont have anyone else progressing.

This week was a dry spell for lessons.. only like 12 or so. Lots of inviting and some funny stories with that. For example.. a woman just straight turned her back to us in the middle of our sentence. "I dont think shes interested." Verbally slapped! We had a ncie phone call this week from some dude saying, "i need missionaries! Now!" So we were like, yeah we are glad to come by. "No! I need those women missionaries.. i need some women!" Uh... yeah do you want to learn about the gospel? "Uhh... whats that? Nevermind." Click... hahah he wanted to meet with Sister Itow... lulz! Anyone like Aerobics classes? How about areobics out in public? Yeah.. so awesome. Just like 50 chicks and that one fembot guy getting a work out to sweet techno remix music... "can i've sa more!" Name it! Josh you should get it for sure. Oh yeah Josh! You want a Liter 'O Cola? How about a liter AND A FOUTH of cola for 29 baht!??!?! Thats 1 dollar! Yes please! lolololoolool

What else.. this week i saw dog with some serious hardware if you know what i mean... i cant even describe it.. well, i can, but i wont. Oh by the way.. did you know we are the "Church of Thought?" Well we are. When we introduce ourselves as missionaries they do the traditional "ooooooo" followed by what we understand to be "The Church of Christ" even though they say, "The Religion of Thought." Christ and Thought are very closely pronounced.. all you need to ommit is an R in the word. That that was funny.. im just like, "yes we enjoy thinking about everything.. you should try it someday." But i digress.. a little. Oh we had a Father make fun of his son and call him a downy HAHAHA. He spoke like, no english, save for calling his son a downy... what a nice father right?

What else.. cant get away from Avatar. Tawid and his wife asked if i had seen it, and of course.. i can quote most of the movie from memory... Tawid, not so good at voices. But he enjoys when i do it. Also, Crowley had no idea what were talking about, so just looked so confused.. Hilarity insued. Also, Tawid continues to just rail on Crowley every day.. just anything possible.. its hilarious cause usually he ends up praising me for some odd reason.. i mean its not like im awesome or anything. dunno. But Tawid, Crowley and I have a sweet relationship.. its good. So how about Sister blessing? Shes still good to get baptized.. still calls US all the time instead of her missionaries. and i teach her every tuesday cause she likes out english class better. sweet. She gives us stuff everyweek. usually its good. this week? No. Sucked. Corn milk? What the?! Its like.. kinda good, but you feel weird drinking corn.

K last things... to anyone that is expecting a letter from me.. i finally wrote some! Had to use that conference time for something hah! Just kidding.. but seriously i did write some then. Oh i forgot a funny story... i may or may not have fallen asleep during a session (or 2) and some Sisters in the wards caught me. They were like, "Elder what were you doing during conference for half an hour?"... "suad onwon (prayer)!" Sister Noy (wisaans wife) totally backed me up and explained how thais dont understand how i can do two things at once, such as listening to conference and "praying." But everyone knew i was sleeping hahaha. its for fun!

One more quick thing... the mission gives us about 5800 baht every month for food. And if you run out of that in a month... stop eating Mickey D's! Its like impossible cause everything is so cheap.. thats about 170 bucks by the way. Speaking of food... Eastern Thailand food is amazing! I found my heaven.. its called somtam.. papaya salad. spicy.. with peanuts. so good. oh and sticky rice. Amazing. We have a separate house fund for taxis and other such bills which is like 8000 baht, so we are all good. Any charges i make with a card or whatever is for myself... like on pdays when we travel we use our own money. They say to keep 1500 baht of your own money with you at all time.. so yeah.. lets try and make sure the debit has at least 200 bucks in or something.. like after this im gonna pull some money out cause i have none... and to answer your question mom, cash pretty much everywhere.

K well i guess thats it today.. even though i couldnt understand conference, i knew what was being said was from the voice of prophets or people he has ordained to speak. It was weird to be watching it for the first time outside of the conference center in 2 years, plus in thai.. but all in all, ive never looked forward to hearing the words of the prophets more. We get people all the time who have concerncs with this or that.. but when it comes down to it, someone said it in an email to me today, they just have to get a testimony of the Book of Mormon and everything else will fall into place. Even if i couldnt understand conference this year, Wud could, and he is going go get baptized possibly BECAUSE of the words of the prophets. We didnt even have to do anything except invite him to Church.. if that isnt the power of the spirit i dont know what is. Wish i could have heard your talk Chase, but was it something along these lines? yeah... the Spirit works in powerfully incomprehensible ways. Every day i get more and more into missionary work, especially inviting.. even though i cant speak well or wahtever, i can still be myself, and weve gotten many return appointments because of it... is that the spirit or me? Its both.. its the spirit working through me. Thanks for all your support and love. Love you all. Sorry if i forgot anything, once again. PEACE!

