Sister Maisie Carrillo: Thailand/Lampang- week 20 Things are great in Lampang! I love the members! I love the investigators! And I love the area!

Hello Family!

This week was a crazy one. I feel like that's just every day of my life though. Just constantly on the move and constantly working towards our goals. It's exhausting but it feels great!

Soooo I might have mentioned Brother Noy last week and if I didn't, he's one of our investigators that's already Christian and baptized and doesn't understand why he has to be baptized again (again, we have taught him a million times why!). But he said he just wants to study lots of different churches. We're working with him. I really like teaching him because he makes me think. I actually feel a challenge when I teach him because I have to learn how to answer his questions. That means I really have to study during my personal studies! I got really frustrated with him because he believes the Book of Mormon is true and I asked him straight up if he believed everything within it was true and he said yes. And then I said, "Well if that's true, then Joseph Smith translated it through the power of God, and if that's true then he truly did receive a calling from God to restore His church and be a prophet and if that's true then this church is true and has all the keys that the church did during Christ's time which means when you already got baptized you did not get baptized by the right authority, therefore you cannot go to the celestial kingdom unless you are baptized by the right authority." Yep I said that all in Thai! I was pretty proud. And he was like, "yeah, yeah I understand but....." He talks in circles a lot! I didn't really understand his answer but yeah, he's still a work in progress. We are also teaching Brother Santi who is also Christian. He has a baptismal date for the 13th next month and he brought his wife to church yesterday and she accepted a date for the 13th as well. He's improved a lot in the past week that we've taught him! He just showed up at the church one day asking when we teach English class and we invited him. Brother Jeff is another investigator that the sisters before us had contacted. He called us this last week and said he wanted to learn. He lived in Colorado for a while and had a friend that was LDS. He has a date for the 13th too! I'm so excited for all these people! They're really solid and are progressing so well! A lot of them have a Christian background. That's how it is up north, there's a lot of Christians.

I have some other exciting news! I called Sister Jo yesterday to get my RC's numbers so I could call them and I asked about First and Yogi. She said that the Bishop in Korat took them in for an interview to see if they could get baptized this week instead of November. They passed! They came out crying and jumping up and down because they knew they had passed and they were so excited. I cried when Sister Jo told me. I absolutely love those two! I'm so sad that I don't get to be there but I'm so happy for them! I have never been so happy!

Things are great here in Lampang. I love the members! I love our investigators and I love this area. It all just feels like a dream. We biked a ton this week! I even got sunburnt, which hasn't really happened since I've been here. The language is getting a lot easier! I understand a lot more and feel a lot more comfortable speaking. It all just gets easier each day. Things are a lot different here in Lampang. The church isn't very established, Elder Parker and Elder Lindley are in the branch presidency and will be conducting every other Sunday. We meet in a rented out building and there was only like 30 members at church this last week. SO different than what I'm used to. I feel very blessed that I get to help the church grow here. We're really trying to work with the leaders and get LA's back. It's hard work but we're determined to make a difference here!

So I love my life here in Lampang. The people really are crazy, the culture is so different from the Issan, they have chicken statues everywhere (apparently a long time ago the leader here worshipped chickens. Interesting), and it's just a cute little town. I really love it here! I have an awesome companion too! I love Sister Rem! We get along really well and have a lot of the same personality. We switch between T25 and running every day, and eat somtam all the time. It's so great!

Some things that I've learned is to strive to be better every single day. Be better than we were the day before and the next day be even better. That's what this life is for, is to keep making ourselves better each and every day! That's something I've been working on a lot. Learn from my mistakes and constantly be striving to be like my Savior. I feel closer to Him every single day!

Sooo with some of your questions: yeah language is still getting there!

It's really hard to be on a good healthy diet in Thailand. Really hard! The clothes: I've bought some new clothes if I like them or at houses sometimes girls leave their clothes behind and so I stole some of those! Life at home seems like the norm, that all seems so long ago. It's almost been a year since I started college, that's really weird to think of! I still can't believe it's almost sept! I try and take lots of pictures because I know you like them! haha! I have taken videos too, I can't wait until I go home and you guys can watch them.

Love you all! Have a good week!

-Sister Rio (what everyone calls me because my name is too hard haha)

1 Nephi 10:19

By the way, so to explain some of those pictures, we hiked to a waterfall today. And then we drove to a mountain wat! that was the best. They drove us to the top of the mountain and there were these wats on the side of the mountain. It was awesome, I literally felt like I was on top of the world! Thailand is so beautiful, I feel so blessed to see this part of the world!