Marathon

Dear Family,

Diana has been married for three months already? Where did three months go? Have they had any success with finding work?

Once again I find myself sitting in an Internet shop full of rowdy teenagers playing computer games with their friends. All the noise is a bit distracting. We were eating dinner with one of the members in our branch, brother Gang, when a group of rowdy teenagers left from the table next to us in a big group. Brother Gang turned to me and told me that when he was that age he was juuust like them. I was thinking... rowdy? Then he said that whatever he did he did it in a group. He was always in a group and always following the society or social group that he was in. And when he had to go home, there was another group of people that he went with whose houses were in the same direction as his. Then he continued to explain that if he wanted to be a better person than he would have to change his social group to be with better people. Unfortunately there is a lot of truth in what he said. Even though smoking is against the rules in the Buddhist religion, people follow the society, and the society embraces smoking. There are SOOO many people who smoke here. How fortunate we are to have been raised in a society of such high standards and to have friends with such high standards. Being a member in Thailand is not easy at all.

Last Sunday Elder Panom and I successfully executed the fireside that we had been preparing. The theme was enduring to the end. It started out with a recording of me talking with music in the background (as an intro to get their attention), then another song played while the projector showed the lyrics in both Thai and English until the song got intense when we showed pictures from the scriptures up close on screen. Then we showed a short video and concluded with a slide presentation and an activity at the end. The electrical genius of it goes to brother Gang for helping put it all together. Thanks to the Church office for the projector. :) In the fireside we connected the gospel principal of enduring to the end to following the example of Jesus Christ and developing His attributes. Preach my Gospel reviews and teaches about the Christlike attributes that we should be striving for. The presentation was nice and smooth. We are going to talk to the members about which Christlike attribute they are working on and helping to encourage them in their efforts.

We are back to finding more investigators again as we just discontinued teaching a bunch of people who weren't ready. That's an interesting aspect of missionary work that I think perhaps a lot of people don't consider very often. It's true that everybody needs to eventually hear the gospel, but, there are a select few who are ready to obey it. Not that they need to be ready to obey all of it at once, but they need to be ready to accept change and exercise faith.

I thought that the restoration would be more important in a place where there were several sects of Christianity present, but I found that it's even more important here. There are people who accept multiple religions, and believe in simply being a good person. For instance the man I invited yesterday said that Christianity is good and Buddhism is good and we can live together. But Islam is it's own good and they are on their own. (They like to bash on Islam) That man said that his ancestors were Buddhist and they won't accept Christianity. He also said that we need to follow our ancestors beliefs, but we're all good, and can live together. That's just one example from yesterday.

But it is easy to smile when I look around and think of where I am and how funny the people are. Heh heh heh. So funny. You'll just have to come see for yourself. Every moment is a classical moment that I wish I could take a picture of here. Heh heh

I think that the more I get into awkward situations and go out of my comfort zone to share the gospel with these awesome people the better.

I love you guys,

Elder Lilly