Be Diligent!

I've been officially welcomed into the ward! haha

"Diligence is steady, consistent, earnest, and energetic effort in doing the Lord's work." (Preach My Gospel)

This is something I've been learning a lot about this past transfer. So things in Bangkapi don't move quite as fast as they do over in Asoke. We spend the majority of our day trying to find people to teach...which means 4-5+ hours of contacting on our feet everyday...all day. Ha, though my feet, ankles and knees may be swollen, and I sweat bucket loads in the heat, in all these things, I've learned to be diligent in my efforts in doing the Lord's work!

I think at first, I found these long contacting days, tiresome and not really all that beneficial. But since being on a mission and doing this every day all day, it doesn't really feel like work when you are just out there trying to help people gain eternal salvation! If Christ could sacrifice his life for each one of us, I can sacrifice 5 hours in the sun every day :)

"When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power." (Ezra Taft Benson)

Members took us out for Korean BBQ!

So ya..this week was kind of hard...and we didn't get any new investigators at church...but we still saw miracles!!! This past Sunday our recently baptized convert Sister ตู๋ (Doo) was confirmed and officially welcomed into the ward! And not to top that but our recent convert Brother เจก (Jake) received the priesthood!! We are soon on our way to bringing a temple here to thailand!!!!

Sister Norrell, me, and a member :)

Love you all!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS TO STOTT AND CAMI WHO GOT MARRIED THIS PAST WEEKEND!!!!!!!!!! I am so lucky to have these 2 in my life :)

Baptisms!!

Yesterday (Sunday) we were blessed to see our investigator ตู๋ (Duu) enter the waters of baptism! And boy was this girl prepared! Rather than us inviting her to be baptized (we were on our way to asking her though) she straight up tells us that she's ready and already talked to the Bishop about it! HA, yup such a golden investigator! Her baptismal service was awesome, and all the members here are so good at fellowshipping; Sister ตู๋ (Duu) is definitely in very good hands here :)

Our investigator ตู๋ (Duu) got baptized!!!!

Love this girl!!!

So I'm back to speaking Thai...24/7...and boy...is it hard! I got so used to speaking and teaching in English in Asoke, that I'm afraid my Thai has gotten pretty sucky, excuse my language. It's times like these that I know I really have to rely on the Lord and the Spirit when I teach because ultimately it is the spirit that will touch the heart of the investigator..not my mediocre Thai. But in order to teach by the Spirit, that also means we have to be worthy of and listen to the spirit to discern the needs of our investigators! This is something I learn more and more each day with the thousands of people we talk to. 

And yes..THOUSANDS! So because this is a Thai speaking area..we are back to contacting 2 hours every day...and with our numbers a little lower...we have been contacting 5+ hours. It's definitely been wrecking my feet, but I know that this work is worth it! Every spare moment we have when we're not teaching, is dedicated to going out and finding!

Got to celebrate Sister Norrell's one year in country mark!

"Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word, and then shall your tongue be loosed; then, if you desire, you shall have my Spirit and my word, yea the power of God unto the convincing of men." (D&C 11:21)

Me and Sister Mamea (our Greeny) before eating lunch with the members!

Shoutout to one of my best friends Cami Jensen...soon to be Cami Bushnell this week!!!! I love you so much!!! CONGRATULATIONS Stott, you definitely are the luckiest guy in the world! (But I hope you know you have to share her when i get back!!! ;) )

I got transferred!!!!

Well, it's official. I am no longer serving in the International ward anymore :( But it's ok, because I'm serving in an amazing Thai ward in Bangkapi...which is still in the same zone as my last area hahahaha! And boy is my Thai rusty! Haha, but luckily I was placed as companions with Sister Barton, from Bountiful Utah, and her Thai is sooo sooo good! But this is her last transfer in the misson, so yup, I'm "killing" another companion...this will be #3. Apparently I was just meant to have a bazillion companions on my mission or something ha!

Got called to serve in Bangkapi with my new companion Sister Barton!

