Siam I Am: i blinked...

February 2, 2014

ANOTHER week has come and gone. this one... actually seems to have evaporated into thin air. i don't know where it went.

actually i do.

now i just have to decide if i want to build up... or say the big news first. i'll let you decide!

monday. we went to ayuttaya! take two for the ancient capital of thailand... old ruins, giant buddha statues... no sunburn this time (thank goodness!). i did eat very strange fish balls on a stick, which kind of resembled the taste of frozen fish sticks. but then they cover them with this delicious sauce... and i was in heaven. the cool thing about thailand is that you NEVER need to cook. you can find every meal on the street. and you could eat a whole day for under $5. and that's even being generous. if you REALLY wanted to go crazy... you could snack and still probably be under that limit.

they have tons of meat-on-a-stick. i don't really know what half of it is... i usually try and stick with the more distinguishable meats... like chicken. the strange round balls of... mystery meat? i don't usually go for those. we had them at a members house one time... and i decided i was happier before. ;)

tuesday. was a fairly typical tuesday. we go to district meeting. where we talked about expectations and faith. elder yuen drew a picture about the tide. showing us two different levels. and then he drew waves at the two different levels. "you see this lower level? this might have been you before the mission, or even in the mtc. you had good days and bad days. but even on your best days before, you still never were as high as you are even now on a bad day." it really helped me to realize something. there are days (and probably weeks) when i feel like... poo. but i look back at where i've come from, and i see how much higher and better i am now. (which reminds me of another story i heard in church yesterday about minecraft. who would have thunk i would hear about that here???) minecraft story: they talked about a video that shows someone working through a maze. it takes about 10 minutes. then they finally reach the end. and they are able to look down from a hill at everything they have just come through. and the maze looks... easy. it didn't seem that way at the time. but they understand what they had to come through, and though at the time it didn't seem easy, they look back now and see how far they have come. my lesson from tuesday? we're always growing. we're always stretching. and one day... we'll be at the top of the hill... and look back at everything that we've done. and we'll realize how much we actually WERE doing and how far we HAVE come!

wednesday... ohhhh wednesday!

we had a great couple of lessons. with a fantastic sri lankan family that got baptized a year ago and is planning on going to the temple! we love them sooooo much. they are sooooo wonderful!!! i just can't even say enough wonderful things about them!!!!! and then we had dinner at a member house. she's thai. but her and her husband have a thai restaurant in the states. they brought their daughter back to learn english. she fed us kfc. did i mention they have soooo many of them here???

we had an appointment at the church. so we had to bike 30+ minutes back to the church at mach 10 in order to get there. we had some really GREAT investigators. and guess what. they aren't in our area - AGAIN! it was like ALL of last month came right back again and slapped us in the face. we went home. sooo ticked. (not very missionary-like...) as we were going home... i had thoughts like "why should i even try anymore... if nothing is going to work my way???" and other depressing variations. i won't share any more. but as we got close to home, i felt like we should try to contact. just for the last hour that we had left. not like ANY of our baptisms have EVER come from contacting. i just felt like my faith was very small. i asked sister phelps if we could do that. and i also felt like we should start with a prayer. ok. we told him we'd had a hard day and needed some help. and we asked for a miracle. and more faith.

i've never had as much fun contacting! i don't know what happened... but everything was different. probably just me. but it seemed like everything. and then the miracle. right before we planned on turning back (you see where this is going??) we talked to some people. i was talking to a guy wearing a headband. very nice. marginally interested. sister phelps was talking to a woman. turns out they were together. and we BOTH had wonderful conversations. and they were BOTH interested in learning. guess who came to church with us yesterday? :D

suffice it to say. i came home feeling very blessed and humbled.

thursday. we had struggled having a whole lot of success this week with getting all of the lessons we needed... thursday didn't help. but we spent a few wonderful hours talking to a new sister that moved into the english branch and helping her get her house organized. she reminds me of my mom... she said that she graduated in nursing... but got into staging houses because she just has "the eye". and she gave us homemade banana bread. and she has a craft area in her bedroom...

friday. everything pit. (how do you say that in english??? cancelled? fell-through? something like that...) we had zone training. 164 baptisms in January. a miracle. in our zone alone last month we had 30 something baptisms.... compared to 5 a year ago. the work is truly hastening.

we were also told to have 3 days of food storage. our solution: mcdonald's delivers.

saturday. our two miracle people from wednesday showed up! (i was losing faith in ALL investigators...) we had a great lesson with them. our member did most of the talking. that's only a problem when they have preach my gospel memorized... my favorite line was when he asked, "have you ever seen the rain? that's when heaven cries because there is so much evil in the world..." i don't know about that...

sunday. wow. definitely the most stressful day of the week for a missionary. especially a missionary WITH A BAPTISM!!! :)

charisa called us on monday and asked if she could get her interview this week. sure. just twist my arm. ;) she passed. and elder yuen just said she was soooo ready! she'd been out of bangkok for about a month (since before transfers) and NO ONE believed that she actually existed! i'll show you all...

so she got baptized yesterday.

it was so wonderful.

a few highlights. "i'd like to bear my testimony... i want to be baptized RIGHT NOW." - little kyle purdue (age 3?)

charisa: "where's my holy ghost?" maybe we forgot to mention you have to come next week to get that. it's a trick we missionaries play to make sure that you keep coming to church... ;)

they made us go back home last night. no going anywhere else. the rest of the world could go crazy... but we were going to be inside. trying to sleep and feel better... since sickness decided to claim both me and my companion this weekend.

the work still goes on!

i love you all!

and keep looking for those little miracles in your life - i promise they are there!

love

sister ellis