Thailand Week 15, 25 Nov 2013

Hey everyone!  This will be a short email, sorry.
  

This week has been good!  Pretty typical though.  If there's ever such a thing as normal out here.  The highlight was our big Mission Tour meeting as a zone up in Chiang Mai yesterday!  We had Elder Wilson and his wife train us on the Book of Mormon!  He's a member of the Asia Area 70 so it was awesome to get to learn from all his experience.  

That was the main thing.  It was way fun to see Elder Vance and Elder Beatty from the MTC again!  They're in the same house now!  And I got to eat a whole garlic chicken pizza by myself at our zone dinner at this way good American food restaurant haha.  So yeah here we are back in the Daily Grind and I love it.

I think I'll be all set for thanksgiving!  There's a white guy serving in our branch who served here once and married a Thai girl he met at BYU and they're taking care of it all.  So I'm really hoping for some good food.  I've started expanding my diet. I bought oatmeal today and found that we have some cocoa powder so hopefully I can make no bake cookies!!  I'll let you know how it goes! 

Oh and by the way, there's a Thailand Bangkok mission Facebook page now! Go and check it out!!

I'm thankful for emails, for the Book of Mormon, for donuts, and for peanut butter!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

Love Elder Josh Keller

Thailand Week 14, 17 Nov 2013

This week has been so awesome!!!

We had a lot of good things happen this week.  Mostly because of this new training we got. It sounds pretty harsh, and that's how I felt at first, but it really does work.  It involves tons of people, a picture of baptism, and filtering.  We talk to as many people as we can about baptism.  The usual stunt is "Hey do you know what this is?  It's baptism, it's being cleansed from our sins.  We can have eternal life and happiness (other blessings, anything really). The 21st of December we'll be having a baptism service.  Do you want to get baptized on that day?"

Basically we try to find the people who are really prepared by the Lord to hear our message.  We know they're out there and every missionary loves finding them!  But that's usually the hard part.   

Now the goal is to filter through those who aren't interested right now to find those who are.  Obviously about 90% of people aren't interested at all. But that's okay.  We move on!  And move on!  We get rejected so many times but when someone is interested they're really prepared and the Spirit has already been working on them.  We have a lot of new people to meet with this week and are super excited to meet and teach them all!

I know the Lord's work is true!

I heard it's snowing in Alaska!!  Yay!!!  I'm gonna miss a real winter but that's okay, I'm tan.  Well, my arms, face, and the part of my neck that's not covered by a collar and tie....Haha I'm gonna have the darkest farmers tan!

I love everyone and hope you have an awesome week!!

-Love Elder Josh Keller

Thailand Week 13, 10 Nov 2013

Hey everyone!  

This week was good.  We got to go visit the ancient capital of Sukothai on Monday so I'll put some cool pictures up!  

This week we put a lot of focus on planning ahead and saw the fruits from it!  We got some good lessons in with lots of people!

This week we also put a focus on contacting for the whole 2 hours everyday. It was good!  We got a lot of good contacts and some people who are really excited to learn!  On Saturday we went and did some inviting at the crazy Thai market street.  You couldn't move unless the crowd took you. It was ridiculous!  

That's about all the big news from this week.  The Church is still true, Jesus Christ is still our Savior and this is still His work.  That's something that hit me this week. No matter what we do, no matter what results we get, I'm serving Christ and that's what makes me want to put everything I have into this work.  

Love Elder Keller

Thailand Week 12, 3 Nov 2013

So today we're finally getting out and going to see some cool Thai culture stuff in the ancient capital city of Sukothai! It's like an hour bus ride away. Hopefully I'll be able to get some fun things to send home for Christmas. So I'll just give a little wrap up of this week.

Wednesday we had our Halloween activity at the church and the members did a way good job setting everything up!  Halloween here isn't the same as America that's for sure.  American candy is so expensive here, well it's not too bad but it's more than other options. The party was way fun!

Friday we got to give a blessing to a sister in really humble circumstances.  It was an eye opening experience to see so much humbleness and faith in someone who has a lot of reasons to be unhappy about life.  I watched Thomas S Monson's talk on how the Lord will never forsake us, and I know how true that is.

Saturday and Sunday were all pretty normal days!  Well, there's not really anything normal in being a missionary, you've got to be prepared for everything!  We got raged at and flipped off (footed) by someone who was super angry we wrote the word scripture on the ground.  We also had a baptism this week!!  That was awesome.  The water in our font is still coming out green though...

Mom we made food this week!  Elder Lucas had some Au Jus and taco seasoning packets his family sent so we had sandwiches and made up some taco soupish stuff this week.

Next week I'll have some good pictures to send home!

Love Elder Josh Keller

Thailand Week 11, 27 Oct 2013

Hey everyone!  This week has definitely been crazy.

We had a lot of random things to do that made doing normal missionary work kinda hard...but it was still a good week.

We had our normal activities Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and had a lot of fun.  There were a lot of people from English class that came to the activity on Wednesday so that was awesome.

Thursday we went to a part member family's house for dinner so that was awesome.  We hardly ever get fed in Thailand haha. I see emails from people in other places and it seems like they get like two dinners every single day!  They made some really good Suki (I think).

