Week 2: Things Here are Picking Up

I hope you guys have all been having a great week! Things in the MTC are finally starting to pick up and I think I'm getting the hang of it more or less haha. Anyway,our district has been learning a lot more Thai now that we've been here for a little bit. We started memorizing the characters already and it's actually pretty cool! They said by the time we leave we should be able to read pretty well. My district is a blast. It's funny cause there are so many different districts here and it's almost like every Asian district learning a certain language has "district pride" in a sense. There's the Mandoes (Mandarins), Cantoes (Cantonese), the Hmnogos, the Camboes (Cambodians) etc. Apparantly we're the Thai fighters (kind of a lame name but we still have the most fun). The Mandoes are super good at spike ball apparently so you don't want to mess with them. The older Thai district and the Camboes have a rivalry soccer game they play every p day so we're gonna go see that after I'm done writing. So far, our district plays volleyball almost every morning and it's great! Something funny that happened the other day was that one of the Elders in my district ripped his pants while we were in the cafeteria. The cafeteria only serves ice cream on certain days so when he saw that they had ice cream, he kinda jumped up in excitement and ripped his pants!!! Little things like that keep us going cause we have class all the time and we still try to keep a sense of humor in here.

So the investigator that we were teaching last week, Phii Bon, committed to baptism. Only we were told that he was gonna have to go back to Thailand!! Our whole district was sooo sad because we all got to know him so well with all of the lessons we were teaching him. Anyway, get this. We're all in class, and all of a sudden Phii Bon came walking in as our NEW TEACHER. He wasn't a real investigator at all and we all freaked out. Even though he wasn't an actual investigator, the experience was so real to all of us.

This upcoming week, our district will be teaching three new investigators and Elder Christiansen and I have been busy trying to figure out what we want to teach all of them. One of our lessons last week didn't go as well as we planned so we've been relying more on the Lord to help us be successful. It's so great how much can be done with His help. Anyway, a scripture that has really meant a lot to me while I've been here is Alma 26:30. It reads "And we have suffered all manner of afflictions, and all this, that perhaps we might be the means of saving some soul; and we supposed that our joy would be full if perhaps we could be the means of saving some". I've been focusing on reading Joseph Smith History lately and something that I thought a lot about is that the Book of Mormon is living evidence of the hardships and challenges Joseph Smith and the pioneers had to go through. It wasn't easy for them. They had so many challenges they had to go through so we need to remember all that they sacrificed for us. No matter how hard this work is, the reward of bringing others to this gospel far outweighs any challenge or hardship on the mission. I've learned so much in these past two weeks and I'm excited to see where the lord will lead me next. Getting everyone's emails is the best part of my week! Remember to continue doing all the things the Lord would want you to do in order to become more like Christ. Love you guys!

Elder Rawlinson