July 25th Letter

Hello family,

Happy Pioneer Day!!! I didn't even remember that today was a holiday until I read your emails. It is kind of funny that in the ward at home they only talked about the pioneers and in the ward here they didn't even mention it. But we did have a couple of good talks. One was about a convert in China who was beaten by his family after he was baptized because he changed religions, but stayed really strong in the church after because he knew it was all true. The other speaker just read a chapter out of the gospel principles book and then said "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen." That last talk was a bit boring, but very informative. I had a pretty sweet experience yesterday, once a month the Zone Leaders in Bangkok get to go and meet with the stake president and talk to him about the concerns that the missionaries see in the wards and branches. It is kind of a big deal because Thailand only has one stake so he is pretty much the leader of the church in Bangkok, and he is such a nice guy. He has a deep leadership voice (which is rare for Thai people) and he is just beaming with love. It was kind of a fun time.

This last week we did a zone training. It was the first big zone gathering that I have had here, it was a lot of fun, but it isn't the same thing as a Zone Conference. We only have Zone Conferences 4 times a year, and all the other months we have these zone trainings which are almost the same thing; however, they are shorter and we focus on one principle of the "teaching curriculum" (the church puts these out). This month was about revelation through church attendance. It was really a great meeting, Elder Larson and I taught about the importance of helping our investigators get to church so they can receive this revelation. If you ever want a good read, you should open up Preach My Gospel and read in the Commandments Section on Sabbath Day Worship. It has some really great promises about keeping the Sabbath Day holy.

This next week seems pretty simple. We don't have to do anything big, we may do a couple of switch offs if we have some time. This next week is the last week of the transfers so nothing big is going on, but I don't think anything is changing here. I think Elder Larson and I will be together for another month; however, your next week sounds pretty exciting. Can you believe that it is already time for Maren and Andy to leave? That is funny how Aunt Leslee gets to come back to Utah to sit in a car and go to Las Vegas. What are you guys going to do down there, anything special? I kind of miss going down and hiking in red rock, that is something I will want to do when I get back.

As for something new that I ate this week, I had pumpkin yogurt – Oh man it was so good. I can't even explain to you. It sounded weird at first because it isn't a fruit, but it turns out to be really sweet and good. The relief society did a cooking activity on Saturday and we ate the results of that on Sunday. So we had some pretty interesting food.

Well, the movies this week are 1)Princess Diaries 2)Gone in Sixty Seconds 3)I Am Legend. I can't think of how these are related at all. The only thing I can think of would be the Ford Mustang – is that it?

Anyways, I love you guys, Have a great week. Be safe driving down to Las Vegas.