Elder Gudmundsen
PS: My camera had some problems.. haha not the camera itself, but a memory card. Im gonna do some "surgery" on it, so hope for the best. haha

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

some funny stuff...

some funny stuff... didnt take a lot this week.. but one in particular is the little thing on the door... what the heck is that right? poor lizard.. stupid thing was behind it when one of us closed the door ahhaa! Squished! The next morning i was on a KILLING SPREE of ants (more like a M-M-M-M-ONSTER KILL) and it led me to this nugget squished there.. lawls! 





How's it hangin ur'one?

Sorry this is so late today.. we had a sports day at a church in "saphan sung" and it was kinda far and then it went for a while.. unfortunately they didnt have volleyball but they did have ping pong with a side order of "thai person who took the game way too seriously." Then we ordered some good old Mickey D's. Fun stuff.


Okay so i dont have a scripture or a phrase of the week! I suck! This week was incredibly busy! I was in Don Muang (my area in case you have forgotten) for only 3 days! We have been having some crazy switch offs (exchanges) and from wednesday to friday i was in Rangist with Elder Cline, the district leader, and then on saturday i was back in Don Muang with Elder Phan, the Zone leader. All in all, it was a lot of fun. Ill just straight to this one guy we contacted in Rangsit... he works at this fish store and had zero customers and it was dusk and raining. He is already Christian but really liked our message and agreed to have us (or Elder Chaiyaway and Cline) come back to talk more. The best part about this was when he said at the end, "thanks so much for coming to talk to me.. it really made me happy today...." awwww! How cute is that? Now, thats super gay of me to say cause it was like a 45 year old dude, but hey... that made ME happy. Plus it was in the little english that he was able to speak. Loved it.

Oh! Just kidding.. i do have a phrase of the week.. last Pday we ate at a restaurant and i couldnt figure what the name was cause it was written in English.. yeah there may have been the thai name right next to it, but i didnt see it. Anyway, it was called thug, le dii... cheap and good. So, now im just putting some other adjective in place of "thug" and saying dii as if i was that mexican from the pops commercial.. you know what im talking about.. i know colton will haha. So thats fun.

DUDE CHASE!! You're home! Hows it feel bro? That suit is POPPIN! AHH. Seriously though.. thats way sick. Loved the pics.. also of that random one of you Dad.. real cute. And you too Nucks. Mom you ferocious still too... hahah. I told Crowley that you and Cuy would get a long really well.. shes just like super nice but also seems like one of those people that would bite your head off if rubbed the wrong way haha. but we dropped them sooo.... haha. They just wouldnt do anything we asked them too.. we will still stay in contact but they wont go to church. Speaking of dropped... pretty much our entire investigator pool has been dropped. Cept for Bii... hes still good even if we pushed his baptismal date back a week. We asked him the baptismal questions (loosely) and when asked who God was he gave a pretty crazy answer involving mirrors... apparently. So we want to make sureh es ready. But there was service on sunday and he insisted on going. So that was neat. Also LAWLS cause he had a runny nose and sneezed during the service and it had some serious power behind it! like... snot flew about a foot or two. No joke either... grossed out yet? He didnt have a tissue.. that do it? ahhh thought so! As of now, Bii is good... and our only other progressors are Phat and Daa and their sons.. well at least one of them. Phat is so hard to meet with cause he is always working, but on saturday i went over just to ask if they were going to go to Church... when asked they took maybe 1 or 2 seconds to say yes without hesitation.. awesome? I say so. The 3 of them (minus the Catholic son.. who actually only goes to that Church cause they give out free stuff) went to Church on Sunday and i think it was really good. President Wisan explained singing hahaha... Phat was like, "Elder Gudmundsen pointed to where we were at when we walked into sacrament late, but i got lost so fast..." He was reading it like a book instead of verses hahah. We are trying to get them over to President Phitsanu's house tonight for FHE but we will see how that works out. I really want them to get baptized.. they are so cool. And think.. in 2 years when we come back to thailand we can hire Phat to taxi us around! Lawls.

