English, Weddings and Exchanges

I am afraid I do not have that much new stuff to talk about for this week. It went by pretty fast. Last Tuesday our English class had a total of 11 people show up which was really nice, especially since we had a long time where we could only get 1 person to come.

Then the next day we went with the Senior Missionaries out to North Chiang Mai University and taught English to some of the teachers there. It was a good thing and it led to some of them being interested in learning about the Gospel. 

On Saturday, we did exchanges, so I was with Elder Bunker working in their area. It was a lot of fun. The day was kind of weird because they had a baptism early Saturday Morning, so that was fun. Then in the evening we went to a wedding reception for one of the members here. It was a good opportunity to see some less active members come out and talk with them. Sometimes, it is hard to talk with the members when you are outside of your branch because you don't know any of them. Sunday was great. Brother Jackie got to pass the sacrament for the first time. that was really cool to see. We got called upon to teach Sunday School about 2 minutes before class started so that is always fun. 

This week is Transfers. I am not sure if I will stay or go so it will be interesting to see what happens. Either way it will be good.

 
-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

I didn't get a chance to post many pictures last week from our trip to the Mountain and waterfalls so I thought I would put in a few extra this week.

 เอ็ลเดอร์ ชีนีย์

Storm, Mountain and Service

This week went by really fast. We had a lot to do. On Tuesday night we had a crazy storm and all the power was out everywhere. It was really bad, as we were trying to bike home and it was just super strong wind and rain. Then when we got in for the night we did not have the normal luxury of air conditioning because of the power being out. We ended up doing our planning time and preparing for bed by the light of some candles we found in our house. Sadly the candles only made the house hotter it was very unpleasant.

The next day we got a phone call to go serve a member that had been affected by the storm. We biked to the church and Elder Barlow, the senior missionary, gave us a ride in the car to the member’s house. The problem was that the area was so destroyed it took us 2 hours to find a route the car could make it through to get to their house. They had a lot of trees down at their house that we helped them to clear out. 

Then the next day we went up to the mountain to visit one of the less active members. It was so rural it was crazy. We ended up teaching a blind guy up there as well. he was really interesting. Then, after we taught that member, she just took us around to all sorts of other people all over the village. That was cool. She took us to about 5 other houses to teach.

Then, this Sunday I baptized my first person. It was one of the Sister’s investigators. That was a great experience. It was very last minute and unexpected but she asked for me to baptize her and I was glad to serve. It was awesome hearing her testimony of the restored gospel after her baptism and her feelings when she was baptized. It made me feel really good that I could be an instrument in the hands of God to bring that happiness to her.

Then, today we got to go to the highest mountain in Thailand. We got up at 2:15 in the morning so we could see the sunrise from the top. We got to the top and it was so foggy we couldn't see the sunrise at all. Then, I had a cool thought as I was standing at the summit, which was, I am now the highest person in Thailand. (One of the perks of being the tallest person in the group).

After that we went over to some waterfalls it was a lot of fun and we got back at about noon and still had all of P day. 

It was a crazy, busy, week with all that we had going on but it was really good as well.

-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 เอ็ลเดอร์ ชีนีย์

Service, a Baptism and more Service

So it is been 2 weeks since my last email.  I was using last week to Skype home for Mother’s Day. Since then a lot has happened. I will try to remember back before last Monday.

Two Fridays ago, we were biking back to the church because we had a service project in the morning, and as we pulled into the church, and we saw a bunch of white guys walking out. It was kind of dark outside but they yelled ‘Hey Elders’ so we stopped to talked to them and low and behold it was my MTC teacher Brother Tirrel, and some of his friends. We talked to them and it was extremely weird for multiple reasons 1) because I met someone on the other side of the world from where I knew him, 2) He spoke English now and he never did in the MTC, 3) He still spoke Thai but now I could understand everything he was saying, 4) it has been like 3 months since I had seen anyone taller than me.  It was really cool that he had just brought some friends along to come visit Thailand while he had come back to some of his old areas when he was a missionary here. 

Then the next morning we had to go to this other service project.  It was a lot of work.  We were building this dam and the purpose of building it was to collect water for the hill tribes that live out there and to clear dirt out so the waterfalls there can work properly. It was really funny, before we were working there was this person giving a briefing about what we were doing and he just kept talking about how when he was a kid there were tons of waterfalls and he could go and play in them. But he was talking for about an hour I kind of just zoned out after a while because it is Thai and it is easy to just not pay attention. Then we finally got to work.  It was a lot of work because they didn't have the machines and stuff that would make a similar project very easy in the US.  It was all shoveling dirt into buckets and hiking those buckets out. 

Then last Monday was Skyping. I have a really fun story to tell about that. We went around to the place we had planned to Skype at about 9:15 and it said open 8- 20 (8 am to 8 pm) but it was all closed down and after we tried to find another place that could do Skype with video and we couldn't find one anywhere we were just kind of wandering Chiang Mai. Then we went back to the first place and it was open again and it doubled as a place where fish ate dead skin off of your feet. It was really weird and there were not enough computers for everyone and the ones that they had were not working right but we eventually got them to work out right and I got to Skype home. After that we got to go to the 3-D art museum here. It was lots of fun there, and after that we just spent the rest of the P day hanging out with Brother Tirrel and his friends. 

