Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Yay... on March 21 i will be 21
Thats weird.. I still feel like a 12 year old haha! Guess where i will be for my birthday? Ubon.. again. Yay!
So this week was pretty good.. had 2 specialized training meetings (1 in Bangkok and the other out in the Easan.. stayed at a really cozy hotel) and 2 exchanges. We were in our area for only 2 days (and now today) but we had a good time at English.. some of those people that i taught when i was a greeny in Don Muang are STILL coming to English class today! Crazy. Was nice to see a lot of them. The English program in Pakkret (and the whole country actually) is changing in order to make it a more effective tool in finding those who are prepared to receive our message. The English program here is pretty good and we are striving to improve it in any way possible. One of the senior couples in Asoke (Elder Peterson) is helping out a lot here (hes also one of the funniest people on the planet). He presented a simple idea about the signs we have out and about.. most of them are flat and facing a large street. However, because they are flat the only window of opportunity anyway has to see them is when they physically right next to it; there is no other way to notice it. So, on a big road in thailand you can imagine how many people actually see it: Not many. See he is helping with a way to make them more visible. It wont be hard, but the number of people coming to English, and therefore the number of people hearing the gospel, will increase. The funny thing here is that it brought me to a new idea: Family History. I know, you may be asking, what does that have to do with English? Well, it doesnt at all haha. But in Preach My Gospel there is only ONE little tiny bullet under the "Finding through your own efforts" topic that says, "offer to teach English as a second language". I remember reading this and thinking, "thats only 8 words and look at the program that our mission created out of it." On the other hand Family History is its own topic, heading, subject, idea, whatever you want to call it... and we dont use it at all.... uhhhh, somewhere the just doesnt seem right. Maybe its just me but that almost seems like a paradox.. like my head wants to explode. Its like buying a cell and not using it.. or filling up a water balloon and not throwing it at someones face.. it just doenst make sense! Currently we've been talking with some of our zone leaders to try and get this to work more.. for starters, everyone needs their four generation chart (by the way, thanks for doing that for me Mom hahah.. i think you are the only one that did it for her missionary). Its a tool that we can use in our finding.. something as simple as, "hey whos that in the picutre on the wall?". Every home we invite has pictures of their grandparents or soemthing and every house puts money in a box that "helps them". That of course doesnt actually do anything, but we dont say it right there.. just kinda beat around the bush a little.. actually, speaking that straight forward works too! Either way, its a real easy way to start up a conversation and it begins on the right note: With their family. Havent sent anything out to the missionaires yet because need to gain a little more experience using it... then we will get permission from President Smith and he will approve it or disprove (in the past APs didnt ask before sending out their own thoughts to other missionaries). Im prayin for this to week and i feel like its something that neesd to be used more than it is now.
......5 hours later, Joy and his boys just got the priesthood at church! That was way rad.. Brother Joy got it first, and then laid his hands on his sons to give them their priesthood as well. Stud and a HALF. I was way impressed. He also gave the opening prayer in sacrament.. pretty awesome as well.. his faith is way strong and I cant really explain the feeling here, but you can physically see and feel of his leadership as the father of this family. They all have their parts that support and sustain one another, but its really impressive and REAL the leadership of the father. I must say, he is doing a stellar job. Really a pleasure to know this family.. they are so nice and their progression is just getting blasted off. The branch is doing a superb job of nourishing them and giving them a warm welcome full of assignments and what not.. they all have a lot of friends too. Love em.
As for other investigators.. well, i talked to that guy that i gave a book of Mormon to on the MRT (remember? before i moved?) and he said he would come today.. but unfortunately he didnt show and wasnt answering. And the father Nugune and his daughter didnt show either.. bummer. So we had no one at church.. big bummer. Just gonna have to find a way to find new people.
Uhhh... wow? So i just read a letter from Sister Nuckols: Ryan Nuckols, Katie Andrews, Drew Taylor, Maddy Mchale, Annie Platt, and Joel Cornwell are ALLLL getting married?!?!? uhh WHAT? Can i please punch whoever said, "nothing changes on your mission" right in the ear? Whatevs.. congratulations all of you!
Love the rest of you too. E-N-C 1 YOU DA BEST!
Peace,
Elder Gudmundsen
PS: Check out picasa.. you will love these pics. Baptism and Chiang Mai
So this week was pretty good.. had 2 specialized training meetings (1 in Bangkok and the other out in the Easan.. stayed at a really cozy hotel) and 2 exchanges. We were in our area for only 2 days (and now today) but we had a good time at English.. some of those people that i taught when i was a greeny in Don Muang are STILL coming to English class today! Crazy. Was nice to see a lot of them. The English program in Pakkret (and the whole country actually) is changing in order to make it a more effective tool in finding those who are prepared to receive our message. The English program here is pretty good and we are striving to improve it in any way possible. One of the senior couples in Asoke (Elder Peterson) is helping out a lot here (hes also one of the funniest people on the planet). He presented a simple idea about the signs we have out and about.. most of them are flat and facing a large street. However, because they are flat the only window of opportunity anyway has to see them is when they physically right next to it; there is no other way to notice it. So, on a big road in thailand you can imagine how many people actually see it: Not many. See he is helping with a way to make them more visible. It wont be hard, but the number of people coming to English, and therefore the number of people hearing the gospel, will increase. The funny thing here is that it brought me to a new idea: Family History. I know, you may be asking, what does that have to do with English? Well, it doesnt at all haha. But in Preach My Gospel there is only ONE little tiny bullet under the "Finding through your own efforts" topic that says, "offer to teach English as a second language". I remember reading this and thinking, "thats only 8 words and look at the program that our mission created out of it." On the other hand Family History is its own topic, heading, subject, idea, whatever you want to call it... and we dont use it at all.... uhhhh, somewhere the just doesnt seem right. Maybe its just me but that almost seems like a paradox.. like my head wants to explode. Its like buying a cell and not using it.. or filling up a water balloon and not throwing it at someones face.. it just doenst make sense! Currently we've been talking with some of our zone leaders to try and get this to work more.. for starters, everyone needs their four generation chart (by the way, thanks for doing that for me Mom hahah.. i think you are the only one that did it for her missionary). Its a tool that we can use in our finding.. something as simple as, "hey whos that in the picutre on the wall?". Every home we invite has pictures of their grandparents or soemthing and every house puts money in a box that "helps them". That of course doesnt actually do anything, but we dont say it right there.. just kinda beat around the bush a little.. actually, speaking that straight forward works too! Either way, its a real easy way to start up a conversation and it begins on the right note: With their family. Havent sent anything out to the missionaires yet because need to gain a little more experience using it... then we will get permission from President Smith and he will approve it or disprove (in the past APs didnt ask before sending out their own thoughts to other missionaries). Im prayin for this to week and i feel like its something that neesd to be used more than it is now.
......5 hours later, Joy and his boys just got the priesthood at church! That was way rad.. Brother Joy got it first, and then laid his hands on his sons to give them their priesthood as well. Stud and a HALF. I was way impressed. He also gave the opening prayer in sacrament.. pretty awesome as well.. his faith is way strong and I cant really explain the feeling here, but you can physically see and feel of his leadership as the father of this family. They all have their parts that support and sustain one another, but its really impressive and REAL the leadership of the father. I must say, he is doing a stellar job. Really a pleasure to know this family.. they are so nice and their progression is just getting blasted off. The branch is doing a superb job of nourishing them and giving them a warm welcome full of assignments and what not.. they all have a lot of friends too. Love em.
As for other investigators.. well, i talked to that guy that i gave a book of Mormon to on the MRT (remember? before i moved?) and he said he would come today.. but unfortunately he didnt show and wasnt answering. And the father Nugune and his daughter didnt show either.. bummer. So we had no one at church.. big bummer. Just gonna have to find a way to find new people.
Uhhh... wow? So i just read a letter from Sister Nuckols: Ryan Nuckols, Katie Andrews, Drew Taylor, Maddy Mchale, Annie Platt, and Joel Cornwell are ALLLL getting married?!?!? uhh WHAT? Can i please punch whoever said, "nothing changes on your mission" right in the ear? Whatevs.. congratulations all of you!
Love the rest of you too. E-N-C 1 YOU DA BEST!
Peace,
Elder Gudmundsen
PS: Check out picasa.. you will love these pics. Baptism and Chiang Mai
Another day in the office...
Sent March 10
Well that was fast. A lot of traveling and a lot of naps... ill tell you what, ive never passed out so fast when hopping on an airplane. This past week we were in Chiang Mai on monday and tuesday, Bangkok later that night, Easan the next morning (driving for 4 hours too between flights) and then back to Bangkok. Certainly feel high-so. Spending so much time with President Smith has been pretty darn cool. Hes got so many stories to tell and hes SUPER funny actually. Countless times i was in stitches. I think i got at least a dozen quotes from him this past week.. all of them funny. And then a few that were just down right inspirationally too legit to quit. My favorite? Well i learned about sacrifice and dedication with him. As we were getting off the plane back to Bangkok there was a huge load of Porsches being loaded onto a plane nearby. We were checkin them out and President Smith knows a thing or two about cars. Anyway, he talked about how he was gonna get a beamer after his retirement but as he put it, "i traded my beamer in for a mission :) pretty good trade right?". As he explained a lot of his colleagues thought he was stupid for doing it, but obviously we know the blessings of doing such a thing.. it was clear that he doesnt regret it at all.
Okay thats it... just kidding (but almost seriously.. all we did was fly, train, fly, drive and train this week). This weeks training was for the leaders of the mission to train their missionaries on for the next 2 months. The Brethren in salt lake have apparently identified (as President Smith puts it) that the world is not finding enough investigators; or, the church is not growing fast enough. Some people think we are baptizing too fast... the prophet disagrees. All of it was straight from Preach My Gospel chapter 9, so nothing was new, but everything needed a fresh review. Everyone seemed to be super into it, and President Smith threw in a nice "best mission in the world" touch to the meetings with what he calls "The Grinder". Simply put, there are 2 rows of missionaries facing each other and we just take turns practicing 1 minute or less statements about restored truth since people are "accustomed to short powerful statements". At this point President Smith talked a little bit about how aadvertising gets that idea: "Have it your way" or "Eat Fresh" (and one Elder got that one wrong.. he said Get Fresh ahaha). The Adversary gets it too: "Just this one time.. it wont hurt" or "Nobody with think you are dumber than a wet carrot if you do that". Anyway, this activity is actually really fun and by the time it was over everyone was getting really good at coming up with their own phrases and linking it to the restoration "for that is our unique message to the world". What was really cool was that Elder Komgrid and i were in every meeting (total of 4) and every time there were parts that changed based on what was clearly revelation from President Smith. There was always something new to learn and we could tell that as he traveled from place to place he was remembering things from the past 3 years in each of those proselyting areas. Pretty cool. Felt good to be among all the mission leaders too. The upcoming months will be these trainings given to all of the other missionaries too. The other part was on repentance. Its common knowledge that the center of our purpose (or our "one word purpose as President Smith calls its) is Baptism. Sometimes it really is great to see everyones passion for Baptism and their understanding of why they are here, but its also not always correct if we only think Baptism all the time. We love to say, "okay lets go out and Baptize now!" because we get stoked off it.. but its not really true; we CANT go out and just baptize people.. its not in our calling. What we can and must do however is go out and cry repentance unto every soul that belongs to the heavenly family of God. Done.
