yoyoyo

Hello again.. it is I, Elder G... I am comfortable!

This was a fun week.. kinda rough.. but fun none the less. There was trouble in Bangkok.. we almost got kicked out of the country! Whos "we"? Anyone whos visa was expired: 40 missionaries; me as well. It was fun. The government in Thailand just got a fat make-over and so pretty much they wanted to cut anyone who isnt "a benefit to the country" out. So they changed our visas from a proselyting visa to a working visa.. but then when we actually went to the visa place, they didnt want that many people there, so they just said "go home!". We were waiting in Bangkok for quite a long time, and in the end they still didnt allow everyone to renew them because they were "over it" - pretty much. Lucily i got mine done, but Elder Heslop didnt so he went to bangkok for no reason and he will have to go back in like a week or so haha.. President Smith was very moving about it and simply said, "in the end, we dont have to worry what will happen because this isnt our work: its the Lord's. If we go, we go. But frankly, YOU (foreigners) are NOT the strength of Thailand... these are; all thai missionaries stand up!... this is the strength of Thailand." at that point 30 thai missionaries stood up, and so did every hair on my body. Werd.

While there though, we had the first transfer meeting at a new Church buildling: EPIC! Its basically the san diego temple of Thailand in that EVERYONE sees it. Its right on a huge freeway where thousands of commuters pass it every day, all day... and usually stuck in bumper to bumper traffic... so you just know that everyone is just checking this buildling out like, "what IS that thing?!". Thats exactly why its so close to the freeway! In fact, while i was there, we had some guy just pull in and ask if he could look around.. so i took him on a tour and showed him around.. he asked me a few questions but the best was, "who chose this spot? Whoever they are.. they're way smart.". My thoughts exactly.

That took up a whole day and a half, and the day before that we had to run around and send pictures of us "working" at English class as evidence to warrant having a "working visa". Unfortunately, Elder Heslops camera has some memory card from 50 years in the future and we couldnt find any place that could plug it in! We went to every internet cafe in the city and no body could! Finally the stores told us to bike out to Big C which is about 6 kilometers from there... as we did so, we watch a mean lookin cloud slowly drift towards us.. as we made it to Big Cs entrance, it DUMPED on us. Soaked instantly. Then, after we bought the right card reader, we chased that same storm back towards the internet cafe from the start.. soaked again. At one point we almost fell off our bikes too.. came around a corner and this wall of wind just completely halted our movement. Needless to say, hilarity insued and we almost drowned from laughing at the ridiculosity. Yes, thats a word.

Okay so how bout some actually work right? Yeah Got is pretty sweet.. hes done with everything and now we are just reviewing. He has been sleeping better and made it to Church no problem. Hes got a lot of questions about random stuff but is kinda like a child.. as soon as you tell him how it is, he totally follows it.. his questions are very much like a kid who really doesnt know better, and hes just so scared to do anyting wrong. Its cool. We are getting together with him, brother Golf and Brother Bom this afternoon to play some tennis. NOBODY knows how to play except for Golf and myself, so it should be pretty funny. Im just gonna smack that ball as hard as i can haha.. hopefully its in a place where veyrone can see and laugh. lulz. Got is fully comitted to endure to the end... his faith is way strong and he is FULLY on board. crazy.
Ampon is.. progressing. We didnt get to teach her this week actually because she got sick one day, and then priesthood didnt show up on saturday.. kind of a bummber, but no big. Shes still goin towards baptism but we are trying to just start over and teach her the basics of Prohpets, Apostasy and Restoration throughout history. We did that with this one foreigner (yeah we are kinda teaching a lot lately!) named Roger and it worked pretty well.. hey! Whaddya know! its the way PMG says to do it! Hah.. cool.
We didnt get that much time to invite this past week but we did meet some new people.. they arent quite sticking yet, but they had SUCH good potential when we first met them.. really hope Satan doesnt get to them too hard... We met a really sweet family this morning actually (we switched our schedule to be able to play tennis with Golf this evening) and the father is LEGIT at magic tricks. he taught us a few and is actually kind of Christian. Hes been all over the world and he was willing to try again. Right now he changed to buddhism again because you can "prove" things about it... well we told him that that was false (without literally saying that) and introduced some real evidence of whats true: The Book of Mormon! Hes got 2 little kids and he lives with his wife (who is also a magician) and they are just way chill. At one point, he was showing us this trick and i was so fascinated that i didnt realize i was like Giselle and i literally freaked out and said, "you.. you're a WIZARD!". I giggled to myself. The Mom expressed that shes always wanted to check out church but wasnt sure where to go or what she had to do first.. we imediately told her to come to ours cause its always ready to welcome her! She wants to.

So, im done.. bored and tired. Not really, but i am bored. So i leave you with one of my favorite lines that came from one of our ward missionaries yesterday in testimony meeting: "Good morning everyone.. i just wanted to come up and share a little bit about this week and about what i heard this morning.. i was listening to some members talk about their week and how a lot of stuff was kinda bad, and i just thought to myself, 'well yeah thats great and everything, but why arent you talking to each other about who you can give to the missionaries to teach!"'. I ALMOST clapped for joy at that moment, but i held it in. Amen! That is my question AS WELL. her name is watermelon and shes becoming a super strong member, whos always looking for missionary opportunities. Werd.
Okay well im done. Thanks for your support and prayers.. i love you. Thanks for being good examples and sticking together.. Mom, Dad.. thanks for being you and stickin with it. Theres problems in Buriram with families deserting each other and its really sad to see it tear people up. Glad it never happened for us. Love you most.

Elder Gudmundsen