Thai'd Up for 18 Months: We have passed our month mark! Week 5

We have passed our month mark! And what a way to celebrate with ice cream bars and fireworks... Oh wait that was supposed to be celebrating for the 4th of July. But we only have one more month to go here at the MTC!

Monday, was pday as usual. The temple was closed so unfortunately we weren't able to go for our regular pday activity. However, class that night was really good. Since being at the MTC we have seen clips and recordings of previous devotionals Elder Bednar has given. He really knows how to speak directly to missionaries. When he speaks, he knows what to say and how to say it. I always feel so impacted by the things he teaches. So for class on Monday, we watched a clip from a devotional Elder Bednar gave about promptings from the Holy Ghost. He was saying that most promptings aren't even recognized as an important prompting from the spirit. You don't always feel that burning or see visions of what you need to do. As long as you are trying your best to be a good boy or girl and act on the good thoughts you have, that is you acting on spiritual promptings. He told a story from his mission in which he had the thought President Packer might need money in case he got hungry on the train in Germany. That money ended up saving him and his wife from a lot of trouble when crossing through Eastern Germany with an extended passport. If Elder Bednar wouldn't have acted on that prompting of, "oh they might be hungry and want to buy some food," they would have not made it through the crossing of borders and would have been kicked off the train. With that money they were able to do what I think he called spiritual bargaining and paid the guard off. All he thought was they might be hungry, but the Lord knew what they needed the money for. He made sure to tell one of his righteous servants to give money to them, even though he didn't know why he was doing it. We don't always have to know the why as long as we are acting on the good thoughts we are having.

Tuesday was pretty uneventful except the devotional. Lowell M. Snow, a former member from the quorum of the seventy spoke. I think he actually said that he was from Draper. Anyway, he spoke about being converted. That it is not enough to just be converted to the church, but that you have to be converted to the Lord.

Wednesday we got to host the new missionaries! That was uh, interesting. Ha ha It was pretty hot that day so we all got a bit sweaty. Oh and our whole district was wearing pink, because on Wednesdays we wear pink. And if you aren't, you can't sit with us... And actually we couldn't find Sister Pitts or Sister Alley at dinner (and they weren't wearing pink). Sorry, back to hosting. I saw the Days. The ones in our ward I don't know really well. Their son is going to Korea. So they snatched a pic that might be coming your way. I kinda promised I would make sure that Elder Day was doing alright, but I haven't seen him since dinner that night... I'm sure he is great though! Girls have such heavy suitcases! Really the Elders should host the Sisters and the Sisters should host the Elders. If only we didn't have to show them to their rooms. But my forearm muscle, you can honestly feel the difference! Ha ha

Thursday was not too eventful... When Sister Brown and I taught our "investigator" Naang this week, well we taught him about baptism. Ha ha And as a district, we are trying to keep our lessons to the time limit. Well we were running short on time so we gave him the baptismal invitation and he responded by saying I don't know enough to be baptized. So I told him that we would teach him and help him prepare. I asked him to pray this week before our next lesson and ask Heavenly Father if he wanted him to be baptized. He said he would, but Sister Brown didn't understand exactly what I told him to do so she thought he said he would be baptized. So she got all excited and told him, "Sidta mii kwamsug khun yaag rab baptidsama mag mag mag!" Which translates to something like, "I am so so so so happy you want to be baptized!" He just looked a little confused and I thought maybe I didn't understand her Thai. But after we got out and talked about, well she thought he said yes I will be baptized. Ha ha I'm sure next lesson we can get him to commit and then she can really express her joy. But that's why teaching in Thai is so fun, because you get to have all those fun misunderstandings.

Friday was a good day! Oh I am going to start with gym. :) Sister Herrmann really likes the 4th of July. Ha ha she was dressed in red white and blue and waving flags... for gym. Ha ha But we played this really cool game called Kuu? Something like that anyway. You get to throw wooden sticks at wooden blocks to knock them down. Sister Herrmann and I were a team against some other Sisters and we won! Ha ha Anyway, for the 4th of July most of our district (pretty much everyone but Sister Peck) wore red white and blue. So that was fun. Oh and Elder Williams was throwing a fit all day because he is from Australia. He told me there is only one other country who loves themselves more than we do, and its New Zealand. Ha ha But they had a special devotional that night. When we walked in, it was funny because they had up on the projector screens a slide that said, "Elders can take off their suit coats, or not, its a free country." And then they had some musical numbers and a talk about how the atonement is what really allows us to be free. After we watched 17 Miracles. I felt bad because I can't prevent myself from laughing when Savannah Lewis' character dies, there are just too many inside jokes about it in the 5th ward young womens. I can't take it seriously. But after the movie the MTC President announced "Sister Carrie Underwood" had just finished singing. (Ha ha, Sister...) That we could all go out and get a dove ice cream bar and if we stand at the edge of the gate we can watch the fireworks! So we got to watch the fireworks from the stadium of fire. The view from the MTC isn't half bad. I really love fireworks. It was weird because when he made the announcement it was 10:15 and my body was tired and ready to be in bed. Ha ha even though I can't fall asleep on time or early my body still can't handle being out past 10:30.

Saturday came and we were all exhausted from being out late for the 4th. So that was probably fun for our teachers. Ha ha We had TRC again and Sister Brown and I were able to teach 2 girls that were actual converts from Thailand! They spoke really fast but through the spirit we were able to understand nearly everything they said.

Sunday we had Josh Wright give the devotional. He is a really good pianist. He mostly just played but between each song he gave a couple sentences of good advice and a story. The song I liked best that he played was the clair de lune blended with How Great Thou Art. It was beautiful.

Funny quote of the week, well it needs a bit of background information. In the devotional on Tuesday, Elder Snow mentioned the only thing he remembered learning from his 5 day stay at the mission home was that he needed to use a shoe horn everyday so he wouldn't get blisters on his fingers. He was going to Germany and that is the only thing he got out of it... Anyway, Tuesday nights we have district devotional review. Sister Mamea asked what a shoe horn was. Elder Luker wins for funniest quote of the week (hopefully its still funny if you weren't there...), "You know those guys at the airport directing the planes with those sticks? That's what a shoe horn does for your foot."

Today we cleaned the temple. It was really cool. We got to help clean the chandeliers which they only do once a year. And only a few districts get to do it so it was a very rare opportunity. So really we only cleaned a couple of the chandeliers from the sealing rooms and moved a lot of chairs. And then we spied on the guys carving the carpet in the celestial room for about a minute. Its crazy how much they do to the temple when they clean it. They completely redo a bunch of the carpet and stuff. I wish them luck to finishing before they reopen next Monday!

Also, Sister Zoller wanted me to let you know, I let her borrow some digestzen and it worked! She said she is super grateful!

Also thanks Grandma for the letter! It sounds like you are having an eventful summer so far! Ha ha Happy anniversary to you and grandpa! Love you guys!

Well I love you all and now I am off to go clean the temple!

-Sister Nethercott