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