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