As for our investigators right now: Well Brother Joy and his family are way good. The Mom god her answer on Sunday :) We committed her to fast and pray to know if she should be baptized with her family on this coming saturday. She did and got her answer. During the Gospel Principles class they talked about the Eternities and being together as a family. After the class was over she looked at me with a grin on her face and said, "sooo.. is it at all possible to you know.. get baptized with my family on saturday?" "Why, cause you got you answer today?" "Yes!". She was interviewed that evening and passed. So they are going to be baptized in... 2 hours! yay. Baptism!! Hah.. see what i did there? Forget it.
So there was a family that i met in Asoke right before moving here and they come to Church too! The fathers name is NooGoon (soemthing like that) and the daugher is Gukgai (dont ask). The father is another man who was perishing in unbelief because he knew not where to find the truth. He was super happy in Church and committed to come every sunday. Should be there today too.
The other investigator right now is name 1. Yeah.. just 1. Hes been an investigator for a long time and had a lot of concerns in his life, but has decided to come back to Church. His story is nice.. but ill save it for later.
Other things... uhhhh.. i love you? Ha. Im 21 in like.. 11 days or something like that.. thats weird. Lulz. I have 4 months left. Thats weird. Theres a graduation ceremony going on outside.. thats annoying. Elder Komgrid is talking on the phone excessively loud.. thats normal haha. Oh speaking of him, hes going to stay with us in August. Okay? Okay, sweet. Just thought id let you know in advance.
Okay well we're going to head over to church.. we are singing a special song for the Baptism. ill record it. Way pretty song. I wasnt kidding na.. i will sing with you Dad when i get home.
Bye! Peace! Shalom (is that right?)
Elder Gudmundsen
Well that was fast. A lot of traveling and a lot of naps... ill tell you what, ive never passed out so fast when hopping on an airplane. This past week we were in Chiang Mai on monday and tuesday, Bangkok later that night, Easan the next morning (driving for 4 hours too between flights) and then back to Bangkok. Certainly feel high-so. Spending so much time with President Smith has been pretty darn cool. Hes got so many stories to tell and hes SUPER funny actually. Countless times i was in stitches. I think i got at least a dozen quotes from him this past week.. all of them funny. And then a few that were just down right inspirationally too legit to quit. My favorite? Well i learned about sacrifice and dedication with him. As we were getting off the plane back to Bangkok there was a huge load of Porsches being loaded onto a plane nearby. We were checkin them out and President Smith knows a thing or two about cars. Anyway, he talked about how he was gonna get a beamer after his retirement but as he put it, "i traded my beamer in for a mission :) pretty good trade right?". As he explained a lot of his colleagues thought he was stupid for doing it, but obviously we know the blessings of doing such a thing.. it was clear that he doesnt regret it at all.
Okay thats it... just kidding (but almost seriously.. all we did was fly, train, fly, drive and train this week). This weeks training was for the leaders of the mission to train their missionaries on for the next 2 months. The Brethren in salt lake have apparently identified (as President Smith puts it) that the world is not finding enough investigators; or, the church is not growing fast enough. Some people think we are baptizing too fast... the prophet disagrees. All of it was straight from Preach My Gospel chapter 9, so nothing was new, but everything needed a fresh review. Everyone seemed to be super into it, and President Smith threw in a nice "best mission in the world" touch to the meetings with what he calls "The Grinder". Simply put, there are 2 rows of missionaries facing each other and we just take turns practicing 1 minute or less statements about restored truth since people are "accustomed to short powerful statements". At this point President Smith talked a little bit about how aadvertising gets that idea: "Have it your way" or "Eat Fresh" (and one Elder got that one wrong.. he said Get Fresh ahaha). The Adversary gets it too: "Just this one time.. it wont hurt" or "Nobody with think you are dumber than a wet carrot if you do that". Anyway, this activity is actually really fun and by the time it was over everyone was getting really good at coming up with their own phrases and linking it to the restoration "for that is our unique message to the world". What was really cool was that Elder Komgrid and i were in every meeting (total of 4) and every time there were parts that changed based on what was clearly revelation from President Smith. There was always something new to learn and we could tell that as he traveled from place to place he was remembering things from the past 3 years in each of those proselyting areas. Pretty cool. Felt good to be among all the mission leaders too. The upcoming months will be these trainings given to all of the other missionaries too. The other part was on repentance. Its common knowledge that the center of our purpose (or our "one word purpose as President Smith calls its) is Baptism. Sometimes it really is great to see everyones passion for Baptism and their understanding of why they are here, but its also not always correct if we only think Baptism all the time. We love to say, "okay lets go out and Baptize now!" because we get stoked off it.. but its not really true; we CANT go out and just baptize people.. its not in our calling. What we can and must do however is go out and cry repentance unto every soul that belongs to the heavenly family of God. Done.
As for our investigators right now: Well Brother Joy and his family are way good. The Mom god her answer on Sunday :) We committed her to fast and pray to know if she should be baptized with her family on this coming saturday. She did and got her answer. During the Gospel Principles class they talked about the Eternities and being together as a family. After the class was over she looked at me with a grin on her face and said, "sooo.. is it at all possible to you know.. get baptized with my family on saturday?" "Why, cause you got you answer today?" "Yes!". She was interviewed that evening and passed. So they are going to be baptized in... 2 hours! yay. Baptism!! Hah.. see what i did there? Forget it.
So there was a family that i met in Asoke right before moving here and they come to Church too! The fathers name is NooGoon (soemthing like that) and the daugher is Gukgai (dont ask). The father is another man who was perishing in unbelief because he knew not where to find the truth. He was super happy in Church and committed to come every sunday. Should be there today too.
The other investigator right now is name 1. Yeah.. just 1. Hes been an investigator for a long time and had a lot of concerns in his life, but has decided to come back to Church. His story is nice.. but ill save it for later.
Other things... uhhhh.. i love you? Ha. Im 21 in like.. 11 days or something like that.. thats weird. Lulz. I have 4 months left. Thats weird. Theres a graduation ceremony going on outside.. thats annoying. Elder Komgrid is talking on the phone excessively loud.. thats normal haha. Oh speaking of him, hes going to stay with us in August. Okay? Okay, sweet. Just thought id let you know in advance.
Okay well we're going to head over to church.. we are singing a special song for the Baptism. ill record it. Way pretty song. I wasnt kidding na.. i will sing with you Dad when i get home.
Bye! Peace! Shalom (is that right?)
Elder Gudmundsen
P-day Changes
Sent March 3
Crazy week. Felt like it went by so fast. After i got the call as assistant i came down here to the office for some training and some suggestiongs and advice on how to do things. Elder Komgrid went over our schedule for the transfer (which is crazy as can be) and im not gonna lie.. i felt way over whelmed. I went home thinking tha tit was going to be so hard and i dont have a clue what to do. I went home and dove straight into the scriptures and prayer.. needless to say i feel a lot better now. So first week (not even full one) as Assistant... its been fairly eventful. Pretty surreal and weird how dramatically quick everything shifted from Elder Larson to me.. speaking of which, it was way fun at transfers meeting. Everyone was talking aabout who would be the next AP and i had to lie to some people (hey, it was lie or go against what President Smith said, which was, "dont tell anyone except your current companion") saying it was someone else haha. Not long though and people stopped asking. Transfers meeting started and not long into to the meeting President Smith called me to be the new assistant. Let me tell you one thing... the feeling that went through me as i strolled up to the stage.. wow. Something else. The applause may have been unnecessary, but i know not what it feels like to be sustained by my equals; and it felt good. I was so stoked to be in that room sitting up on the stand looking out on just a bunch of solid missionaries.. so cool. Almost instantly i got a dozen questions for missionaries about baptismal daters, questions about what we can and cant do, where to go, what to do.. just changed so fast! So far things have been great. Yeah im tired, but its nothing that we cant handle. Taking the Elders to the airport with President Smith was, well, weird. That will be Him and I soon. The life as an AP is very different from other missionaries; much more than i originally thought. For one, having my own phone is cool. The car is nice. Being in the office, well that im still getting used to. Working closely with President Smith? Yes Please. Oh and dont forget the part about being with Elder Komgrid again, thats awesome too. Oh, and my kid (Elder Revelli) got called to be office Elder as well haha. So we are in the same house again. Speaking of the house... Dad you woulda been proud of me here, cause this morning we CLEANED that bugger. It was probably the messiest house in the mission by far.. like, by a long shot. And we cleaned the entire place. I can finally feel the spirit in it now! Before it wasnt even fit for a rats den. Yeah, that bad. Worse than that woman's horrible hair you saw the other day.
Okay so whats happening here in the office: Well, as far as investigators go, we have barely any! We have a family thats getting baptized in a week (thats a nice inheritance to come into) and the mom is the only one not getting baptized with them. The whole family is way cool. I met 2 of the children, je t'aime (yes thats for real "i love you in french") and jap; both are way cool and are 15 and 12 respectively. The father is Joy and the mother is Tem. Theres one last son who was in Laos this weekend, James, so i havent met him yet. They are doing stellar. Theres a few others here, Paulo, Noy and Bune, but havent met them yet either. The majority of our time the next few weeks will be spent out training other missionaries. President Smith met with us yesterday and specifically told us that we are not AP's that hold his hand or go everywhere he goes; in fact he DIScouraged that. So we will go with him only when he schedules us to go or asks us personally. Otherwise we will do our thing (which is his, just in different places at different times) and he does his. Theres a lot of freedom in this job and he says he trusts us totally. Its a new world being here lemme say that much, and so far i think i like it.
Next week we have 4 meetings in 4 days and we will be flying all four of those days. Then in between we gotta find time to go get me a drivers license, practice and make sure that i can understand the traffic laws here (or lack there of.. so actually not that bad). Busy busy. Should be fun. After that week we have exchanges, meetings, exchanges, meetings all the way until the end of the transfer. And we will have to begin preparing for that transfer very quickly. Normally we dont prepare for the transfers stuff until 2 or 3 weeks before it, but this one is going to be HUGE. 17 dying and 16 coming in. Elder Komgrid included. President Smith has been stressin about this one for a while and he said hes gonna begin transfers planning early. yay.. i get to inherit all that mess! Bring it.
So hopefully by now you understand that my p-day is changes to saturday? If no, then yes, it is now saturday instead of monday. But, President Smith warned that we would have to sacrifice p-days sometimes because of our schedules.. so just as a heads up, dont freak out if one day you dont get an email. Most of the time it shouldnt be very hard to email you on any other day.
