Baptism and Exchanges

This has been I good week. To start off, Brother Came got baptized!! It was super sweet. All the members here where also super excited because Samut Prakaan hasn't seen a baptism in a while. He was super excited to get baptized and he has a nice group of friends to fellowship him in the future. 

As far as other investigators, we have Henry; he is the son of one of the African Less Actives we found. They have been to church the last two Sundays and we have a goal for him to get baptized next week. It can happen if we can meet with them often this week, so we will have to see what happens.

We also have another investigator, Brother Mote. He is really sincere and really honest; which are two awesome qualities to have in investigators. He has a date for the 10th of July, which he can most likely make happen.

Other fun events this week, we had exchanges; so Elder Parish came here and was with Elder Ellis, and I went to Bangna and was companions with Elder Cecil for the day. It was pretty fun to be back on a bike. We had a pretty good day. we had a good lesson with one of their investigators. 

Well that was about all for this week, จบ

-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 เอ็ลเดอร์ ชีนีย์

Less Actives and Laotian Investigators

So this week has been good.  Last Monday, Chinatown was really fun. It is just this crazy, thin alley with tons of shops on either side. Today we are going to a zone sports day. It should be fun as well. 

As far as the Area goes, this week we had a nice referral fall into are hands. It was for this man that wanted to know where the church was. We set up an appointment with him and talked to him. It turns out he is a less active member from Bangkapi that moved down to Samut Prakaan and didn't know where to go to church. So we let him know where the church building was then taught him the restoration lesson.  Afterward, we asked for a referral and he told us about his friend that would be interested. Then after that, he wanted to give us a ride home, so we went with him and he told us about his 9 year old son and his wife that he wants to get baptized as well. it was sweet. He came to church with his two kids yesterday so that is great. He is from Africa so we talk to him in English but he speaks 4 languages. Super cool. I am really excited to be working with him.

We also have had the chance to visit these Laotian people in our area. We have an investigator there. His name is Brother Came. It is cool, there are 4 of them that live in this small room and the other three guys are baptized already so now we are working with Came.  They also have another friend that we have taught that we are working with. Brother Came has a baptismal date for this Sunday so he will most likely make it.  We will see what happens. His friend will probably take a little bit longer. It is fun teaching Laotian people; Lao is really close to Thai so we can usually make it work. Sometimes, though, they can’t understand what we are talking about. 

We are really trying to work with Less Active members.  There are a lot of LA's here because the church building is not in Samut Prakaan anymore. It is about an hour away so it is really hard for people to get out there. Especially because a lot of people don't have their own individual transportation. We are really just trying to get people with cars to start picking up people on their way to church. It is hard, especially because there are a lot of people that barely have enough time to go to church and now it is almost impossible with an hour commute on either end of it.

It is going well though, and the area is progressing.  We are seeing growth. 

-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

เอ็ลเดอร์ ชีนีย์

Stake Conference, Boats and New Investigators

This week has gone by pretty fast. Last Monday we went and played laser tag in Asoke (downtown Bangkok).  It was pretty fun but the actual game time was only about 20 minutes so it went by pretty fast for how long it took to get there and everything. 

We picked up some new investigators this week. We found this guy named Mote. He is really funny. He was initially interested in the English class but he is interested in learning about religion as well. He is super funny and is really interested. 

We also got to go on the ferry this week to go visit a less active family. It was super fun. I liked being out on the water. It just crossed over the river and was only like a 5 minute ride but it was fun.

On Thursday, we had Zone training which was good. There are a lot of missionaries from my MTC district in this Zone. The zone training focused a lot on working with members to get referrals and to get more success.

Yesterday was Stake Conference which was also really good. They had a lot of good speakers. The only down side was it was way up in Asoke so investigators didn't want to go and a lot of members didn't go as well.

As for today we are planning on going to China Town, so that will be fun. 

That's really all I have for this week, I hope next week is more interesting.

-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 เอ็ลเดอร์ ชีนีย์

Transfer to Samutprakarn

So this week has been interesting. First off, I got transferred out of Chiang Mai and I am now in Samutprakarn and my new companion is Elder Ellis. Samutprakarn is the southernmost area in the Mission so I went from almost the most northern to the most southern. It is by the coast. It is still part of Bangkok though, because Bangkok is gigantic, so that is weird. I have seen the ocean a few times since coming down. Elder Ellis is from Hawaii. He has been out a little under a year.

On Tuesday, our English class did not do so well. It was pouring rain and most Thai people drive motorcycles, so the only person we had come was Brother Jackie. Afterward we went and ate dinner with him. Wednesday was crazy. I was getting all packed up and ready to go. Then we had to take a bus out. Our bus got going for about two hours then it broke down and we had to wait another 2 hours for another bus to come before we could get going, so it ended up being a long trip to get to Bangkok for transfers. 

During Transfers, I met up with Elder Ellis and we left my bike at the office and headed out. We went back to Samutprakarn and got to work.  It was nice not having a ten hour bus ride like with Chiang Mai, we just hopped in a taxi and that was that. 

Elder Ellis is from Hawaii and he likes a lot of outdoor activities. He is big into surfing, but he likes a large variety of things outside. We have been getting along well.

We don't actually have a church building in Samutprakarn so we have to go up to Srinakarine which is about an hour away by bus. So this is similar to Chiang Mai with it taking forever to get to church but this time it is a bus ride instead of a bike ride.  It is weird to be off of my bike and walking everywhere but bikes would be really dangerous here so it is probably better to walk. 

Well, that is about it for this week, Today we are going to play laser tag for P-day so that should be fun.

I have included pictures are of me and Elder Ellis (sorry for the darkness, I'll try to send a better one soon) and me and Elder Barlow before I left Chiang Mai.  I’ll also include some extra pictures of our last P-day trip to the waterfalls and the mountains and a cool building in my new area.

-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 เอ็ลเดอร์ ชีนีย์