Sister Maisie Carrillo: Thailand/Korat- week 9 If we're not experiencing trials, then we should be worrying. We need trials in order to learn and to grow!

Hey Mom!

My week was really good! It went by super fast because we were in Ubon from Thursday until yesterday for Zone Conference and District conference (now officially STAKE CONFERENCE!). I love Zone Conference! I got to meet a lot of missionaries that were in my zone and the Ubon zone (which included Sister Hayes and Elder Wertz!). We get randomly picked to go up and speak, I didn't have to speak but I had to give the opening prayer. I'd rather do that than give a talk haha! It was so good though, President said basically everything that I needed to hear. A lot of us have been struggling and he just mentioned that this is our own Gethsemane. If we are to be more like the Savior and know Him personally then we are going to have to experience some of the things that He did. If we're not experiencing trials, then we should be worrying is what he basically said. We need trials in order to learn and to grow. To know the Savior is life eternal. I thought that was so true! It really helped me a lot, gave me lots of perspective. I don't think I'm experiencing all these hardships for nothing. I know that Heavenly Father is trying to build me up from it!

So Zone conference was on Friday and then we didn't have meetings until Saturday night so us missionaries went and picked up trash off the streets (there is a lot of it!). This one lady saw us cleaning up and called us into her yard to come start cleaning it. We were just like ok! It was funny haha. People came up to us and told us thank you though and one lady even said she'd come to church because of our good example, which is awesome!

The meeting that night was for all the members in the Roi-Et and Ubon zones. It was fun to see our Korat members there. Two of the sisters in the ward just got their calls to the Bangkok Thailand Mission and report in November so I'll be serving along side of them, so excited! Hopefully I'll be able to train one of them! The meeting was at this really nice hotel. It was so funny, I had two khon Thais come up to me and ask if they could take a picture with me. It's so funny! Anyways the area president, President Gong, was there and so was President Senior. When President Gong spoke he had everyone that had been baptized in the last month and the last year stand up. It was so amazing how many people have been baptized. There was a lot of them. We just wanted to cry. So many miracles happening in Thailand and so many being brought unto Christ. It's the best thing in the world to be apart of this work! The next day though, Korat officially became a ward instead of a branch! This will be the third stake created in Thailand. We're all so excited!

Well this week we taught Brother Teerawut. He's been one of our investigators for a long time but we haven't been able to meet with him much because he's always working in Phuket! We had a date for him to be baptized on the 21st. Some sad news though, he's going to Phuket today and won't be back until August! We were really sad. But he was so great, he just told us that we should be proud of ourselves and that we brought him to Christ and he'll be baptized when we he gets back. So the next sisters that come in will have a dater right when they come in, if I'm not here still. Also some awesome news, Elder Mayo sent us a picture today of Brother Kim getting baptized! He got baptized yesterday! Yay for Brother Kim!

Everything is great here in Thailand though! I'm starting to get kind of sick though and losing a lot of my hair. If you can could you sent me some vitamins or something? The food here just has nothing nutritious in it, and my body is starting to shut down from it! Don't worry though, I'm going to call the office about it sometime this week.

There are dogs EVERYWHERE here just walking around the streets. It just makes me so sad because they live such a sad life on the streets. There are so many weird breeds of them here. Really I think they should either put them in a pound or put them down because some probably don't really want to live anymore. As horrible as that sounds that's how bad it is for them! But it's illegal to kill animals here. They think that they are their families reincarnated. It's weird.

Well I hope you guys have a great week! Miss and love you all!

-Sister Carrillo

2 Cor 12: 9-10 My scripture of the week!