Well, i think i will keep this one short. Its getting close to head out of the office. I love you guys. Thanks for your support. Im so stoked right now.. i get to work right next to President Smith for the next 4 months and then peace out on an airplane with him too. Its gonna be a good time. Amidst all the craziness and the random "outside the law" behavior of being an AP, im trying my best to stay rooted to what ive been taught the last year and a half. On transfers day i didnt even get a chance to read the scriptures and i felt just straight weird. This morning during the cleaning i just felt like stopping everything and just reading in the Book of mormon for a little while. It felt good. I know that Book is true. Grab it. Hang on to it. Dont let it go. Love you!
Elder Gudmundsen
Crazy week. Felt like it went by so fast. After i got the call as assistant i came down here to the office for some training and some suggestiongs and advice on how to do things. Elder Komgrid went over our schedule for the transfer (which is crazy as can be) and im not gonna lie.. i felt way over whelmed. I went home thinking tha tit was going to be so hard and i dont have a clue what to do. I went home and dove straight into the scriptures and prayer.. needless to say i feel a lot better now. So first week (not even full one) as Assistant... its been fairly eventful. Pretty surreal and weird how dramatically quick everything shifted from Elder Larson to me.. speaking of which, it was way fun at transfers meeting. Everyone was talking aabout who would be the next AP and i had to lie to some people (hey, it was lie or go against what President Smith said, which was, "dont tell anyone except your current companion") saying it was someone else haha. Not long though and people stopped asking. Transfers meeting started and not long into to the meeting President Smith called me to be the new assistant. Let me tell you one thing... the feeling that went through me as i strolled up to the stage.. wow. Something else. The applause may have been unnecessary, but i know not what it feels like to be sustained by my equals; and it felt good. I was so stoked to be in that room sitting up on the stand looking out on just a bunch of solid missionaries.. so cool. Almost instantly i got a dozen questions for missionaries about baptismal daters, questions about what we can and cant do, where to go, what to do.. just changed so fast! So far things have been great. Yeah im tired, but its nothing that we cant handle. Taking the Elders to the airport with President Smith was, well, weird. That will be Him and I soon. The life as an AP is very different from other missionaries; much more than i originally thought. For one, having my own phone is cool. The car is nice. Being in the office, well that im still getting used to. Working closely with President Smith? Yes Please. Oh and dont forget the part about being with Elder Komgrid again, thats awesome too. Oh, and my kid (Elder Revelli) got called to be office Elder as well haha. So we are in the same house again. Speaking of the house... Dad you woulda been proud of me here, cause this morning we CLEANED that bugger. It was probably the messiest house in the mission by far.. like, by a long shot. And we cleaned the entire place. I can finally feel the spirit in it now! Before it wasnt even fit for a rats den. Yeah, that bad. Worse than that woman's horrible hair you saw the other day.
Okay so whats happening here in the office: Well, as far as investigators go, we have barely any! We have a family thats getting baptized in a week (thats a nice inheritance to come into) and the mom is the only one not getting baptized with them. The whole family is way cool. I met 2 of the children, je t'aime (yes thats for real "i love you in french") and jap; both are way cool and are 15 and 12 respectively. The father is Joy and the mother is Tem. Theres one last son who was in Laos this weekend, James, so i havent met him yet. They are doing stellar. Theres a few others here, Paulo, Noy and Bune, but havent met them yet either. The majority of our time the next few weeks will be spent out training other missionaries. President Smith met with us yesterday and specifically told us that we are not AP's that hold his hand or go everywhere he goes; in fact he DIScouraged that. So we will go with him only when he schedules us to go or asks us personally. Otherwise we will do our thing (which is his, just in different places at different times) and he does his. Theres a lot of freedom in this job and he says he trusts us totally. Its a new world being here lemme say that much, and so far i think i like it.
Next week we have 4 meetings in 4 days and we will be flying all four of those days. Then in between we gotta find time to go get me a drivers license, practice and make sure that i can understand the traffic laws here (or lack there of.. so actually not that bad). Busy busy. Should be fun. After that week we have exchanges, meetings, exchanges, meetings all the way until the end of the transfer. And we will have to begin preparing for that transfer very quickly. Normally we dont prepare for the transfers stuff until 2 or 3 weeks before it, but this one is going to be HUGE. 17 dying and 16 coming in. Elder Komgrid included. President Smith has been stressin about this one for a while and he said hes gonna begin transfers planning early. yay.. i get to inherit all that mess! Bring it.
So hopefully by now you understand that my p-day is changes to saturday? If no, then yes, it is now saturday instead of monday. But, President Smith warned that we would have to sacrifice p-days sometimes because of our schedules.. so just as a heads up, dont freak out if one day you dont get an email. Most of the time it shouldnt be very hard to email you on any other day.
Well, i think i will keep this one short. Its getting close to head out of the office. I love you guys. Thanks for your support. Im so stoked right now.. i get to work right next to President Smith for the next 4 months and then peace out on an airplane with him too. Its gonna be a good time. Amidst all the craziness and the random "outside the law" behavior of being an AP, im trying my best to stay rooted to what ive been taught the last year and a half. On transfers day i didnt even get a chance to read the scriptures and i felt just straight weird. This morning during the cleaning i just felt like stopping everything and just reading in the Book of mormon for a little while. It felt good. I know that Book is true. Grab it. Hang on to it. Dont let it go. Love you!
Elder Gudmundsen
Last week in the Beast
Well my last full week in the beast is now over... and it was a fun one. I felt like it was a second only, but it was really fun. Lots of inviting and lots of blessings that followed seemingly out of nowhere.
Lets start with our exchange: I went over outisde of my area with the District Leader over there and we got DESTROYED haha.. we got rejected so much. I had to keep out spirits up by constantly pointing to the next door saying, "ah.. this one.. these are the prepared ones.... okay maybe the next one". The appointments fell through and we didnt get a single one until.. guess what: the last door. We found 2 brothers smoking and instantly asked if they wanted to quit. They said yes and we began teaching about our loving heavenly father who blessed with a commandment called the word of wisdom. We testified that they could quit if they let us share our message for 15 minutes. They let us in. It was a good lesson -short, but good- and we got a return apointment.
The next day.. oh my goodness, it was sooo hot. We walked around this neighborhood (which we didnt ask permission to go into first) for a few hours and there was just no one home except old maids. We met this one nice maid that gave us lots of water and oranges.. so that wa snice haha. We just started working the heat to our advantage asking if we could have a drink of water, and then asking other houses later if we could use the bathroom hahah.. it works a little bit. At one point we got chased down by the neighborhood watch cops but we were sitting with an old grandpa. Apparently one of the houses that we knocked on has someone inside, even though they didnt come to the door, and they had called the gaurds. When the guards came over, they looked really confused seeing as we were sitting down talking to the old man. THey looked at him and asked, "hey.. did these 2 men come to see you?" He simply nodded his head and they left. He immediately looked at us and said, "thank you boys, but i think you should probably go now"> hahah.. what a boss. At that point we had to go meet our companions to exchange back, and the neighborhood was WAY far from the street. We asked those same guards if they could call us a taxi (while talking to them for a while as well) and no taxis came. About 10 minutes later this guy rolls up in his boss mercedes and says, "hey you 2! You knocked on my door like 30 minutes ago but i was in the shower.. you want a ride?" haha.. well im not gonna reject a 100000 dollar mercedes ride, especially when we could talk to him about why we knocked on his door. We hopped in and he already knew we were here talking about Christ, and he said we could come back another day. He was going to just take us to the street for a taxi but instead took us over to his office to meet his lawyer friends, of which one of those is already a new investigator. It was pretty legit. Im not sure if they got to see that guy again yet, but even still, the promises of the Lord come in weird ways.
Then after that i exchanged with the other District leader here in asoke except now in my own area. It was wild.. we invited and got rejected a lot. Like, a ton. We were both surprised, but i kept saying the same thing, "here we go.. this one has prepared"... and then we found a grandpa with porn on the television... "see ya later!". Said a quick prayer to drive the filth out of our eyes and kept going. We eventually were led to a BOSS. His name is Joe. And he let us right in. He talked about how his older brother invited him to church a year ago (Protestant church) and it got him out of a really deep pit of nothingness. He loves Christ and we told him about the first vision. He totally respects everything we do and wants to learn more about the Book of Mormon. When the spirit was strong, we committed him to follow the example of Christ by being baptized by someone holding the authority of God. He said he already was baptized, but isnt sure if he really does need to do it again or not. So we got to see where hes at. I see this kid as a missionary soon. He was totally jealous of our calling as full time missionaries where we dont study or go to school or work. He is 20 years old so he totally could be one in the future. LAter that day we went to pass out english flyers around the subway and the sky train connection. Around 5 oclock there is just so many people. It was a good time. About 30 minutes through it, this foreinger from England i think.. looks at me and just says, rather rudely, "ReLIGion?!" and i nodded.. he walked away. 20 minutes later i saw Elder Grover talking to the same foreigner who apparently came back, and it looked like he was being rude again. I made my way over to him and yeah.. he was swearing at Elder Grover. He was attacking him saying that he came over here to destroy the peoples religion and what not. I came over just in time to here him ask about why we needed to do what we do. As his frustration continued to rise, for whatever reason, i felt it was necessary to try and change the subject. I smiled and asked him what his name was. He refused to give it saying he didnt want to say his name. I smiled and told him my name was Elder Gudmundsen and put my hand out to shake his hand... he refused and responded by calling us the 3 worst swear words in the English language. Needless to say, Elder Grover and i were astonished and without anything to say.. also a little nervous. He kept going and asked to see some identification, which we showed him, and then he walked away. Elder Grover and i just stood there in disbelief at what had just occurred.. we didnt know who he was, or why he did what he did, but we walked away smiling that he didnt do anything rash. By far the gnarliest experience for us both on our missions. But hey! Blessed are they who are persecuted for HIS names sake right? Although it was an unusual experience, i felt fine! We werent mad at him or anything and we said a pray that he would be forgiven for what he had done. Who knows.. he may have had a bad experience in the past or maybe he just didnt fully understand what we were here to do. Either way, hes still a son of God.
On saturday there was a baptism.. and there was a monk in attendance! He usually comes to English and we had announced the baptism there; so he came. At the end of it all i got to talk with him for a good 15 minutes (and for some reason some of the members were scared to talk to him). I gave him a Book of Mormon and committed him to read it. He was willing to do it and then when the spirit was right, i asked him if he would follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. He thought for a moment and said, "no way can i do that right now!". It was an interesting response, but satisfying none the less. I proceeded to give him the soft commitment that when he got his answer and he knew the Book of Mormon was true, would he then be baptized. He said he would study first. Way nice guy! First time i have committed a monk to baptism haha. The baptism itself was way good too.
