Adventuretime!

Sorry, today we're on a P-day adventure cuz we're traveling to Chiang Rai to ride ostriches and elephants!!! It's one of my last p-days so we're really trying to make them as fun-filled as possible :) I'll be sure to send pictures next week! And all the pictures attached for this week were from our p-day excursion last week :) so enjoy!

This week, was our first and our last FULL week of work here in Chiang Mai. We have SOOO MANY MEETINGS this transfer its ridiculous. But it was fun to just get down to work. We were supposed to actually have a baptism this weekend too...but sadly, we were told she needs to wait until next month. But instead of being disappointed, Sister ออ้ย has been nothing but more faithful even! She knows that her waiting these next few weeks will be a time for her to strengthen her faith in Christ even more, so that when she is actually baptized in April, she will more fully understand the covenants she will be making with our Heavenly Father. She has just been an amazing example of faith to me because I feel like I was honestly more upset about her having to wait than she was. haha.

This week is going to be chaos, because me and the zone leaders have to plan everything for our Zone conference this weekend, which happens to be the same weekend as our District conference (aka stake conference)....so ya....we'll be working really hard trying to plan everything before President and Sister Senior get here!! wish us luck!!!!!

"Therefore, o ye that embark in the service of God; see that ye serve Him with all of your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day."

This scripture from D&C 4 is the youth theme for this year, as well as I think EVERY missionaries theme. We recite all of D&C 4 every morning here on the mission, and it has just helped me understand our purpose not only as missionaries but as disciples of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I encourage all of you, not only those of you who are preparing to serve a mission, but ALL of you to study this chapter, and see what you can do to improve your service to God. :) I know that studying this section has helped me so much understand how I can better serve my God!

"Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God you called to the work!"

The Lord has called ALL OF US to help in the hastening the work of salvation!!!!

Love you guys!!! 

Ever upwards,

Sister Lam

Mong Village dress-up party

 Random man riding his elephant!

Long-neck village!

 My diet coke commercial pic ;)

Floating lantern- Tangled stylez

Missionaries loooooooooooove traveling....not really though

Sorry this email will be kind of short cuz I'm low on time. But it's just been a week of running around traveling. We had Missionary Leadership Council (MLC) in Bangkok this week (which is about a 12 hour plus bus ride from ChiangMai), and from there we went to our zone's districts in all of Northern Thailand to do some follow-up training and some switch-offs (which meant an additional 15 hours on buses to visit our districts). So I feel like we haven't really been here in ChiangMai at all...kinda lame. But I guess as we all know, meetings are an important and frequent thing that happens in our church because it is how we receive and direct the counsel given to us from our Heavenly Father.

Did switchoff's with the sisters from Lampang!

This week I did a lot of studying on the Priesthood, and how every calling is a priesthood calling since we are all set apart by priesthood power! So in our training from President Senior, we learned a lot about our role and responsibility to take care of our investigators and recent converts, which includes keeping and maintaining our records of them. Because without records, these people cannot progress because the ward and missionaries do not know who they are to be looking after and how they can best assist their needs. It's something our mission has greatly been struggling, so I know that this training was inspiration from the Lord to help us all repent and get back on the right track and do all that we can to help our members and investigators! And as we know...18,19-20 year-olds, are not always the best organized, so it was a very good call to repentance for our missionaries here in Thailand I believe. :)

I hope I have more fun things to report to you guys next week! Sorry this is such a lame email!!

Love and miss you!

Ever upwards,

Sister Lam

Got to hold a porcupine :)

The Final Transfer!

Picking some mangoes from the church's mango tree ;)

I can't believe it's finally come down to my last transfer! It's ridiculous. But Heavenly Father has truly blessed me and has sent me to the place that EVERYONE always talks about when they talk about Thailand: เชียงให่ม (Chiang Mai). Yup, I've finally made it to the North!!! So far my mission has just been Bangkok and the Esan, but I'm officially in a completely new place where they speak a completely different dialect of Thai....haha yup, but luckily I think I've caught onto Northern way faster than I caught onto Esan. And on top of that I have an amazing new companion: Sister Remington. Funny story, she and Sister Brown (my companion before Sister Belnap) were both actually trained by Sister Ellis, and I am once again follow-up training! haha, yup following up both of Sister Ellis's "children." :) And so far so good!!! Turns out that she and I are pretty much the same person, so it's been a fun week together thus far. Oh, and she's from Canada! So that's cool haha.