So other than that.. i think everyone else is dropped.. nobody was willing to meet with us and/or keep commitments. Sucks, but we got to do some work this week to get our pool back up... gonna be a butt ton of inviting! beeyaahh!!! What'er im ready i aint scurred. OH! Forgot about this guy last night who we gave a baptismal date for.. hes "set" on the 14th of November, but it was kind of a weak commitment. He is already Christian, so we really need to help him see that this is a RESTORATION, in order for him to do what he must.. but i mean hey, he said he would, so we shall see. Hes a way nice guy.. probably 50 ish. Name is "Somyot." Lives super clsoe to our house, but in this "community" of shacks.. litterally shacks of like sheet metal. Its really humbling to see this people sometimes.. this guy didnt even have water to offer us, or clean cups for that matter, but wanted to be a good host and served us pepsi in semi clean cups. How can i refuse to drink even if they didnt smell good? quite amazing.

So while in Rangsit we were inviting in this pretty high-so (high class) neighborhood, and found this lady who lives in LA.. been there for 10 years and speaks way good english.. she was just visiting her mom in Thailand. When she heard that we were LDS missionaries, she stopped speaking Thai and said, "ooooo! You are Mormons? Oh i need to speak english cause this is serious.. is it true you believe in having many wives?"... SERIOUSLY!? Thousands of miles away in a buddhist country and i still hear that?! hahah we corrected it and she was like oh okay well i will keep takling with you. We asked if she would get in contact with the missionaries in LA but she said, "i dont know how to say it in English but i dont have beliefs.. oh you're atheist.. haha. Interesting. Speaking of Atheist... Elder Phan, the ZL used to be one. We talked alot on saturday since we had forever and a year to invite, and it was quite fun. He was like, "yeah i was full of crap.. i thought i was so sure that there wasnt a God, but eventually that light of Christ that we all have finally came out. and now its great." Elder Phan... so chill. Lives in the OC so will definitely stay in contact with this nugget. Love his way of doing things.. he just says things like they are, doesnt beat around the bush, nor does he care what people think if he says things that other missionaries might be "awked" out about.... wait was i just talking about Elder Phan or myself?... lawl.. hahah. Maybe thats why we clicked.. Way chill.

Well im kind of out of stuff this week.. loved everyones emails this week.. got a butt ton! Woohoo popular! JK. Oh so we had this random fireside last tuesday... where our entire district, save Merrel and King, met up again.. got to see Hess again! yeah! THey had this fireside from BYU hawaii about possible education after the mission.. kind weird right? But it came from the Asia Area presidents request so whatever.. kind took up our whole day though. Yeah im staying at BYU. Its funny... i ve seen at least 1 person from our district every week... this never happens.. so i hear. Strange things going on. But this next transfer is going to be insane.. there are 20 ish missionaries coming in, and like 16 people "c(j)obing" so new ZL's are going to be called, new AP's, new DL's.. new trainers.. so we will have to see what happens. Crowley seems ripe for the pickens for ZL... so he may move. We shall soon find out.

Cant wait to watch conference! Well.. i COULDNT wait.. not i can.. gonna be all in thai with no translation so that will suck... not gonna be able to understand anything and i dont think ive ever wanted to watch conference more than i do right now... but in ENGLISH! sigh...

Oh i forgot another thing.. in Rangist theres this 8 or 9 year old girl... shes super into the Gospel. Shes like forcing her dad to sit down with her since we cant teach her alone. This one night we went over there and there house lights blew out cause of the thunder.. they light a bunch of candles outside their house for us and then like... 3 fathers and about 10 children sat around them... had a nice little pow wow! Kinda funny. Dont know if its gonna go anywhere but i hope it does.
Last Monday night was hilarious... ive never seen it rain that hard... anywhere. I was looking for the lightning cause there was so much, but i couldnt see it cause it was literally RIGHT ABOVE US! I was soaked but really didnt care.. so funny. K gotta go. Thanks for all your love and support and thanks for the tidbits of info about "missions" mom and dad. Glad to see everything is going well. Thanks Bishop! Loved your email too.. really cool to see the work doing well back in Cali too. Especially John.. so cool!!! Bout time haha. K really got to go. Sorry if i forgot to mention anything... and sorry to everyone that i havent written back too.. i have no time! hahah i sound like a thai person! Jk.. but seriously.. lololollool!

Elder Gudmundsen