Friday we got to have a fireside for the branch with President Senior and Sister Senior.  It focused on all the younger people in the branch who are preparing to serve missions.  We had a lot of people come and it was a huge success.  All the speakers were great and the cookies and brownies almost tasted American haha.  I understood almost everything that the speakers said too!

Saturday we had a baptism!  This girl was so excited to get baptized that she didn't fall asleep until 3 in the morning!  It's so cool to see the gospel improving people's lives everyday and how much happier it can make people.

Ok so I just have one story for this week to tell.  We locked ourselves out of our house Saturday night.  Our neighbor called us out to talk to us and so we walked out the side door and it shut.  And we had already locked the front door.  So no key, no phone.  But that wasn't too big of a problem for us!  We were able to open a couple of the windows near another door in our house and got the screens off.  Luckily it was by the clothes rack so we could get a hanger.  And lucky that Elder Lucas is way tall and has really long arms haha.  So we had to get through a window, the screen door, and then turn the knob to click the lock.  We managed that with a hose stuck through the window gate and wrapped around the knob.  We were so proud.

This week we didn't get everything done we wanted too. But that just means we're going to try twice as hard this coming week!  I know that this church is true and when we work and act well our part the Lord will provide the rest.  That's the miracle of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. No matter what imperfections and weaknesses we have, everything can be made right through him.

I hope everyone has an awesome week!  

Love Elder Josh Keller

Thailand Week 10, 20 Oct 2013

So this week was transfers week!!!  But not, because I didn't move.  We still went down to Bangkok though!  We had to renew our visas.  And it was good because we got two new sisters who each had 3 suitcases and some boxes of supplies.  I was really impressed we got it all into a taxi haha.  

So I'll just outline how that all went down.  

-We get on a bus at about 11:30 Wednesday and arrived at about 4:30

-We ride in the back a truck with a bunch of luggage from some missionaries we met at the bus station and it was super sketchy...we probably went like 60mph. (We did our best to stay in the bed by grabbing the bikes and suitcases best we could and leaning with the turns...the light rain stung)

-Then we hang around the church for a bit, I took a little nap

-We leave to get to the visa place and the taxi goes to the wrong place so it takes forever...A stick shift in the city is a little crazy too

-We renew visas, which isn't hard it just takes a while with as many people as we had

-Then we go back for the transfer meeting.  All I've had to eat is a donut...

-Transfer meeting was awesome! It was pretty crazy!  I guess they all are but there were definitely some surprises in the mission

-The two sisters remaining in Phitsanulok are now companions and we got Sister Mullen and Peterson! Sister Peterson just barely got here!

-Then we go eat at this way good mexican food place for a late lunch.

-Our bus tickets are for 8:00 so we hang out at the church for a couple hours.  It was way good to catch up with all the missionaries from the MTC and stuff!

-On the way to the bus station there's crazy traffic and we get there with like 10 minutes to move everything, get a snack, and go to the bathroom but we made it!  

-We get back to Phitsanulok and get to sleep at like 3 in the morning...

Let's just say I've been tired the past few days haha.

Another awesome thing this week was a new investigator with a baptisimal date!  We invited him to church on our way there and he accepted a date for November 9th!!  

Being a missionary is really hard sometimes but it's worth every minute to help people find the church and see how happy they are with the gospel blessing their lives.  

Love Elder Josh Keller

Thailand Week 9, 13 Oct 2013

Hey everyone!!  

This week has been good, I'll just keep it simple this time.

So Thursdays we plan for like 3 hours to make sure we have all the investigators and everything on track.  It's really important and productive but not the most exciting thing. So we decided to splurge and get some pizza for the pre planning lunch.  And then we got it the next day too!  A member here got accepted to a college in American and so she took a bunch of people out to pizza and her host family I think paid for it all.  We're spoiled. Pizza is way expensive here.  It's pretty much as much of a splurge as you get here.  Peanut butter, nutella, honey, real cereal, those are at the top of the expensive things missionaries buy.

Then Saturday and Sunday were General conference!  For anyone who doesn't know what general conference is, it's a bi annual meeting that gets broadcast to the entire world in almost 200 different languages.  We get an opportunity to hear the Prophet of the Lord, Thomas S. Monson, and all of his apostles speak to us and give us guidance for these days.  The main message that I got was that the world is trying to lead away the hearts of men.  They reminded us to keep strong and maintain the church and gospel of Jesus Christ as the center of our lives.  I particularly liked a quote from Elder Russell M. Nelson.  "Your Heavenly Father has known you for a very long time."  That's such a simple but powerful sentence.  I know that He knows us each perfectly and will help us whatever our troubles are.

Then Sunday after conference I got to baptize someone!!  It was a way good experience!  This investigator has such a strong testimony and I can see how the church has blessed her life and will continue to bless her for the rest of her life.  It was kind of intimidating to baptize, especially in Thai,  but It was all good in the end!  

So yeah the church is true and the Lord continues to reveal truths to us in these days through his prophets and apostles.  

Love Elder Josh Keller