Thursday Brother Jackie got baptized.  It was really awesome.  We had Elder Barlow Baptize him. It was really cool. Afterwards Jackie went up and bore his testimony on the church and talked about his friendship with Elder Barlow 45 years ago it was really cool. I also had to give a talk which I was really nervous about because 1 I don't like public speaking and 2 because it is in Thai but it ended up working out just fine and I got a lot of compliments on it so that was good.

This week was good. We got to have companion exchanges with the zone leaders on Friday, so I got to spend a day with Elder Noyce. We had a lot of interesting experiences. The first one was that we saw a Motorcycle accident happen right before our eyes. it was two motorcycles and one was backing out into the street and the other motorcycle flew around the corner and nailed the guy backing out. Nobody was hurt.

Then we had a good thing at night.  We were biking around going to contact because our appointment canceled, then I was just thinking we should go visit sister Kwan. Right then, Elder Noyce yelled, 'Follow your feelings'. That seeming like a sign, so I immediately veered left and went over to Sister Kwan's house. On the way there, Elder Noyce pointed out this house that had some pictures of Jesus. We went there, shared a scripture about prophets and the left.  On the way back, the neighbor with the Jesus Pictures was out on his porch and so we contacted him and he really likes to read the scriptures so we introduces the Book of Mormon and set up a time to drop off Book of Mormon and talk to him some more. He seemed really golden and when we came back yesterday to drop off the Book of Mormon he was even better. He kept saying things like ‘I love the Bible’ and ‘I have gone to many churches but none of them feel completely right.’ So we are really excited for him. His name is Boot.

Then on Saturday we had to go out and work on the dam again. This time the hike over to the section or riverbed we were clearing out took about 1 hour carrying all these tools and stuff through some crazy jungle terrain the when we had to go the people told us this other way would be faster to go out and they were right it only took about 45 minutes but it had some crazy cliffs and stuff that you had to go down. With just a sketchy rope tied to a tree as the guide down so that was interesting. It was part of the waterfall or where the waterfall would be if there was water.

We had a good day at Church yesterday.  Jackie got confirmed.  We had our investigator, Joshua come for about the 4th week in a row. He is probably going to get baptized this next Sunday if we can meet with him a few more times and this family that I taught a while ago we have picked back up and all of them came to church. The Dads name is Brother Song; they seem really solid now so we will see how they go. 

That is all I have for these last two weeks.  Sorry it is extremely long. Congrats to anyone who made it all the way through.

-- Elder Cheney 

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 เอ็ลเดอร์ ชีนีย์

Baptismal Dates and Another Referral in the Wilderness

This week has gone by pretty fast. Elder Joyem and I went around to a lot of different people. Monday and Tuesday we gave out a lot of baptism dates. We gave Jackie the date for the 12th, a new investigator named Joshua a date on the 15^th.  Joshua is awesome.  He is Christian already, he just wants to come to church to learn stuff and be a member. He has come to church the last two Sundays. We also gave Chaad and Nat a date for the 29th. The funny thing is, we worked super hard all week to try to get members to come to lessons with us and we ended up with more daters than member present lessons. We also have some good potentials coming up. We started teaching this girl named Nampuan.  She has made signs for our English class, and she is interested in the gospel. Also we have our neighbor Comb. We met with him and he has before opposed the idea of getting baptized because he has gotten baptized in another church already, but we really talked about how the people who baptize need to have the authority to do so and he accepted it well and said he would get baptized. The problem is he is going to a different part of Thailand to work for a few months. He doesn't want to go there but that is the only place he can find work in his trade. This is when our member was really cool. He asked if he wanted to stay here and Comb answered yes then he was like ok well then I will find you a job here. So our member is on the job hunt for him here so hopefully he can come back soon.

On Saturday, we wanted to go visit this referral the Sisters gave us. We got directions to the place, then we showed a member the directions and he told us it was really far.  Then we asked like how far.  He said it is about where this member lives. Knowing where that member lived, I didn't think it was that much of a problem.  Not really that far. So we biked out to around where the member lived and asked for further directions.  We kept using this process of biking and asking for quite some time until after about 2 1/2 hours of biking, we got to this Buddhist temple that the investigator described as being close to their house.  We then had to try to figure out where to go.  We randomly ran into these two young men on a motorcycle that were the sons of the investigator.  They told us to follow them and they took us down this dirt trail forever until we eventually got to this village that is really remote and all the houses are huts.  

 

So that was fun.  We will probably be going back there again, too.  It didn't take near as long to get back once we knew the route. There was also a lot of cool scenery up there too, so it was really a nice trip.

Church yesterday was good.  We had Jackie and Joshua come to church. I have also inherited a lot of translating duties since the transfer.  The other companionship of Elders translates for the 1st Branch so we can sit by our investigators, and we translate for second Branch so they can sit by their investigators. I like it.  It helps me focus on the meeting better but sometimes it gets really hard when the person at the pulpit is talking about this weird movie that has a time machine. 

Also, I wanted to mention a funny story.  Today for our exercise time, we went and played basketball in the church parking lot.  We played for a while when one of the other Elders asked if I could dunk.  I did an ok 1 hand dunk, then they asked if I could do a two hand. I ran up and jumped hard to dunk and the backboard came crashing down on top of me when I dunked.  Like, literally, I broke a backboard.  I wasn't even doing a rim hang or anything. It was really funny and at the same time sad, because now we don’t have a basketball hoop or anywhere to play until we can fix it.

Well that is pretty much the summary for the week.

   

-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 เอ็ลเดอร์ ชีนีย์