Sunday.. oh man this was awesome. As we left our apartment i was talking on the phone with investigators and members to make sure that everything at church would be good. As we got on the actually subway train, i was about to hang up the phone and the spirit just constrained me to hang up, take my Book of Mormon and just start yelling and inviting people to read the book. I hung up, looked at my companion and asked, "Wanna Dan Jones it?" Dan jones was a missionary in wales who did something similar but on the streets of wales. He looked at the book and gestured jokingly, "go for it!"..... BAM! I turned around and just started yelling the things that came into my heart. I could hardly believe that i was actually doing it! One of the most invigorating experiences ive ever had, and i havent been so excited in.. well, ever. Within the first row of the train, a man maybe about 50 years old looked up at me and raised his hand, "ill take it". Got his name and number and committed him to read from the first page. I looked at my companion whose face was priceless, and grabbed another book..... "okay who wants THIS one!". We had to get off soon after and nobody else took that one, but i got that one handed out on the way HOME later that night. Ah! It felt SOOO good! Yes i do wish that i hadnt waited 6 months of being in asoke and riding the subway everday to have waited until 4 days before i move, but who cares! I got it now. THis morning Elder Siriphan did it too. Got one out to a guy as well. Made me so proud and so happy to be on a mission. I love the book of Mormon!
As far as investigators go, this week was kinda slow. Lucky, Tam and Noke are all doing good. THey got to Church and Lucky brought all 3 of her kids. They were ahving a ball with Tam and Nokes little kids. Way cute. Niyome is doing okay, but he enjoys beating himself up for some reason.. he doesnt understand the scriptures THAT well and thinks he is just stupid. We keep trying to tel him that its not that.. its just weird language. It will come! But he came to church and knows its Heavenly Fathers home. Im sad to leave all of our investigators but i know they are in good hands. They know our purpose and they trust us. Elder Siriphan is very capable and ready to do this; to take over the beast.
As for me.... well prepare youselves. President Smith called me last night. He asked me if i feel like i am an obedient missionary; if i feel like my zone trusts me and respects my decisions; if i work with the stake president and have his trust; and if there are any of the questions that my stake president asked me during my interview that i cannot now answer positively. Upon answering he then proceeded to tell me about my progress as a missionary that he has noticed. With that said, he invited me and asked me if i would accept the call to be the next Assistant to the President this coming thursday. My blood ran chill and i almost didnt answer, but finally responded yes. My last 3 transfers will be spent as Assistant guys... uhhhhhhhhh, thats weird. Really weird. Speechless? Me too. Who woulda thought right? I got down and prayed immediately.. i never ever thought that i would be where i am now.. its unbelieveable. I opened up the source of all knowledge in the scriptures and read in Doctrine and Covenants section 1: the Lord calls the weak and simple things of the world. I know that is true. I felt comforted in this new calling i am ready to do it. Its going to fun. I am so grateful, beyond expression for the countless opportunities that the Lord has given me to learn and grow on my mission. The blessings of the Lord are too great to describe.. but i know he loves me. I also know that this calling, although significant in its own sense, is no more important than anyone else in the mission. Im excited! And i love you all. I testify of this work; it is Christs own work.
Love,
Elder Gudmundsen
Lets start with our exchange: I went over outisde of my area with the District Leader over there and we got DESTROYED haha.. we got rejected so much. I had to keep out spirits up by constantly pointing to the next door saying, "ah.. this one.. these are the prepared ones.... okay maybe the next one". The appointments fell through and we didnt get a single one until.. guess what: the last door. We found 2 brothers smoking and instantly asked if they wanted to quit. They said yes and we began teaching about our loving heavenly father who blessed with a commandment called the word of wisdom. We testified that they could quit if they let us share our message for 15 minutes. They let us in. It was a good lesson -short, but good- and we got a return apointment.
The next day.. oh my goodness, it was sooo hot. We walked around this neighborhood (which we didnt ask permission to go into first) for a few hours and there was just no one home except old maids. We met this one nice maid that gave us lots of water and oranges.. so that wa snice haha. We just started working the heat to our advantage asking if we could have a drink of water, and then asking other houses later if we could use the bathroom hahah.. it works a little bit. At one point we got chased down by the neighborhood watch cops but we were sitting with an old grandpa. Apparently one of the houses that we knocked on has someone inside, even though they didnt come to the door, and they had called the gaurds. When the guards came over, they looked really confused seeing as we were sitting down talking to the old man. THey looked at him and asked, "hey.. did these 2 men come to see you?" He simply nodded his head and they left. He immediately looked at us and said, "thank you boys, but i think you should probably go now"> hahah.. what a boss. At that point we had to go meet our companions to exchange back, and the neighborhood was WAY far from the street. We asked those same guards if they could call us a taxi (while talking to them for a while as well) and no taxis came. About 10 minutes later this guy rolls up in his boss mercedes and says, "hey you 2! You knocked on my door like 30 minutes ago but i was in the shower.. you want a ride?" haha.. well im not gonna reject a 100000 dollar mercedes ride, especially when we could talk to him about why we knocked on his door. We hopped in and he already knew we were here talking about Christ, and he said we could come back another day. He was going to just take us to the street for a taxi but instead took us over to his office to meet his lawyer friends, of which one of those is already a new investigator. It was pretty legit. Im not sure if they got to see that guy again yet, but even still, the promises of the Lord come in weird ways.
Then after that i exchanged with the other District leader here in asoke except now in my own area. It was wild.. we invited and got rejected a lot. Like, a ton. We were both surprised, but i kept saying the same thing, "here we go.. this one has prepared"... and then we found a grandpa with porn on the television... "see ya later!". Said a quick prayer to drive the filth out of our eyes and kept going. We eventually were led to a BOSS. His name is Joe. And he let us right in. He talked about how his older brother invited him to church a year ago (Protestant church) and it got him out of a really deep pit of nothingness. He loves Christ and we told him about the first vision. He totally respects everything we do and wants to learn more about the Book of Mormon. When the spirit was strong, we committed him to follow the example of Christ by being baptized by someone holding the authority of God. He said he already was baptized, but isnt sure if he really does need to do it again or not. So we got to see where hes at. I see this kid as a missionary soon. He was totally jealous of our calling as full time missionaries where we dont study or go to school or work. He is 20 years old so he totally could be one in the future. LAter that day we went to pass out english flyers around the subway and the sky train connection. Around 5 oclock there is just so many people. It was a good time. About 30 minutes through it, this foreinger from England i think.. looks at me and just says, rather rudely, "ReLIGion?!" and i nodded.. he walked away. 20 minutes later i saw Elder Grover talking to the same foreigner who apparently came back, and it looked like he was being rude again. I made my way over to him and yeah.. he was swearing at Elder Grover. He was attacking him saying that he came over here to destroy the peoples religion and what not. I came over just in time to here him ask about why we needed to do what we do. As his frustration continued to rise, for whatever reason, i felt it was necessary to try and change the subject. I smiled and asked him what his name was. He refused to give it saying he didnt want to say his name. I smiled and told him my name was Elder Gudmundsen and put my hand out to shake his hand... he refused and responded by calling us the 3 worst swear words in the English language. Needless to say, Elder Grover and i were astonished and without anything to say.. also a little nervous. He kept going and asked to see some identification, which we showed him, and then he walked away. Elder Grover and i just stood there in disbelief at what had just occurred.. we didnt know who he was, or why he did what he did, but we walked away smiling that he didnt do anything rash. By far the gnarliest experience for us both on our missions. But hey! Blessed are they who are persecuted for HIS names sake right? Although it was an unusual experience, i felt fine! We werent mad at him or anything and we said a pray that he would be forgiven for what he had done. Who knows.. he may have had a bad experience in the past or maybe he just didnt fully understand what we were here to do. Either way, hes still a son of God.
On saturday there was a baptism.. and there was a monk in attendance! He usually comes to English and we had announced the baptism there; so he came. At the end of it all i got to talk with him for a good 15 minutes (and for some reason some of the members were scared to talk to him). I gave him a Book of Mormon and committed him to read it. He was willing to do it and then when the spirit was right, i asked him if he would follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. He thought for a moment and said, "no way can i do that right now!". It was an interesting response, but satisfying none the less. I proceeded to give him the soft commitment that when he got his answer and he knew the Book of Mormon was true, would he then be baptized. He said he would study first. Way nice guy! First time i have committed a monk to baptism haha. The baptism itself was way good too.
Sunday.. oh man this was awesome. As we left our apartment i was talking on the phone with investigators and members to make sure that everything at church would be good. As we got on the actually subway train, i was about to hang up the phone and the spirit just constrained me to hang up, take my Book of Mormon and just start yelling and inviting people to read the book. I hung up, looked at my companion and asked, "Wanna Dan Jones it?" Dan jones was a missionary in wales who did something similar but on the streets of wales. He looked at the book and gestured jokingly, "go for it!"..... BAM! I turned around and just started yelling the things that came into my heart. I could hardly believe that i was actually doing it! One of the most invigorating experiences ive ever had, and i havent been so excited in.. well, ever. Within the first row of the train, a man maybe about 50 years old looked up at me and raised his hand, "ill take it". Got his name and number and committed him to read from the first page. I looked at my companion whose face was priceless, and grabbed another book..... "okay who wants THIS one!". We had to get off soon after and nobody else took that one, but i got that one handed out on the way HOME later that night. Ah! It felt SOOO good! Yes i do wish that i hadnt waited 6 months of being in asoke and riding the subway everday to have waited until 4 days before i move, but who cares! I got it now. THis morning Elder Siriphan did it too. Got one out to a guy as well. Made me so proud and so happy to be on a mission. I love the book of Mormon!
As far as investigators go, this week was kinda slow. Lucky, Tam and Noke are all doing good. THey got to Church and Lucky brought all 3 of her kids. They were ahving a ball with Tam and Nokes little kids. Way cute. Niyome is doing okay, but he enjoys beating himself up for some reason.. he doesnt understand the scriptures THAT well and thinks he is just stupid. We keep trying to tel him that its not that.. its just weird language. It will come! But he came to church and knows its Heavenly Fathers home. Im sad to leave all of our investigators but i know they are in good hands. They know our purpose and they trust us. Elder Siriphan is very capable and ready to do this; to take over the beast.
As for me.... well prepare youselves. President Smith called me last night. He asked me if i feel like i am an obedient missionary; if i feel like my zone trusts me and respects my decisions; if i work with the stake president and have his trust; and if there are any of the questions that my stake president asked me during my interview that i cannot now answer positively. Upon answering he then proceeded to tell me about my progress as a missionary that he has noticed. With that said, he invited me and asked me if i would accept the call to be the next Assistant to the President this coming thursday. My blood ran chill and i almost didnt answer, but finally responded yes. My last 3 transfers will be spent as Assistant guys... uhhhhhhhhh, thats weird. Really weird. Speechless? Me too. Who woulda thought right? I got down and prayed immediately.. i never ever thought that i would be where i am now.. its unbelieveable. I opened up the source of all knowledge in the scriptures and read in Doctrine and Covenants section 1: the Lord calls the weak and simple things of the world. I know that is true. I felt comforted in this new calling i am ready to do it. Its going to fun. I am so grateful, beyond expression for the countless opportunities that the Lord has given me to learn and grow on my mission. The blessings of the Lord are too great to describe.. but i know he loves me. I also know that this calling, although significant in its own sense, is no more important than anyone else in the mission. Im excited! And i love you all. I testify of this work; it is Christs own work.
