Guess who has food poisoning.....

 Fattest dog I've ever seen.

Hahahahahah Soooo uhhhhhhhhhhh.... we're never eating member food again. Around 6:00PM last night we were heading to Imperial to go contacting when Sis Adams just stopped and was like, "I'm gonna vomit." So we ran back to the apartment and yup! She vomited. All night. We're trying to think of a way to avoid eating member food without offending them............... It'll take some more thought.

Well, as always, I'm shocked at how fast this week went by.

A member's doggy who went psycho crazy on Sis Adams.

This week we had another major break through with our investigator, Sai. We taught her about baptism and why she has to do it. The member that was helping us teach randomly was like, "If you knew that you were gonna die tomorrow... would you be baptized?" And Sai was like, "Of course!" Turns out she already wants to do it, it's just that she's worried about her family who is super Buddhist. The member was really great and shared her experiences of how her family was really against her changing religions at first but later accepted it. In the end I just looked at her and was like, "We didn't meet by coincidence. You're supposed to do this." She really thought about that and at the end of the lesson she was like, "Sis Zaugg... what you said about us meeting not being a coincidence.... It's really strange. On that day that we met, I was riding the bus home. That bus didn't go all the way home so I needed to get off and get on a song thew to go the rest of the way. But after I got off the bus, I just felt like I wanted to walk... and it was when I was walking that I met you and decided to go to the church with you." The crazy thing about this story is that where she got off the bus was REALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLY far from her house. It was gonna be like a 40 minute walk. And Thai people HATE walking. I mean they abhor walking. It's ridiculous the extents to which they will go to avoid walking. And she just randomly decided to walk and bumped into us! Coincidence? NO WAY! She accepted a date for this week. We're really hoping that Satan doesn't get to her!!!! She's still at a really fragile stage right now.

Sad news: we had to drop K, our deaf investigator. :C 

We're dropping a lot of our investigators, actually. We're working on getting a new pool. We've been finding some pretty good potentials, though! A lot of people have been running up to me and being like, "HOW DO I GET CLEANED FROM MY SINS?!?!?!?!" or "HOW DO I CHANGE RELIGIONS??!?!?!?" It's been way cool to see us being lead to those who are prepared!

Making yummy Thai salad at a member's house!

The ward has recently started a weekly Sports Night. Every Saturday we play random games with members and investigators! The two best parts of this week's Sports Night was when the Elders interviewed their recent convert's son and he passed, and then when she came a member was like, "Hey did you know there's gonna be a baptism tomorrow?" And she was like, "No, who?" and the member was like, "It's that kid in the red shirt." and she was like, "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT???" hahaha 

 The wilderness behind the church.
Note the sign that says:
"It's forbidden to throw away trash here."

Next best part was after one of the Zone Leaders who was on switch offs with Elder Wahl for the day threw the Frisbee over the wall into the giant wilderness wasteland beyond it and while the members were scrambling about trying to figure out how to get it back, Sis Adams and I somehow started the most hilarious game with the primary. There's a little girl whose name is Boy (yeah.. haha), and she's SO CUTE. She's absolutely nuts and is obsessed with the missionaries. She and the twins and another little boy would point to one of us and shout our name and then we would be like, "YAYYY!", give them a high five and then they would do a little dance. Basically we were just yelling at each other, throwing high fives around and dancing for a good 10 minutes straight. It was soooooooo funny! And it stuck, too. Now whenever one of those kids see us we play it again. hahahahahha

Sooo yeah! Today we get to spend another P-Day chilling at home..... but I guess things could be worse. haha Have a good week, ever'rybody!

Love,

Sis Zaugg

Heyoooooooooooo

Sawatdii friends and family tuug taan!

