Greeting, final push for kalasin

(May 19)

(sorry this email is kinda long)

This week to start we had an in-person District Council, and met up with everyone. It was nice, had really good lunch, and had a service project where we like deforested a plot of land. I got a scythe and yeah it was just a group of like 8 missionaries with machetes and swords just hacking at trees. It eventually started to rain really hard so we rushed back to the church and Sister Bei had picked us up.

We had finally scheduled an appointment with sister nui and her son am, and yeah we went straight back home, changed and went to her house. She lived sort of far away and we sort of got lost. But after being like 30+ minutes late we finally showed up. She was super nice and quickly invited us in. She has the fattest dogs I have ever seen in my entire life. They are built like giant eggs with toothpicks for legs. Her house was super nice and we had a great lesson. We then prayed for her dad who had been a little sick, and yeah it was probably just like one of the best first teaching experiences I have had in like 5 transfers.

Wednesday had a little bit of drama. The branch president (bratan A) said he was resigning after serving for 11 years which was crazy. Just some gossip (fresh milk and arms). But it got the ward stirring up quite a bit.

We also met up with Idea again, (investigator who is basically a member who can't get baptised because her grandma). She and her mom gave us these weird sour fruits and I didn't mind them too bad. They then proceeded to give me a giant bag that had hundreds of them and said to geen yeut yeut (eat a lot of them). So when we got home I just snacked on them and ate like 15ish berrie things.

Well the next day my stomach was absolutely obliterated and it was giving me quite similar feelings I had in my first area Sakhon Nakhon (with my stomach feeling like it was going to bust, and having to use the bathroom like super often.)

Later that day we played some basketball (I tried to) with a new member and some investigators we were hoping to teach.

I asked one of the new members(non) about the berries and he was like "Yeah, you're only supposed to eat like 2 or three of them at a time, and thai people avoid them because it hurts their stomach."

So, that explained a lot. I am a missionary so I can't really be too frustrated with idea or her mother but a warning or something would have been very nice. 😅

Well I pushed through Friday but Saturday was zone conference. That meant I had to survive a 4 hour karaoke bus ride without destroying my pants. So I had a miniature fast with only eating minimal foods on Friday, and just planned to try to sleep on the bus.

Luckily some of my prayers were answered because on Saturday morning I was feeling quite a bit better and I ended up surviving the bus ride.

When we got to the conference, I met up with desho and Ford from buriram. They were both super nice and it was great to catch up with them. I also met meh duun (super nice old lady) with champ (super cool kid from Ubon) and some other old members. The mission feels so long but so short at the same time, Its like a weird time warp and It honestly feels like it hasn't been super long since I've seen them when it had been.

The Saturday session was good, we ended it and we ended up staying there a little long because elder vang wanted to buy a guitar at a nearby shop. Then we ran into president kanyupan and he ended up giving us smoothies like at 9.30pm which was crazy. We got to the hotel, played some games with Elder dollar, and yeah.

The next day I had like zero issues with my stomach. The meeting was good, wrapped up and president spoke with the husband of sister dew who I just became pretty good friends with. And that about wraps up the week.

Thought and verse:

18 And thus my brethren did complain against me, and were desirous that they might not labor, for they did not believe that I could build a ship; neither would they believe that I was instructed of the Lord.

1 Nephi 17:18

I like this because it is an example of never letting doubts or the negative influence of others stop you from your vision.

Regardless of what it is, how it's happening, where, there will always be a person who thinks something is pointless or unintelligent. That does not mean we stop building our boat or reaching for our potential. There are tons of people that think missionaries are bad people, but I know my purpose of helping and making the world a better place, and that will never stop me from helping other people.

There are tons of people that think the world is cruel and hopeless, but never let that stop you from smiling or helping a neighbor. With belief, humans are able to achieve anything. We are able to build computer go to space, all of which ideas were probably mocked or though were stupid from many. But the potential of humans, and especially God is unlimited. And the biggest things that stop us from progressing is if we let ourselves fall.

(Isaac’s mom here - some of these photos are from last week)