Love,
Elder Gudmundsen
Another fast week
Sent Feb. 19
This keyboard is turrible.
This week was filled with exchanges in our zone. We exchanged with the district leader in Bang Khae and it was a jolly good time. This one Elder, Elder Chamberlain, was with me in Bang Khae and hes a stud. Scared the jubes out of me though.. while we were getting ready for bed he all of a sudden stopped moving and i heard the silence (hha that sounds funny) and so i looked over at him. He was silent and his face look super deep in thought. Wehn i asked him what was up he said that Elder Nelson (his companion) had an experience with a ghost or something the other night. He said that he heard voices a couple nights before and that they wouldnt go away for about an hour.. then they finally left saying he was no fun. Super creepy and he wasnt just doing it to play a joke but for serious.. now at this point my face was kinda like Hansels face when Zoolander discovered that Matilda could read minds.. freaked out. Anyway, we decided to dedicate the house and try and get some sleep.. yeah that didnt happen. Neither of us slept very well hahaha.. every sound that we heard instantly made out hearts pound and stress out. Also i talked in my sleep later on in the night when Elder Chamberlain woke up which made he think that i was talkin about some crazy experiencea bout to happen. Then later i woke up and had to use the facilities.. soo hard but i was scared to get up haha.. all the video games i use to play got my mind going creazy! I think i would go to the bathroom and then when i came out Elder Chamberlain would be standing at the door waiting for me to open it hahah! But it all passed. It happened to be a new apartment that they just moved to, so it wasnt dedicated.. but in our prayer to dedicate it, which i know for sure helped, the Lord will protect that house for all future Elders.. thats the 2nd house ive dedicated on my mission :). COol stuff. Anyway, the exchange was good.
After that we had interviews with President SMith cause he didnt have time at zone conference and then we got to go teaching with im after! He tries to as much as he can, but his busy schedule usually keeps it difficult to do exchanges with the zone leaders. but he had time for 1 appointment with us and it was way cool. Brought me to repentance about sharing experiences and how to apply things better to investigators lives. He shared an experience about his great grandmother who had ill feelings towards the church and heard crazy stuff about them too. However one day she saw the Elders walking around the street while she sat on the outside porch chair.. she wanted to flee and just rudely walk inside and not talk to them.. but to what she later attributed to tbe the spirit constraining her, she could not get up from her chair.. she was almost literally glued to her seat. The Elders came up and talked to her and she decided to listen and read the Book of Mormon. The rest is obviously history. That investigators name is Eve and shes been to church only a few times, but is starting to really like it. What stuck for her was how she feels like shes at home. She also sees a striking difference between the outside world and inside the small buildling of a church. She loved that random people came up and said hello event hough they dont know her.
Onto other investigators.. Tam and Noke are still on board.. but struggling a little bit. Tam chose to go to a work seminar thing instead of church and so noke wasnt able to get both the kids to church. Kinda sad. We prayed about it and decided that we would wait to tell him the consequences because we knew that if we tried to tell him on the phone it would go the way of all other phone calls like that; down hill. So, they will have to suffer the consequences here and understand that they are not ready for baptism yet because they dont take the Sabbath day seriously enough. It was really sad and we wanted so bad to just tell him on the phone that he was making the wrong choice, but the hearts of men are so frail and as soon as we would have told him that he was wrong we knew that he would follow after the desires of his heart which right now are in the wrong place. But we will fix it this week.
Lucky and her family are doing okay.. Lucky is struggling with her kids.. the youngest is being stubborn and she feels like her children are grateful for her sacrifice.. which are a lot. Shes raised all 3 kids by herself their whole lives.. its pretty impressive. I think being at church helped her a lot and i believe that she will be able to press forward and fix the problems for sure.
Niyome.. not really sure. He kinda dissapeared down by Phuket for a week.. apparently his relative is moving over there and needs someobdy to go check out the place and reserve it for them. Niyome got the short stick.
Everything else is fairly good right now. Nothing super special. I think right now the thing i am excited for most of all is Sister Tuk.. shes doing a lot better and she is SO close to finishing the book of Mormon. Shes on Moroni! She almost walked out on church yesterday because of something someone said, but decided not to even though she was out the door. Dont know what occured in her thoughts to make her stay, but she did. Shes seemed to be a lot happier lately, even though work is a pain and her boss as well. This week will be super curcial for her.. shes gotta make her stand after she finishes CHapter 10 and thats going to be an intense lesson. Will let you know whats up.
Okay well im done. Last full week in the Beast! Love you all. Thanks for your support always. Its so wonderful right now to be out here.. and it feels special to know that im part of 50000 young men who are prayed for the most in the Church. It feels surreeal to remember that fact. But thanks for you prayers always. Keep em coming!
Bye.
Elder Gudmundsen
This keyboard is turrible.
This week was filled with exchanges in our zone. We exchanged with the district leader in Bang Khae and it was a jolly good time. This one Elder, Elder Chamberlain, was with me in Bang Khae and hes a stud. Scared the jubes out of me though.. while we were getting ready for bed he all of a sudden stopped moving and i heard the silence (hha that sounds funny) and so i looked over at him. He was silent and his face look super deep in thought. Wehn i asked him what was up he said that Elder Nelson (his companion) had an experience with a ghost or something the other night. He said that he heard voices a couple nights before and that they wouldnt go away for about an hour.. then they finally left saying he was no fun. Super creepy and he wasnt just doing it to play a joke but for serious.. now at this point my face was kinda like Hansels face when Zoolander discovered that Matilda could read minds.. freaked out. Anyway, we decided to dedicate the house and try and get some sleep.. yeah that didnt happen. Neither of us slept very well hahaha.. every sound that we heard instantly made out hearts pound and stress out. Also i talked in my sleep later on in the night when Elder Chamberlain woke up which made he think that i was talkin about some crazy experiencea bout to happen. Then later i woke up and had to use the facilities.. soo hard but i was scared to get up haha.. all the video games i use to play got my mind going creazy! I think i would go to the bathroom and then when i came out Elder Chamberlain would be standing at the door waiting for me to open it hahah! But it all passed. It happened to be a new apartment that they just moved to, so it wasnt dedicated.. but in our prayer to dedicate it, which i know for sure helped, the Lord will protect that house for all future Elders.. thats the 2nd house ive dedicated on my mission :). COol stuff. Anyway, the exchange was good.
After that we had interviews with President SMith cause he didnt have time at zone conference and then we got to go teaching with im after! He tries to as much as he can, but his busy schedule usually keeps it difficult to do exchanges with the zone leaders. but he had time for 1 appointment with us and it was way cool. Brought me to repentance about sharing experiences and how to apply things better to investigators lives. He shared an experience about his great grandmother who had ill feelings towards the church and heard crazy stuff about them too. However one day she saw the Elders walking around the street while she sat on the outside porch chair.. she wanted to flee and just rudely walk inside and not talk to them.. but to what she later attributed to tbe the spirit constraining her, she could not get up from her chair.. she was almost literally glued to her seat. The Elders came up and talked to her and she decided to listen and read the Book of Mormon. The rest is obviously history. That investigators name is Eve and shes been to church only a few times, but is starting to really like it. What stuck for her was how she feels like shes at home. She also sees a striking difference between the outside world and inside the small buildling of a church. She loved that random people came up and said hello event hough they dont know her.
Onto other investigators.. Tam and Noke are still on board.. but struggling a little bit. Tam chose to go to a work seminar thing instead of church and so noke wasnt able to get both the kids to church. Kinda sad. We prayed about it and decided that we would wait to tell him the consequences because we knew that if we tried to tell him on the phone it would go the way of all other phone calls like that; down hill. So, they will have to suffer the consequences here and understand that they are not ready for baptism yet because they dont take the Sabbath day seriously enough. It was really sad and we wanted so bad to just tell him on the phone that he was making the wrong choice, but the hearts of men are so frail and as soon as we would have told him that he was wrong we knew that he would follow after the desires of his heart which right now are in the wrong place. But we will fix it this week.
Lucky and her family are doing okay.. Lucky is struggling with her kids.. the youngest is being stubborn and she feels like her children are grateful for her sacrifice.. which are a lot. Shes raised all 3 kids by herself their whole lives.. its pretty impressive. I think being at church helped her a lot and i believe that she will be able to press forward and fix the problems for sure.
Niyome.. not really sure. He kinda dissapeared down by Phuket for a week.. apparently his relative is moving over there and needs someobdy to go check out the place and reserve it for them. Niyome got the short stick.
Everything else is fairly good right now. Nothing super special. I think right now the thing i am excited for most of all is Sister Tuk.. shes doing a lot better and she is SO close to finishing the book of Mormon. Shes on Moroni! She almost walked out on church yesterday because of something someone said, but decided not to even though she was out the door. Dont know what occured in her thoughts to make her stay, but she did. Shes seemed to be a lot happier lately, even though work is a pain and her boss as well. This week will be super curcial for her.. shes gotta make her stand after she finishes CHapter 10 and thats going to be an intense lesson. Will let you know whats up.
Okay well im done. Last full week in the Beast! Love you all. Thanks for your support always. Its so wonderful right now to be out here.. and it feels special to know that im part of 50000 young men who are prayed for the most in the Church. It feels surreeal to remember that fact. But thanks for you prayers always. Keep em coming!
Bye.
Elder Gudmundsen
Hot
Sent Feb. 13
Its getting hot. Really hot. Kinda redonculous. Yaaaayyy... sweat!
Good week. We finally had lots of time for inviting. It yielded some pretty good results. But lets start with daters..
Tam and Noke are doing a lot better. They still have some concerns with the Sabbath day, but as far as being more of a family and doing things like reading and studying and praying as a family. They seemed really happy the time that we taught them on Friday.. and Tam was definitely feeling relief from a little upset stomach ahah. Thats the only time where i dont feel like my blood is going to boil from a canceled appointment cause all i can do is laugh..: "we cant meet tonight!" "why not?" "Tam has diarrhea.." haha. Cant really be upset with that one. Anyway, they are doing relaly well. We have to have a talk tonight about the sabbath day.. not quite keeping it holy as they need to. Hes had a lot of work come up that made it so they couldnt go last week, and this week they may have it again. We gonna get this one cleared up tonight. Probably gonna fast with them too. Love this family!
Lucky and her kids.. haha. Funny stuff. Her 2 youngest ones are super stubborn and feel like they are being forced to learn.. which really is the mother inviting them to sit down for 20 minutes and them freaking out saying "ahhh stop it!". Oh teenagers.. told Lucky to not worry about it.. they're kids.. you could say "please sit down for 20 minutes" as calm and non forceful as a dude on extra strength Ritalin and they would think it was forcing. The other day we taught the restoration.. the spirit was supa strong. The kid that s a dude wasnt really listening until we got to that part.. then he was staring at us the whole time.. he totally felt it, but hasnt quite let it sink into his heart yet. No worries. We will get him.