I'm sitting here trying to remember what happened this week... but it went so fast I can barely remember! hahaha

We spent a lot of time teaching Brother K, our deaf investigator. He had a goal to be baptized this last Sunday... but his understanding was really limited. He can read and write, but it's hard for him to understand and we can't ever understand his understanding because he can't answer open ended questions. :/ He was supposed to interview on Friday night, but after we asked him if he had repented... we realized that he still didn't understand what repentance was... or that he even had sin to repent of. :( We decided that he needed more time. He was really sad after that and didn't go to church on Sunday. Sis Adams kept saying that maybe he was ready and that we hadn't had enough faith and had taken that opportunity away from him. I didn't want to believe it, though..... But after that he wouldn't answer our texts. We thought we lost him! But, we (mostly me) had a lesson on humility and realized that even though we tried our best... maybe we could have done more to help him be prepared for baptism, so this morning we prayed together and repented and guess what! Right after our prayer he texted us! We're so grateful for this second chance that God has given us to teach Brother K. I think from this experience I truly learned what it means to come before God with a broken heart and a contrite spirit. It wasn't easy for me to repent... mostly because I was sure that K hadn't been ready, but I decided that I would rather lose my pride than a child of God. :) It was worth it.

This week we've met a lot of prepared people! We found a woman who recently moved to Pangna who is looking for God and comfort, a grandma who is raising her grandchildren and who is looking for a good place to raise them, and a few others. We're pretty excited to see what happens with all of these new people!

This week we had a break through with our investigator Sai. She just couldn't accept that she had faith until we had a throw down lesson with her and told her that she had faith and gave her hw to read Alma 32. The next day she had a different demeanor... she told us that she thinks she DOES have faith!! Woo hoo!!!! She has grown so much since we first started teaching her! She's seen he light and she loves it. :)) She said, "Sisters, would you believe it? I take the Book of Mormon everywhere with me. I read it in the bathroom when I'm sad." Awwww yeah!

So yeah.......... I really..... can't remember anything else. hahah I feel like Pangna is so normal compared to Saphaansung. Nothing crazy happens.... ever..... I kinda miss it! haha

Love you all!!

Sister Zaugg

Life is like a roller coaster...

This week was definitely rougher than other weeks. It started out with food poisoning on Sunday night which didn't get all the way better until Thursday, and then just..... lots of other stuff. haha Contacting was really rough this week. We would spend hours contacting and just got rejected the whoooooole time! We didn't find as many people this week as we're used to. Plus we were really praying and hoping that one of our investigators would be baptized this week but none of them are there yet. We've just been calling this week the trial of our faith. It's really no big deal. We still saw a lot of good things and we still have progressing investigators so we're not too bummed. Mostly we're pumped to double our faith and watch the miracles roll in!

I think the best contacting story from this week is from Friday. We were outside our second favorite 7/11 contacting for a long time. We didn't get a single person to stop and listen! We were getting pretty frustrated so we decided to take a half time break and get an icecream cone from McDonalds. As we were walking up to the front of the mall we found ourselves in this animal and plant..... wonderland. SO. CONFUSED. There were so many animals.... and so many mushrooms and random plants just scattered around the store front! The best part though: GOATS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There was a big pen full of sheep and goat babies!!!!!!! And guess what. They were wearing hats. I think I died and came back to life like 10 times. I. Love. Goats. There were also birds and puppies. So many puppies. IT WAS TERRIBLE!!!!!!!! We just had to run to the Mcdonalds and shield our eyes before we could get sucked in. I did take some pictures of the goats, though. >_>

But that actually isn't the point of this story, I promise.

After the goat/icecream fiasco we ran back to the 7/11 to continue contacting. We kept getting rejected, and at one point a guard from the mall approached Sis Adams. We were both like, "Oh no! He's gonna tell us to get lost!" Which doesn't make sense because there were like a million other people around trying to sell stuff but anyway he walks up to Sis Adams and points at the picture of baptism in her hand and is like, "What is that?" And she's like, I'll just play along! And starts teaching him about it. And then he's like, "Wait- how do I do this?" He accepted a date for baptism and we're gonna teach him this week! Pretty cool. 