Me and my new and last companion Sister Remington!!!!

Goodbye dinner in บางแค (BangKhae)

Well what to say, what to say...the North has been quite a culture shock that's for sure. We take care of 2 branches here, which means 6 hours of straight church EVERY Sunday. And I mean I know that I basically live, breathe and eat the gospel here everyday as a missionary, but 6 hours of straight meetings was quite the doozy. Not to mention how Chiang Mai is like one of the top 5 tourist travel spots in the world, so we get a LOT of tourists coming in and out of our branch every Sunday, which means we get to translate for 6 hours :) haha, yup definitely challenging, but it's testing my language, which is good I guess since I feel like I've just been getting too comfortable and complacent with my language skills. AND because there are so many tourists...there are just tall white people EVERYWHERE we go....so that's definitely been different. Usually in other areas missionaries avoid the white people cuz they are not usually very friendly. And I mean I know I served in International awhile back, but I feel like the majority of the people I taught were still not white...so it's like Heavenly Father is trying to prepare me for all the tall white people that await me back home haha. That wasn't supposed to sound trunky...

Turns out Chiang Mai has a lot of white hippies everywhere...this man we came across at the park by our house....just chillin in his short shorts playing the flute for everyone...#classy

I definitely miss Sister Belnap (my child!!!) and all of my RCs (recent converts) back in BangKhae, but I know that the Lord has a work for me and Sister Remington to do here in Chiang Mai together. We've already started to see miracles with random new investigators asking US if they can learn the gospel, and different members have started to open up about their families and inviting us to teach their nonmember family members!!!! These last few weeks I'm really really trying to just challenge myself at every corner and trying to make myself the best missionary I can be, that the Lord NEEDS me to be right now. And I know that we will see the miracles through our faith and service!

Ever upwards,

Sister Lam

Transfers again!!!!....My last one :(

Well, the call hasn't come in quite yet, but today we find out who will be staying here in Bangkhae and who will be moving :( And seeing as I only have 1 last transfer, I would LOVE to stay and finish out my mission here in Bangkhae. But as always, I am trying to wait patiently to see what the Lord will have in store for me. My companion is funny and keeps saying that I'm bound for some sort of trial this last transfer because everything I didn't want to do on my mission (every role of responsibility I didn't want) has been thrown at me: house leader, STL and trainer. etc....don't know what my last trial will be...but hopefully it wont be too bad right? I mean all of those other things turned out to be pretty good....

Went to this historic site called the "death railroad" from World War II which was to send supplies through Burma to Thailand...lots of people died....

Ok just got the call actually...turns out i'm moving....yup....my last 6 weeks will be in a new area :( well I'm sad to be leaving...but I know it's because the Lord has work for me to do wherever I will be called to serve. So I guess this time next week I'll be emailing you from a new area!!!!

We went to some awesome waterfalls!!!!

This week was a little harder cuz we didn't see the success we saw last week, but it was still fun! We got to trek out to our RC Brother จ้า's (Jaa) house in the middle of nowhere!!! Turns out he and his family own a shrimp farm. So it was way cool to see him at home and with his family...not to mention meet his family and shed some light on what their son has been doing with us at church these past 5 months :) They seemed pleased as long as he is learning how to be a better person. The cool part was sharing with them the doctrine of the family. Hopefully they'll take us up on our offer of coming to church with us! They couldn't come yesterday because Jaa's older sister was getting married, but I have faith that they'll come eventually and receive the blessings of being an eternal family!!!!

Me and my companion :)

We went to visit our RC at his house in the middle of nowhere! He and his family own a shrimp farm!

Until next week!

Sister Lam