English class yielded quite a bit of success this week. Had a TON of people come in. Almost too many people to be honest.. i cant teach 70 people on my own.. i can try, but its difficult. There are 3 new investigators from English and 1 of them is in our area and she has a date already. Shes super humble and way in tune with what we teach her. Just prepared as can be. The other is just the same.. however she has ye tto have a date because the lesson we taught was a little crappy. But she believes in God already and believes that he led her to our Church.. she got lost one day and just happened to pop up next to our church haha. Sweet.
Niyome. Doing way better. He understands the principle of repentance and said hes gone through a lot to repent for his past sins. However we do have to remind him again that afte ryou repent you promise to not do it again.. that includes coming to church. Dont know where he went yesterday but it wasnt church i can say that much. APparently he went out of town.. weird. Funny guy.. he listens to conference in his taxi every day. Legit.
So what was fun this week.. besides all that. We had a lot of time for inviting. Met a lot of interesting people.. a lot of "decepticons" lately too. We met these 3 burmese women that are humble as the DUST! They are already christians and at first we didnt know they were from Burmese.. she said she was from Chiang Mai in one of the villages that speaks a different language.. her thai was super un clear and we though this was why. But last night they said they were all born in Burma. There thai is weak and their english is weaker. But they firmly believe in Christ and are some of the first christians ive met in a long time who understand that the Sabbath must be kept holy. They said that they dont work on sunday because the Lord doesnt like that. Werd. We went with Elijah and he bore testimony that if they really wanted to, the Lrod would help them with THai so that they could read the Book of Mormon. He said that I and him were from America and pray everyday for us to be able to speak the language, and it works. Werd. They believed and they asked, with the utmost humilty and faith, to pray for them as well so that they could be able to understand the doctrine and to be able to read this new book about Jesus Christ. One of the first investigators ive seen on my mission to come out on a first lesson with a notebook ready to write things down tha twe say ahha. Can you say prepared?
Well i think im done.. gotta go to Water gate to buy a new suitcase.. the black one broke :( So thats what a charge will be today. Ive got 2 weeks left in Asoke and im gonna make them count.. the ward is starting to pick it up a lot and people are starting to get a vision of what they want to see here. I think things are going to really change soon. It takes time, but im even surprised at my own self at how patient ive been with it hhaha.
With this Burmese people.. we met them last week by the way and didnt have a return appointment until yestreday. She called and said she was still home and free to talk. But we didnt have a dude. We called up someone super quickly who happened to be at Church. He accepted of course. As he was leaving, some other memers asked him where he was going... he said to go help the Elders teach. The y looked at him surprised and confused saying, "why? Church is over?". He looked at them a little dissapointed and simply said, "so what?! The work doesnt end when church is over!". Couldnt have said it better myself. This work is truly marvelous and wonderous.. and it will not stop. Im so grateful to be a part of it. Love you all!
Elder Gudmundsen
PS: Happy "most dangerous day for an Elder" Day.
Its getting hot. Really hot. Kinda redonculous. Yaaaayyy... sweat!
Good week. We finally had lots of time for inviting. It yielded some pretty good results. But lets start with daters..
Tam and Noke are doing a lot better. They still have some concerns with the Sabbath day, but as far as being more of a family and doing things like reading and studying and praying as a family. They seemed really happy the time that we taught them on Friday.. and Tam was definitely feeling relief from a little upset stomach ahah. Thats the only time where i dont feel like my blood is going to boil from a canceled appointment cause all i can do is laugh..: "we cant meet tonight!" "why not?" "Tam has diarrhea.." haha. Cant really be upset with that one. Anyway, they are doing relaly well. We have to have a talk tonight about the sabbath day.. not quite keeping it holy as they need to. Hes had a lot of work come up that made it so they couldnt go last week, and this week they may have it again. We gonna get this one cleared up tonight. Probably gonna fast with them too. Love this family!
Lucky and her kids.. haha. Funny stuff. Her 2 youngest ones are super stubborn and feel like they are being forced to learn.. which really is the mother inviting them to sit down for 20 minutes and them freaking out saying "ahhh stop it!". Oh teenagers.. told Lucky to not worry about it.. they're kids.. you could say "please sit down for 20 minutes" as calm and non forceful as a dude on extra strength Ritalin and they would think it was forcing. The other day we taught the restoration.. the spirit was supa strong. The kid that s a dude wasnt really listening until we got to that part.. then he was staring at us the whole time.. he totally felt it, but hasnt quite let it sink into his heart yet. No worries. We will get him.
English class yielded quite a bit of success this week. Had a TON of people come in. Almost too many people to be honest.. i cant teach 70 people on my own.. i can try, but its difficult. There are 3 new investigators from English and 1 of them is in our area and she has a date already. Shes super humble and way in tune with what we teach her. Just prepared as can be. The other is just the same.. however she has ye tto have a date because the lesson we taught was a little crappy. But she believes in God already and believes that he led her to our Church.. she got lost one day and just happened to pop up next to our church haha. Sweet.
Niyome. Doing way better. He understands the principle of repentance and said hes gone through a lot to repent for his past sins. However we do have to remind him again that afte ryou repent you promise to not do it again.. that includes coming to church. Dont know where he went yesterday but it wasnt church i can say that much. APparently he went out of town.. weird. Funny guy.. he listens to conference in his taxi every day. Legit.
So what was fun this week.. besides all that. We had a lot of time for inviting. Met a lot of interesting people.. a lot of "decepticons" lately too. We met these 3 burmese women that are humble as the DUST! They are already christians and at first we didnt know they were from Burmese.. she said she was from Chiang Mai in one of the villages that speaks a different language.. her thai was super un clear and we though this was why. But last night they said they were all born in Burma. There thai is weak and their english is weaker. But they firmly believe in Christ and are some of the first christians ive met in a long time who understand that the Sabbath must be kept holy. They said that they dont work on sunday because the Lord doesnt like that. Werd. We went with Elijah and he bore testimony that if they really wanted to, the Lrod would help them with THai so that they could read the Book of Mormon. He said that I and him were from America and pray everyday for us to be able to speak the language, and it works. Werd. They believed and they asked, with the utmost humilty and faith, to pray for them as well so that they could be able to understand the doctrine and to be able to read this new book about Jesus Christ. One of the first investigators ive seen on my mission to come out on a first lesson with a notebook ready to write things down tha twe say ahha. Can you say prepared?
Well i think im done.. gotta go to Water gate to buy a new suitcase.. the black one broke :( So thats what a charge will be today. Ive got 2 weeks left in Asoke and im gonna make them count.. the ward is starting to pick it up a lot and people are starting to get a vision of what they want to see here. I think things are going to really change soon. It takes time, but im even surprised at my own self at how patient ive been with it hhaha.
With this Burmese people.. we met them last week by the way and didnt have a return appointment until yestreday. She called and said she was still home and free to talk. But we didnt have a dude. We called up someone super quickly who happened to be at Church. He accepted of course. As he was leaving, some other memers asked him where he was going... he said to go help the Elders teach. The y looked at him surprised and confused saying, "why? Church is over?". He looked at them a little dissapointed and simply said, "so what?! The work doesnt end when church is over!". Couldnt have said it better myself. This work is truly marvelous and wonderous.. and it will not stop. Im so grateful to be a part of it. Love you all!
Elder Gudmundsen
PS: Happy "most dangerous day for an Elder" Day.
Hello
Sent Feb. 5
uuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgggggggggggggggggggggggggggg..... I feel tired.
But not really.
Interesting week. Dont really know exactly how i feel about it yet hahah.. ill tell you one thing, im not satisfied with it thats for sure. We had a lot of trainings this week.. speciallized traiings of the simplified curriculum from the MTC progream. Good stuff. THis week was on revelation through the Book of Mormon. Great stuff. I enjoy the trainings actually. Giving them is fun too. However, it was kinda long haha. We decided to teach all 3 district meetings in one week that way we can get it all out of the way in one week. So that means that this week we will be able to go out and find full time. This week we found 1 new investigator.. kind of a bummer. The lesson started out well (he even put his dogs away so that they wouldnt interrupt us) and then prayed with us no problem. But when we tried to read from the Book of Mormon with him he just started FREAKING out... like, there was no way that we would have been able to read with him in that lesson and help him feel the spirit too.. i dont know what he was afraid of (truth?) but oh man he was scared out of his pants (almost literally.. he was only wearing boxers ahah). We asked him what was wrong and he just did that nervous laugh and looked everywhere but our eyes.. we asked him if it was his family.. that if he read out of this book he would automatically change religions? He said yes. We asked to just make an appointment with him and his family cause that would be better anyway. He agreed. So hopefullly when we get back to him this week he will open up a little more. I cant say i disagree.. those who dont like change should be scared of the Book of Mormon haha.
Other than that we taught a lot of other lessons and just didnt get anything good.. got rejected.. a lot. More than ive been used to lately. Kinda weird. We did teach a lot, just found no one who was ready or willing to study more and apply the teachings to their lives. Kinda rough. But like Roger back in Buriram always said, "everyday is a 'praise the Lord day' no matter what happens". Indeed. We both feel that although this neighborhood that we have invited at everyday for the last 4 months is really good (and we will continue to invite there every now and then) we are going to move over to this new flat complex across the street. It looks big. And we feel like its inspired that we move. I personally feel stoked to get up in there and just start removing the SUPA dark veil of unbelief shrouding all their minds. Stupid sin. Nobody even likes you.
"You dont have any friends! nobody likes you!".
So there is this new thing that we have been implementing with our daters and with our current progressing investigators. President Smith has talked with the Mission president over in Cambodia and he said that the church is growing rapidly (they are getting 2 stakes in just a little while) but they have the "in the front door and out the back door" baptism thing going on. So the mission president there has had all his missionaries commit their investigators to read the entire Book of Mormon cover to cover before they will be baptized. President Smith loved the idea and is now implementing it over here. Everyones on board and its now a big determining factor as to when we will commit people to be baptized. If someone reads the Book of Mormon slow, so be it.. they will have to have a date that is further away then. We were about to commit Tam and Noke to do that the other day but Noke said it herself: "we have to read the whole book before we are baptized right?" haha.. Elder Siriphan and i looked at each other laughing (cause that was the commitment we had planned on before we taught them) and said "actually, yes. We were about to say that". Speaking of those 2.. they are doing really great. We took them over to Elijah's familys house (his wifes name is Zuan) and they all seemd to be so happy. Even though Elijahs kids dont understand a thing that Tam and Nokes kids are saying, they try to be friends with them as much as possible. Quite adorable. Phoenix absolutely LOVES their house.. she just runs around like a maniac liek its her own house. Super funny. I think it really helps Tam and noke feel good too. They look happy and laugh a lot while over there. It was kinda funny.. on the way over to their house the first time, Tam was talking a little bit about how he doesnt like rich people that much.. in my mind im like.. "uhhhh... Elijahs house is pretty high so...eh, oh well.. they already like the people!". Kinda amusing. But it didnt seem to phase him once he was over.. i think they were just really grateful for their kindness. Last night at dinner Elijah just tapped his arm at dinner and so "dont even think about eating a little bit.. eat all you want". They havent decided on a date for baptism yet, but they read the book of mormon together everyday this week, so thats a good step in the right direction. Also they met the bishop yesterday, and they seem to really like him and trust him already.
