Sister Maisie Carrillo: Thailand/Korat- week 14 I'm working towards that day when I can meet God again and hear Him say, "Well done." How great it would be to hear Him say those words to us!

Hello!

This week was such a nice week! It rained almost every single day. And when it rains here, it rains! You could get a full on shower by just walking out for 2 seconds. I love it though! We were biking from the church and the street was flooded up to my mid calves and we have to bike through it. It was awesome, except I was afraid of what was in the water. There were cockroaches and bugs floating around everywhere. I was afraid a snake was going to come up and bite me! But since it's been raining a lot, I feel like I've been seeing a lot more bugs than usual. I had a great experience with one while I was in the shower. I felt something on my leg, and I thought it was just my hair or something so I didn't really pay attention but then it started going up my leg and I look down and it's a centipede! I smacked it off my leg and managed to not scream. But then I was freaking out because I couldn't find it. I was looking everywhere for it and finally looked at my hand and there it was. Then I screamed and Sister Jo had to come and check on me. it was so gross! The rest of the day I felt like there were bugs crawling all over me!

Since it's been raining a lot though, and other reasons such as work, a lot of investigators have canceled appointments with us. They're afraid of the rain, they just really don't like it. I asked one of the members why they don't like it so much and they said because they get wet and they're afraid they'll get sick. I think it's funny. But anyways, it's given us a lot of time to go out and invite! Which has been fun, I've seen a lot of white people. I usually like to go and talk to them because they seem to have more of an opinion about stuff (since they have that Christian background) and I like to hear what they have to say. I always think it's so interesting. So let them say what they have to say and be respectful about it and then I share what I have to say and always end with they'll be able to know for themselves if what I say is true if they pray sincerely about it. I don't know if they ever do it, but I always like to invite them to pray. I've really enjoyed talking to them though, it gives me a good view on what I want to study during personal study.

I really love personal study! Probably my favorite part of the day and I get to start off my day with it! An hour just never seems like enough though. I've been reading a lot about the plan of salvation lately. Last week, I actually had a dream that I was reading in the doctrine and covenants and it was a section somewhere in the 70's. I skimmed through that during my personal study the next day and section 76 caught my eye. Which talked all about the kingdoms of God and where we will go in the next life depending on who we were in this life. Just studying that and the POS really has made me think about my life. How incredibly short it is and everything I do here determines what I will ultimately become. Which makes me want to try so much harder. I'm working towards that day when I can meet God again and hear Him say, "Well done." How great it would be to hear Him say those words to us! To know we did all that we could to stay faithful and give our hearts to Him.

We had some training this week! We're going to really try and focus on working with RC's and LA's. There are a lot of LA's here in Thailand! We're working on retention so we've been having meetings with the leadership in the ward to start working with the LA's and finding them and getting them back to church. We want them to feel loved and like they have a friend at church so we've talked about giving members certain LA's to call for activities or to go and visit and just be a friend to. Us missionaries are also going to work on our teaching such as really teaching about faith and repentance. Because if they have that strong foundation of faith, they'll have that foundation when the storms of the world come (Hel. 5: 12). And I think repentance is definitely something that sometimes I don't focus on enough. Repentance isn't an easy process but it's also something that we shouldn't be ashamed or afraid of. It's such a blessing for us to be able to repent! Without it, we would have no way of overcoming our natural selves or to be able to change our hearts. Repentance is what helps us to become more like our Savior, something we should be doing everyday. But repentance is how our investigators are really going to have that personal conversion. I really liked the training, I think it will help us to be better missionaries and help the members become missionaries as well.

Elder Holland is coming next month as I mentioned last week! But we get to actually meet him on the 15th! That day he's going to have just a session with the missionaries and then on Sunday, all the members and missionaries get to go listen to him speak. I'm so excited! So lucky to be able to listen to one of the apostles of the Lord!

Well that's all I've got for last week. We have a lot of great investigators! I love teaching them and being able to share my testimony of the gospel with them. I'm still trying to improve myself on not getting frustrated or holding myself back because of the language. That has been one of my really big struggles is the language. But I get better each week! I just have to look at how far I've come! I've only been learning it for 5 months, which isn't very long!

Ireland looks so cool! I really want to go there someday. The history would be so cool! I forwarded Lauren some of the pictures!

Hope you guys have fun in Ireland, love you both!!!

-Sis. Carrillo

2 Nephi 2 - it's a really good chapter they had us read for training this week!

Sister Uuray got baptized! :) I was lucky to get to teach her these last couple of weeks. The last lesson we taught her was about the temple, which is one of my favorite things to teach. Her sister (who is not a member) said she'd do whatever it took to get her sister to the temple.