Back to eatin good ol' Thai food!

Me and Sister Barton also live with 2 other sisters: Sister Norrell (from Alabama) and Sister Memea (from Hawaii). Sister Mamea is also a greeny!!!! But you wouldn't think she was cuz she speaks Thai like a pro already...like WAAAY better than I was when I was a greeny! It's been so fun living with them! We also had to switch houses with the elders, cuz it used to be a 4 elder and 2 sister area, but now it's 4 sisters and 2 elders....so cleaning out their house was an interesting event...not to mention the fact that they didn't fix any of their ac units..so we had to sleep on the floor downstairs until the bedroom ac got fixed. oh the joys of being a missionary! :)

Me and the 3 sisters I have been blessed to serve with this transfer!

So Bangkapi is an amazing ward! They are so unified, and they like to document just about everything on Facebook...so the unattractive amount of pictures of me have just skyrocketted on facebook...ugh haha. But right now we are preparing for our church building's open house at the end of the month. And while we were in this meeting, I thought they were all just being friendly and trying to meet us new sisters...when they were all trying to see what skills we had to help them build up this event!!! The second I said I was a PR major, they all pounced, and I all of a sudden turned into a skilled PR executive who could put the whole event together for them and promote it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram...you name it. NOT TRUE! I think they forgot I was a missionary for a sec and thought I could just hop onto the internet like a normal human being. haha, so it was funny trying to find ways that I could really help them. So they put me in charge of designing and creating the flyers that they will post everywhere, and we will pass out to people as we invite, and will post on Facebook as well #nopressure...hopefully I can bring out those rusty skills of mine!

My new home for the next little while ;)

On a spiritual note, we have a baptism this next sunday! Her name is Sister Duu, and she is soooo cute and ready to be baptized! She was a walk-in to the church, and she came to church on Sunday and stayed all 3 hours and loved it! I love these Thai people so much!!! She truly is a miracle! So ya, she accepted a date for this next Sunday, and until then, we just need to teach her everything! So should be a pretty busy week!

I made dinner for our new district!

Something else I've learned since being a missionary is that God will not always shout the answers to you. Sometimes you need to just make a decision and THEN the confirmation will come as to whether it is right or wrong. "You must learn to walk to the edge of the light, and then a few steps into the darkness; then the light will appear and show the way before you." (Harold B. Lee)

Love and miss you guys!!!! Keep emailing me :) I love to hear about all of your lives!

-Sister Lam

Transfer week again!

I cannot believe that this transfer is already over!!!!! I am so sad that my time with Sister Greenwood has already come to an end! She has been such an amazing companion and has just taught me so much about being selfless and having Christlike love. I will be sad to say goodbye to her, especially since she's going home!!!

It was our District Leader Elder Passey's Birthday on Sunday, so we had a fun District dinner to celebrate!

This week was a little crazy. Last monday, We got a call informing us that Sister Ng was getting transferred randomly to another area for the last 10 days of the transfer. So she quickly had to pack her bags, and it's just been me and Sister Greenwood for a little while now. So it's been weird going around without 1/3 of our companionship, but me and Sister Greenwood managed ok. We were kind of struggling though this week in terms of finding new people to teach. But when Sunday rolled around, we had these 2 people from Ethiopia just walk into Sacrament Meeting and come up to us afterwards saying that they wanted to learn more! Such a miracle!

We met the girl from the movie "17 Miracles" at church on Sunday! (yup, definitely don't have a very large variety of movies to chose from, so she's become a celebrity amongst us missionaries) I definitely recommend the movie though!

Sorry this email is pretty lame and short, but I've attached a link to this mormon message we were able to use with one of our investigators this week that I think really changed his perspective on the experience of Joseph Smith and how we can apply it to ourselves! Hope you like it!

http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages/topics/prayer?v=2505987918001

Love you all so much! and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my niece and nephew this week! 

Happy Birthday to my nephew Aidan and my niece Sammi!!!!