Sandys friend Lucky.. haha shes way good. We taught her and her family at her house and man.. shes a trooper. She raised her 3 kids all by herself. Thats skilled. We havent even gotten to teach Lucky about the Book of Mormon but she has read it everyday and prayed with her family everyday. She reads and doesnt have a clue what it means (sometimes) but she feels the spirit. She came to Church.. LOVED IT. Again. Her daughter prayed during the lesson and it was pretty normal.. nothing out of the ordinary, but at the end she added a little sentence that was awesome: "Please help My mom to not have any work on sunday". We had taught the Sabbath day and Lucky was asking about emergency situations. She said she could keep it holy though. It was nice to see that her daughter, who really didnt talk that much in the lesson, was actually paying attention.
Sandys other friend Nice is doing good. She wont pick up for the Din Daeng Elders (who are missionaries hha) but she picked up for us. She read the Book of Momron everyday and she even got some of her Christian friends on her back: "stay away from the mormons! They are evil and have lots of wives!!!". Nice was just like, "uh okay, thanks for telling me. If thats history than its history, but i already know its where i need to go". Yee son. Funny how people just do the work for us sometimes isnt it? "By their works ye shall know them".
Okay well i think thats all i got right now. I love you all and am grateful for your support. If you didnt get to everyday this past week, please "i exhort you", make time this week: Read the Book of Mormon UR DAY!
Also, im curious.. what is our Ward Mission Plan like?
Love, Elder Gudmundsen
uuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhgggggggggggggggggggggggggggg..... I feel tired.
But not really.
Interesting week. Dont really know exactly how i feel about it yet hahah.. ill tell you one thing, im not satisfied with it thats for sure. We had a lot of trainings this week.. speciallized traiings of the simplified curriculum from the MTC progream. Good stuff. THis week was on revelation through the Book of Mormon. Great stuff. I enjoy the trainings actually. Giving them is fun too. However, it was kinda long haha. We decided to teach all 3 district meetings in one week that way we can get it all out of the way in one week. So that means that this week we will be able to go out and find full time. This week we found 1 new investigator.. kind of a bummer. The lesson started out well (he even put his dogs away so that they wouldnt interrupt us) and then prayed with us no problem. But when we tried to read from the Book of Mormon with him he just started FREAKING out... like, there was no way that we would have been able to read with him in that lesson and help him feel the spirit too.. i dont know what he was afraid of (truth?) but oh man he was scared out of his pants (almost literally.. he was only wearing boxers ahah). We asked him what was wrong and he just did that nervous laugh and looked everywhere but our eyes.. we asked him if it was his family.. that if he read out of this book he would automatically change religions? He said yes. We asked to just make an appointment with him and his family cause that would be better anyway. He agreed. So hopefullly when we get back to him this week he will open up a little more. I cant say i disagree.. those who dont like change should be scared of the Book of Mormon haha.
Other than that we taught a lot of other lessons and just didnt get anything good.. got rejected.. a lot. More than ive been used to lately. Kinda weird. We did teach a lot, just found no one who was ready or willing to study more and apply the teachings to their lives. Kinda rough. But like Roger back in Buriram always said, "everyday is a 'praise the Lord day' no matter what happens". Indeed. We both feel that although this neighborhood that we have invited at everyday for the last 4 months is really good (and we will continue to invite there every now and then) we are going to move over to this new flat complex across the street. It looks big. And we feel like its inspired that we move. I personally feel stoked to get up in there and just start removing the SUPA dark veil of unbelief shrouding all their minds. Stupid sin. Nobody even likes you.
"You dont have any friends! nobody likes you!".
So there is this new thing that we have been implementing with our daters and with our current progressing investigators. President Smith has talked with the Mission president over in Cambodia and he said that the church is growing rapidly (they are getting 2 stakes in just a little while) but they have the "in the front door and out the back door" baptism thing going on. So the mission president there has had all his missionaries commit their investigators to read the entire Book of Mormon cover to cover before they will be baptized. President Smith loved the idea and is now implementing it over here. Everyones on board and its now a big determining factor as to when we will commit people to be baptized. If someone reads the Book of Mormon slow, so be it.. they will have to have a date that is further away then. We were about to commit Tam and Noke to do that the other day but Noke said it herself: "we have to read the whole book before we are baptized right?" haha.. Elder Siriphan and i looked at each other laughing (cause that was the commitment we had planned on before we taught them) and said "actually, yes. We were about to say that". Speaking of those 2.. they are doing really great. We took them over to Elijah's familys house (his wifes name is Zuan) and they all seemd to be so happy. Even though Elijahs kids dont understand a thing that Tam and Nokes kids are saying, they try to be friends with them as much as possible. Quite adorable. Phoenix absolutely LOVES their house.. she just runs around like a maniac liek its her own house. Super funny. I think it really helps Tam and noke feel good too. They look happy and laugh a lot while over there. It was kinda funny.. on the way over to their house the first time, Tam was talking a little bit about how he doesnt like rich people that much.. in my mind im like.. "uhhhh... Elijahs house is pretty high so...eh, oh well.. they already like the people!". Kinda amusing. But it didnt seem to phase him once he was over.. i think they were just really grateful for their kindness. Last night at dinner Elijah just tapped his arm at dinner and so "dont even think about eating a little bit.. eat all you want". They havent decided on a date for baptism yet, but they read the book of mormon together everyday this week, so thats a good step in the right direction. Also they met the bishop yesterday, and they seem to really like him and trust him already.
Sandys friend Lucky.. haha shes way good. We taught her and her family at her house and man.. shes a trooper. She raised her 3 kids all by herself. Thats skilled. We havent even gotten to teach Lucky about the Book of Mormon but she has read it everyday and prayed with her family everyday. She reads and doesnt have a clue what it means (sometimes) but she feels the spirit. She came to Church.. LOVED IT. Again. Her daughter prayed during the lesson and it was pretty normal.. nothing out of the ordinary, but at the end she added a little sentence that was awesome: "Please help My mom to not have any work on sunday". We had taught the Sabbath day and Lucky was asking about emergency situations. She said she could keep it holy though. It was nice to see that her daughter, who really didnt talk that much in the lesson, was actually paying attention.
Sandys other friend Nice is doing good. She wont pick up for the Din Daeng Elders (who are missionaries hha) but she picked up for us. She read the Book of Momron everyday and she even got some of her Christian friends on her back: "stay away from the mormons! They are evil and have lots of wives!!!". Nice was just like, "uh okay, thanks for telling me. If thats history than its history, but i already know its where i need to go". Yee son. Funny how people just do the work for us sometimes isnt it? "By their works ye shall know them".
Okay well i think thats all i got right now. I love you all and am grateful for your support. If you didnt get to everyday this past week, please "i exhort you", make time this week: Read the Book of Mormon UR DAY!
Also, im curious.. what is our Ward Mission Plan like?
Love, Elder Gudmundsen
Bonjourno
Sent January 29
Well it was a very successful week.. lots of stuff went on.. lots of business, meetings, errands and other things that popped up out of nowhere. We got little to no inviting (maybe about 30 minutes yesterday night before going home).
Zone conference was a success. It was super powerful and President Smith gave a superb sermon about the Gospel of Repentance, as given by Elder Perkins from the asia area presidency. My favorite quotes: "Repentance is hard.. its supposed to be. And quite often the hardest part for all mankind is the doctrine of forgiveness; especially here in thailand. Its abroad in the church. As stated in the Doctrine and Covenants secton 64 verse 10 it is required of us to forgive all men. The lord is the judge. If we choose to forgive not all men then WE are limiting the atonement and placing ourselves as the judge above Christ. That is apostasy.". I like that.
With that lets get into some investigators progress shall we? Sandy was baptized.. woohoo! Holy stuff her baptismal service was soooo good. She was crying before she even got to the stand (and what of her friends daughters came from Rangsit which is where ELder Furr moved to so he was able to come as well). She gave a very powerful testimony thanking everyone who helped ehr and quoted her favorite speaker, President Uchtdorf. She did what she was suposed to do to: Invite EVERYONE. It was a saturday baptism so there were fewer people than a sunday baptism, but man there were a ton of people! She got her younger sister to come, friends from work, frieds from Chon Buri (which is 2 hours away) and they all brought friends too. Some were just coming out to support but werent actually interested but then others.. oh are they interested now. Sandy was incredibly sincere and her testimony was very heartfelt. Everyone there could feel of her truthfulness and love for the gospel. She also bore testimony to the pwoer of the Book of Mormon and its converting power for her. She quoted and read from Alma 37:37. OH man this woman is amazing! Shes gonna bring so many people into the church. I dont know this man, but i now know his name: Nathan Ricks. He works for NewSkin (or however you spell it) and he is the reason why Sandy (and a nother friend which we taught yesterday which i have yet to mention) were interested in the Church. He came to a meeting once in Thailand. THey invited him to go sightseeing. He rejected saying that the following day he was going to Church. They thought he was joking and he said no, hes going to Church. They didnt understand why, but they wanted to know. She thanked him too in her testimony. Elder Furr and i wrote his name down.. this man is an example of living the gospel. One day ill shake this mans hand.
So, her friend: Nice. Thats her name, NIce. Shes been to Utah, Temple Square, the temple, the tabernacle, conference hall, etc.. the works! She wants to be mormon. She put her name down in the referral media center, but has been wodnering why no one has ever brought the book! I wonder too. Maybe that systeem needs a reboot! Sandy invited her tothe baptism, but she couldnt make. However she came yetserday to Church. She doesnt look like a cryer. She cried. She loved church.. i mean LOVED church. Shes quick to observe and quick to understand. The only problem? Shes in another area! So we wont be the ones to teach her (after yesterday haha.. we taught the first lesson) but she will be coming to Church in Asoke. She also expressed that she sbeen looking for a place...a palce that feels like home and a place that will help her understand her more. She got a belief in God at temple square and finally found what she was looking for yesterday. She committed herself to read the Book of Mormon before she is baptized.. pretty insane. Speaking of which, thats a new committment for all missionaries and investigators: Read the book before they are bapitzed. Its not an actually committment, meaning if they dont do it, we wont forbid them from being baptized, but we will deifintely see who tried and who didnt. If they had 3 months to finish and are only to 1 Nephi 15, well thats a good reason to not pass them. As Ezra Taft BEnson said, "there is a difference between a convert who is built up on the rock of Christ through the Book of Mormon and stays hold of that iron rod, and one who is not.". These people need to be reading this book! We all need to be reading it more! She didnt get a baptismal date yesterday simply because.. well, someone in the lesson may or may not have talked WAY to much and we couldnt fit everything in. No wurrs.. she will have a date this week.
