Week 74: Christmas in Thailand

Sawadii Krap everyone! I hope you all had a great Christmas. We had our Christmas party with the ward including a performance of the nativity so this past week, we've been preparing and practicing for it a lot. I was one of the wise men with two other missionaries. Even though I'm not someone that really does shows and stuff like that, the whole thing actually went pretty well. It was fun and it helped me feel more of the Christmas spirit.

This past week, we've been able to teach some new people! The other day, I was inviting close by a shopping center and I started talking to a lady named Party (Thai people have interesting nicknames) who was with her friend named Pan and she seemed interested in wanting to learn English. We ended meeting a day or two afterwards, showed them the church a bit and had a lesson on the Restoration. After the lesson, they took baptismal dates for January 8th. Yay! They're still pretty new investigators but hopefully they can both progress towards they're date. 

There are some great people in this area and I love them! Brother Goh is one of them! He invited me to a Christmas party in his neighborhood and I thought it would be great to go to. This neighborhood's not the same as a standard neighborhood in Gilbert. There are huge apartment buildings close by each other kind of like slums. It's a poor neighborhood. It was Friday night and Elder Miyagi and I get to the neighborhood and we see all these kids and Brother Goh wearing Christmas hats. We walk together to a nearby park and believe it or not, a section of the park was just completely decorated for a Christmas party. There was a Christmas tree, haystacks, a random tent, a small little fence with what looked like Christmas tree cut-outs on the top, and food. After we got there, we waited for Santa to finally arrive. Santa was a fat kid that lived in the neighborhood dressed with with a beard on and everything. He was so awesome! He came into the party with Brother Art and Brother Mighty.  What was so cool about all of it was that the entire party was basically set up by Brother Mighty. As far as I know, no adults were a part of getting this party together. The kids that went lived in the same neighborhood (pretty sure same building) as Brother Art, Goh, and Mighty. They had Christmas music and singing and it was just so awesome. Here we were in a poor slum neighborhood at a Christmas party full of these kids and teenagers. A lot of the kids that went came to our church party the following day. I know that our Savior loves those that were a part of that party. It was the highlight of my Christmas and something I'll never forget. 

Have a great week everyone! I know that this church is true and that this work is real. God loves us all.

  The first three pictures are from the party that Brother Goh invited me to and the last one is from the Christmas party. Both were great!