In other cool news: this week has been the week of many languages. On Wednesday we went on switch offs with the sisters in Bangkok West zone. There's only two companionships over there so the sister training leader asked if we would participate in their switch off to add more diversity. So I went to Asoke with Sister Narayanan, who serves in the international ward, and Sis Adams stayed in Pangna. It was kind of a tender mercy, because I've always wanted to serve in Asoke, and I'm pretty sure that I won't ever get the opportunity (pretty much because President Senior basically told me that this is my last transfer in Bangkok.... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH), and it was way fun to get to be there for a day!! Sis Narayanan and I taught soooo many people! We taught a man from Srilanka who doesn't really speak English so we had to have a translator. We taught a family from India who speak Tamul (Sis Narayanan is from India so she spoke Tamul with them. I smiled and looked pretty and bore my testimony a few times). They are refugees because of a war or something like that, and they just got approved to move to the states!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so happy for them. I think I almost cried like 3 times. After that we taught a man from Africa who reads the scriptures in French, and then taught a girl from America who's here teaching English. It was so much fun!!!!!!!!!!

While I was teaching all these amazing people, Sis Adams got to teach our deaf friend! It went really well, and we taught him again on Saturday. He's awesome! Teaching is really hard, but he has a lot of faith. We're gonna be fluent in Thai Sign Language by the time we're done here in Pangna. lol

But that's not all! On Sunday one of the members brought her teacher from China to church. We taught her in a weird combination of Chinese, English, and Thai. hahahahah We didn't have any pamphlets in Chinese so we didn't know how to teach her to pray... so the member just kind of made it up.... Hhahaa It was so cool. 

This week was so awesome! I got to meet so many kinds of people. I've had so many opportunities to experience so many different cultures here in Thailand. I've heard a lot of different languages. I think what strikes me the most is that no matter what culture, tongue, or people I've seen, the Gospel fits there. The Gospel isn't limited to just one group of people. It's all-encompassing. It's true for everyone. And no matter what language is being used in a lesson, I've found that really, we all speak the same language; we speak the language of the Spirit. The Spirit carries our message past the language barriers and bears witness to the hearts of the people who we teach, whether they speak Chinese, Tamul or sign language that Jesus Christ is their Savior. Amazing!

I know that this is the work of the Lord. Great things are happening here in Thailand, even if sometimes we have a week of trial. 

Love you all!

Sister Zaugg

A baptism and food poisoning

 Members' new years party
included lots of crabs and fish.

Happy New Years!!!! New Years was way annoying here because EVERY ONE and their grandma goes out of town on New Years so there was way less people out on the streets to contact... and the people who we did contact weren't free to meet that week! BUT We still somehow managed to get 6 investigators to church on Sunday, which was such a miracle. Pangna is starting to explode. It's amazing to watch.

Baptism!

Our investigator Noon was baptized yesterday! We still don't really understand how it happened. We literally did nothing..... except for put ourselves outside of Imperial World (a mall) and talk to her mom. She and the Spirit did everything else! We knew her for 7 days, taught her 4 times and she was baptized on her second Sunday at church. Sis Adams and I both aren't really sure if it even happened at all. We're like... "Wait.... what? We've only been here for two weeks!" When we made a goal for a baptism this Sunday last week, we had no idea who it was gonna be and at the time hadn't even met Noon yet. We just trusted that it would happen.... and it did! She is so boss! At her baptism she gave the best testimony I've ever heard. The members were really welcoming, too. Woop woop!

As a mission we're really focusing on letting the Lord do His work. All we have to do is be obedient and ask for it! For next week we have a goal for 2 baptisms... yet again, not sure who it's gonna be... but we believe in miracles. :)

I don't have too much to say this week, mostly become I'm sicker than a dog currently. I got food poisoning last night... from what, I have no idea. I spent last night in our restroom. :( 

Just want y'all to know that God truly is hastening His work! I'm witnessing it first hand. 

This is going to be a historic year for the church in Thailand. It's a blessing to be here at this time. 

Love,

Sis Zaugg