Speaking of people with dates, Lucky has one! She accepted it with flying colors. Her date is the 3rd of March (ill be gone already). We just taught teh Sabbath the other day and she is a little worried about it, but she believes that she will be able tod o it for sure. She just has to clear some work things and then it will be good. She brought her daughters to Church and they seemed to enjoy it. The son didnt come.. hes stubborn. We'll get him haha.
Tam and Noke are doing a lot better. We went over with Brother Elijah and talked straight up with them. Tam said soemthing scary.. he almost threw away the path he knew was right. Hes been pretty discouraged lately and felt like God hasnt been helping him when he prays and does the things he knows he should. He however didnt throw away the path because he already has faith and knows its correct. But he says hes tired (yes he usuallyd oes speak more than NOke does). We asked him why he think he is tired. He went off about work and kids and other things, and finally we just stopped him. I was just like, "look tam.. i know im the black sheep in this group and the only one without a wife, but i know why you're tired. Because everything you just said was all about yourself. YOu are tired because you are trying to lead a family WITHOUT your family. Your tired because you and your wife arent talking. You are tired because although you are doing a great job of using your faith and keeping the commandments, you are cutting one thing off: Daily reading and praying as a family. If you were to do that, you wouldnt be tired. You are tired because you dont have Noke. And Noke is clearly tired because she doesnt have you. Not only are you tired because of this, but you open the door for Satan to come in and destroy your family". Elijah shared a lot of his experiences so far and how he has "companionship inventory" with his wife everyweek. pretty cool. We committed them to do these things and to talk together about their own baptismal date. The next day we went back and Tam was reading for her! It was way cool. THey are turning around and things are looking up a lot. They have been through a lot and at this point i felt super relieved.. ive been worrying about them a lot, but realized that that doesnt help at all. They went to church and rejected his mothers invitation to go the Buddhist temple.. she wasnt very happy. But he knew it was right. AH MAN I LOVE THIS FAMILY!
Niyome is doing studdly.. hes got a lot of repentance to do. cob.
Andy is also doing way well. We havent talked to him in the past 2 days cause he went to Phuket, but he said he would got o Church there. Hope he did.
Still finding other investigators.. been rough without the time to go inviting. This week we had an Elder get appendicitis. He was hospitilized the night before zone conference and had surgery the same night. Hes been down now and wont be able to work for a few a weeks. Kinda stinks cause he only has 5 weeks left of his mission left anyway haha. We had to go exchange with him and his companion so his companion could go back to their area and get garments and other stuff.. that took the entire day after Zone Conference and so our area had nothing happen haha. Saturday.. super busy. Zone Leader council in the moring (way good.. coming out with a new way to work with the members.. im repenting) and then interviews for baptism since that Elder who got sick couldnt do them (both passed) and then back for the baptism.. So this is Bangkok and traffic was intense.. we were literally running from place to place.. came running into the baptism 15 minutes late at FULL speed.. we were busy, but it was all good things. The morning was focused on preparing people for baptism.. the afternoon was interviewing people that were already prepared for it and the evening was the baptism. Oh how sweet it is to be a missionary! After that we had a great coordination meeting.. and changed the mood of things. We asked them what the goals for baptism was for the ward for the year.. didnt have one yet. So we made a mutual goal: 50. Took it to the Bishop: 40. 40 baptisms for this year. Its totally possible. Instead of talking about investigators and all their concerns, we just talk about ways to make our misisonary goals be one with the ward goals. It works.
Okay.. cob leew (no you arent supposed to understand that). Love you all. The Book of Mormon is true! Read it. And again. Also write me letters. I want to hear about experiences with sharing the Book of Mormon. mmmm
Elder Gudmundsen
Well it was a very successful week.. lots of stuff went on.. lots of business, meetings, errands and other things that popped up out of nowhere. We got little to no inviting (maybe about 30 minutes yesterday night before going home).
Zone conference was a success. It was super powerful and President Smith gave a superb sermon about the Gospel of Repentance, as given by Elder Perkins from the asia area presidency. My favorite quotes: "Repentance is hard.. its supposed to be. And quite often the hardest part for all mankind is the doctrine of forgiveness; especially here in thailand. Its abroad in the church. As stated in the Doctrine and Covenants secton 64 verse 10 it is required of us to forgive all men. The lord is the judge. If we choose to forgive not all men then WE are limiting the atonement and placing ourselves as the judge above Christ. That is apostasy.". I like that.
With that lets get into some investigators progress shall we? Sandy was baptized.. woohoo! Holy stuff her baptismal service was soooo good. She was crying before she even got to the stand (and what of her friends daughters came from Rangsit which is where ELder Furr moved to so he was able to come as well). She gave a very powerful testimony thanking everyone who helped ehr and quoted her favorite speaker, President Uchtdorf. She did what she was suposed to do to: Invite EVERYONE. It was a saturday baptism so there were fewer people than a sunday baptism, but man there were a ton of people! She got her younger sister to come, friends from work, frieds from Chon Buri (which is 2 hours away) and they all brought friends too. Some were just coming out to support but werent actually interested but then others.. oh are they interested now. Sandy was incredibly sincere and her testimony was very heartfelt. Everyone there could feel of her truthfulness and love for the gospel. She also bore testimony to the pwoer of the Book of Mormon and its converting power for her. She quoted and read from Alma 37:37. OH man this woman is amazing! Shes gonna bring so many people into the church. I dont know this man, but i now know his name: Nathan Ricks. He works for NewSkin (or however you spell it) and he is the reason why Sandy (and a nother friend which we taught yesterday which i have yet to mention) were interested in the Church. He came to a meeting once in Thailand. THey invited him to go sightseeing. He rejected saying that the following day he was going to Church. They thought he was joking and he said no, hes going to Church. They didnt understand why, but they wanted to know. She thanked him too in her testimony. Elder Furr and i wrote his name down.. this man is an example of living the gospel. One day ill shake this mans hand.
So, her friend: Nice. Thats her name, NIce. Shes been to Utah, Temple Square, the temple, the tabernacle, conference hall, etc.. the works! She wants to be mormon. She put her name down in the referral media center, but has been wodnering why no one has ever brought the book! I wonder too. Maybe that systeem needs a reboot! Sandy invited her tothe baptism, but she couldnt make. However she came yetserday to Church. She doesnt look like a cryer. She cried. She loved church.. i mean LOVED church. Shes quick to observe and quick to understand. The only problem? Shes in another area! So we wont be the ones to teach her (after yesterday haha.. we taught the first lesson) but she will be coming to Church in Asoke. She also expressed that she sbeen looking for a place...a palce that feels like home and a place that will help her understand her more. She got a belief in God at temple square and finally found what she was looking for yesterday. She committed herself to read the Book of Mormon before she is baptized.. pretty insane. Speaking of which, thats a new committment for all missionaries and investigators: Read the book before they are bapitzed. Its not an actually committment, meaning if they dont do it, we wont forbid them from being baptized, but we will deifintely see who tried and who didnt. If they had 3 months to finish and are only to 1 Nephi 15, well thats a good reason to not pass them. As Ezra Taft BEnson said, "there is a difference between a convert who is built up on the rock of Christ through the Book of Mormon and stays hold of that iron rod, and one who is not.". These people need to be reading this book! We all need to be reading it more! She didnt get a baptismal date yesterday simply because.. well, someone in the lesson may or may not have talked WAY to much and we couldnt fit everything in. No wurrs.. she will have a date this week.
Speaking of people with dates, Lucky has one! She accepted it with flying colors. Her date is the 3rd of March (ill be gone already). We just taught teh Sabbath the other day and she is a little worried about it, but she believes that she will be able tod o it for sure. She just has to clear some work things and then it will be good. She brought her daughters to Church and they seemed to enjoy it. The son didnt come.. hes stubborn. We'll get him haha.
Tam and Noke are doing a lot better. We went over with Brother Elijah and talked straight up with them. Tam said soemthing scary.. he almost threw away the path he knew was right. Hes been pretty discouraged lately and felt like God hasnt been helping him when he prays and does the things he knows he should. He however didnt throw away the path because he already has faith and knows its correct. But he says hes tired (yes he usuallyd oes speak more than NOke does). We asked him why he think he is tired. He went off about work and kids and other things, and finally we just stopped him. I was just like, "look tam.. i know im the black sheep in this group and the only one without a wife, but i know why you're tired. Because everything you just said was all about yourself. YOu are tired because you are trying to lead a family WITHOUT your family. Your tired because you and your wife arent talking. You are tired because although you are doing a great job of using your faith and keeping the commandments, you are cutting one thing off: Daily reading and praying as a family. If you were to do that, you wouldnt be tired. You are tired because you dont have Noke. And Noke is clearly tired because she doesnt have you. Not only are you tired because of this, but you open the door for Satan to come in and destroy your family". Elijah shared a lot of his experiences so far and how he has "companionship inventory" with his wife everyweek. pretty cool. We committed them to do these things and to talk together about their own baptismal date. The next day we went back and Tam was reading for her! It was way cool. THey are turning around and things are looking up a lot. They have been through a lot and at this point i felt super relieved.. ive been worrying about them a lot, but realized that that doesnt help at all. They went to church and rejected his mothers invitation to go the Buddhist temple.. she wasnt very happy. But he knew it was right. AH MAN I LOVE THIS FAMILY!
Niyome is doing studdly.. hes got a lot of repentance to do. cob.
Andy is also doing way well. We havent talked to him in the past 2 days cause he went to Phuket, but he said he would got o Church there. Hope he did.
Still finding other investigators.. been rough without the time to go inviting. This week we had an Elder get appendicitis. He was hospitilized the night before zone conference and had surgery the same night. Hes been down now and wont be able to work for a few a weeks. Kinda stinks cause he only has 5 weeks left of his mission left anyway haha. We had to go exchange with him and his companion so his companion could go back to their area and get garments and other stuff.. that took the entire day after Zone Conference and so our area had nothing happen haha. Saturday.. super busy. Zone Leader council in the moring (way good.. coming out with a new way to work with the members.. im repenting) and then interviews for baptism since that Elder who got sick couldnt do them (both passed) and then back for the baptism.. So this is Bangkok and traffic was intense.. we were literally running from place to place.. came running into the baptism 15 minutes late at FULL speed.. we were busy, but it was all good things. The morning was focused on preparing people for baptism.. the afternoon was interviewing people that were already prepared for it and the evening was the baptism. Oh how sweet it is to be a missionary! After that we had a great coordination meeting.. and changed the mood of things. We asked them what the goals for baptism was for the ward for the year.. didnt have one yet. So we made a mutual goal: 50. Took it to the Bishop: 40. 40 baptisms for this year. Its totally possible. Instead of talking about investigators and all their concerns, we just talk about ways to make our misisonary goals be one with the ward goals. It works.
Okay.. cob leew (no you arent supposed to understand that). Love you all. The Book of Mormon is true! Read it. And again. Also write me letters. I want to hear about experiences with sharing the Book of Mormon. mmmm
Elder Gudmundsen
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