Siam I Am: shrimp delivered.

March 9, 2014

okey day. here we go!

as usual... this week was crazy. i think i thought that the work would slow down when i left bangkok to go to the boonies. (sister mullen and i lovingly refer to it as a 4-7 town. which basically means that it ONLY has 4 7-11 stores. which is CRAZY considering the thai people worship 7. not really. but they have almost as many sevens as they have wats.)

monday. didn't do much. we live in a hotel... so making oatmeal every morning with no microwave... is a little impossible. so we went to the store to find adequate morning food for the limited and meager circumstances we have in our room. namely an electric wok and a fridge. probably spent more msf than was necessary... but the popsicles i got will definitely come in handy on hot days when i feel like i'm going to die. which is quite frequently. i saw a picture from ben showing the snow up to his shoulders... and his ipad... and i though... what? that's not missionary work! at least not in thailand.... they give us bricks to use as phones. maybe it's because they know that when we get frustrated speaking in thai that we need to throw something... and they know the phones better be able to stand it. ;)

sister mullen likes to plan in an hour of "lay on my bed and think about stuff" time on p-days. with the new mormon messages that we got last week... i can say that we successfully accomplished that. there really isn't that much to do here. sometime here in the future we are going to go to sukothai... but we thought about it at 8:30 last night... and decided against it.

i'm always amazed at the miracles we get. we had 4 people committed to be baptized on the 16th this week. one of them...may or may not have dropped us. but that's beside the point. she DID want to be baptized... there's just some problem with her boyfriend. drat. we went contacting for a day and got 5 really solid numbers. i don't know what we did that day... but both sister mullen and i knew that it was different. we just felt so good about them all! they kind of proved all of our typical steriotypes wrong. like the people by the river that sell little fish in bags. (i have no idea why)... and the lady lounging on her cart that is attached to her scooter. we both knew that you NEVER get these people's numbers. they are always "not free"... but for whatever reason... this was the day that EVERYTHING was trying to teach us something. the day that i was NOT wanting to go contacting... that it was soooooooooooo hot... i think the lord wants us to go through those little decisions within ourselves.... overcoming my personal laziness and desires to do what i know he needs me to do. THEN the miracles happen. it's great. it's SO WONDERFUL!

thursday. zone training. you know what that means? 3 hour bus ride to the Pitz. (ok. it's really called pitsanulok...) but it is the PITS. the HOTTEST place in thailand. on a bus. whose shocks... were SHOT. oh. but i loved it so much. :) and then an hour meeting with the THAI zone leaders... never had a zone meeting ALL in thai before. that was interesting. then another 3 hour bus ride home. all in all... a fantastic day! which ended with a scripture study class with a few members of the ward.

this transfer is so different than the others... if we don't have a lesson... we have no less-active members. AT ALL. so what else can we do? we go inviting.

i'll never think that 2 hours of contacting is hard EVER AGAIN.

by the time we finished close to 5 hours in one day this week.... 2 hours was sounding like a party.

one night this week we went "attack contacting" (can you imagine the elders giving it any other name?) which basically consisted of us going to the market, and all standing in the same area.... talking to everyone that passed. most people... probably talked to 4 missionaries by the time they actually GOT to the market. it was fun. you wanna be baptized? you're getting baptized? why not? are you sure? or something close to that effect.

we had the district leader from chaing mai come down this last weekend to see our small little "group" and its progress. we were... a little stressed that we wouldn't get people to church. (like most missionaries EVERYWHERE.) so before the meeting started we're calling EVERYONE in our phones... telling them to get to church. 32 at church. that started in december. it was a miracle. we want to have 40 there by the end of the transfer. heavenly father can do it. now he's just waiting for his little helpers here in kamphaengphet to get out and hit the pavement to find some people!

it was really neat though. it was 10:00 and none of our people had showed up. i thought balanced had drifted out the window... but! a miracle! (oh me of little faith... again!) 2 investigators walked in the door 5 minutes after the meeting started.

and they liked it!

one of them smokes. drinks coffee. and isn't married to his "wife". (yes. that is a thing in thailand.) but he wants to get baptized. he's quitting them all. and he's going to marry his wife when she gets back from bangkok.

his name is also shrimp. (just a funny side note.)

we had shrimp delivered. yuk. yuk. yuk. (that's a giggle.)

life is crazy. it's busy. but i feel your prayers every single day.

know how much they are appreciated!!!!

and i'll eat some mango sticky rice for you. ;)

love you!

sister ellis