It was boiled and safe so I went for it!

This week has had a lot of stuff going on. Our number of investigators has still not been getting too much better. We got this one new investigator who works taking the stems off of peppers at his house. We met him by just going and helping him work taking the stems off. We got to talk about different stuff and he was really interested in our English class that we were starting. When we got the class running we stopped by and gave him an English Card and then he asked about religion and since then we were able to stop by a few times and help de-stem some peppers. The other family we were teaching has been really hard to get a hold of since we last met, which was about 2 weeks ago now. We have a lesson with them on Wednesday, It will probably be the ‘make it or break it’ point for them because they are always super-willing and searching during lessons but they just loose focus as soon as we leave. We had no luck finding Jackie's baptismal records so he will need to get baptized again. 

Yesterday was Easter. It is not a holiday here except for in the church. We didn't really have anything special happen. We had District Conference this weekend. It is basically the same thing as Stake conference in the states. So we had lots of people at church here in Chiang Mai. It was a good meeting. I am starting to get a lot of stuff from church because my Thai is getting a lot better. I almost translated part of the meeting yesterday but there were a lot of other missionaries there to do the translation. I have started doing translation for one or two people in classes and stuff but doing a talk is a little bit harder.

We were able to have two people we were working with come to the conference.  One was Jackie and the other one was the rice farmer we have been meeting with. We were surprised to see him come. We called him the night before and he said he would be out of town. It is really nice to have people at church, especially when we have such a good meeting taking place.

So, on to the fun stuff. Earlier in the week I got to eat some chicken feet. We just went to this random restaurant and got a random thing off the menu and they brought out some soup with noodles, chicken feet, and some coagulated blood in there. The feet were not too bad. It looked bad with all the toe nails and everything but it is boiled and safe so I went for it. There isn't a lot of substance unless you want to eat the bones. Also today we went to go take pictures with Tigers. It was really fun. You can lay with them and take pictures and do whatever you want. They had some baby tigers and some white tigers but they charge a lot more to take pictures with those.

Well, that is all I have for this week.

--Elder Cheney 

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ ซีนีย์

New English Room

This week was a good one. We just got a place to teach English out by where we live so we have been doing a lot of work getting that ready. We had our first English class out there and we only had one person show up. We weren't able to advertise it that much because we weren't sure if we could have it open by last Tuesday. Hopefully we will have more people tomorrow when we teach. We have been trying to talk to a lot of people about it and a lot of people like the words ‘Free English class’ so hopefully those people will take advantage of it and come by. This week we had to paint the English room. It looks way better now. It took pretty long for the two of us to get the painting taken care of because we had to strip off old wall paper and wash the walls so that the new paint would stick okay and last for a while. It will also be a nice place for teaching investigators. Most missionaries here teach at the church but that really isn't an option for us because we are so far away from the building so it will be nice to have a place to teach so we don't have to bike that far. 

Not that much else was going on this week. The less active we found named Jackie has been doing good and has still been coming to church every week. We have been having trouble finding his records from way back then so he might have to get re-baptized. 

We had a good lesson this week. We had this investigator named Non and she had not been able to meet with us in 5 weeks. When we called her earlier in the week she said her Mom wouldn't let her be Christian.  She said we could meet with her one last time and we came and taught her. She was moved by the spirit so much that she said she would get baptized and continue to meet with us. I hope we don't have any other problems with her her mom.

We also have this investigator that is a rice farmer and every time we go there his mom starts to yell at us because older people here don't trust white people. Luckily, we can just walk to the other side of the rice field, where she is not physically capable of going, and have a good lesson without interruption.

We are really excited for the potential we have going into this transfer and it should be really great.

I really enjoyed  last week we went to this silk factory and then to this place where they paint paper umbrellas and large paper fans for our p-day.

Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ ซีนีย์

Never Procrastinate the Day of your Duck Buying

So not that much new this week. We had an interesting story this week. So there is this guy we ride our bike by often and we always say hi as we go by. He is always selling ducks on the side of the road. We always go by and we say hi then he says hi. Then we always talk about buying some duck from him but whenever we go by it is never convenient. So we had gone a long time and then the other day we were several miles away from home when Elder Parish's tube pops on his bike. We would usually just patch the tube in this situation, but we were out of patches so we had no choice but to start walking the bikes home. We are pretty far away from home so we had a long way to walk. After we had been walking for about an hour or so, the duck guy sees us as he is driving by and he pulls over to help us out. He gives us a ride back to our house, and we felt really bad that we had never bought any duck from him and if we bought duck now it would look like we are just doing it to be nice. So the moral of this story is, never procrastinate the day of your duck buying. So to add to the story we went and bought some duck from him later and it was really awkward and hard to eat.  If you could get just a regular piece of meat it wasn't too bad but there was a lot of extra stuff in there. 

We found a good new investigator this week. He lives right across the street from us, which is really convenient because we often have to bike pretty far to get places.  The other family that we are teaching is doing really well. They are developing a lot of faith and are going to be good for their baptism date on the 3rd. Yesterday, we taught them the Word of Wisdom and they accepted it well. Brother Chaad has a small alcohol problem and they both drink coffee and tea, but they realized it probably isn't good to be addicted to those things and agreed to quit.

Yesterday, our water didn't work so we had to shower at a member’s house, (after it turned back on in was really brown for a while).

In other news, Transfers are this Monday; that is why we are changing P day up.  I am staying in Chiang Mai with Elder Parish so not that much will be different for me.

-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ ซีนีย์

Jackie and Elder Barlow

So I guess I have 2 weeks to write about because I missed last week. So, the first week was pretty good. We found this person across the street from our investigators house, so we talked to him. His name is Jackie, and he said he had met with the missionaries about 50 years ago. He even told us their names but we just kind of brushed it off because we didn't know them. He moved away and lost contact with the church. He asked if he could get a Book of Mormon because he had lost his. So we go back to talk to him and drop off the Book of Mormon, then he starts telling us all about how he met with the missionaries, a lot, 42 years ago. So we start teaching a lesson to him about the gospel of Jesus Christ and he didn't really remember that much which, wasn't that big of a surprise. Then we move on to baptism and he tells us he got baptized already by the elders in Chiang Mai 42 years ago. We were really surprised that this guy was baptized already because we thought he was just a former investigator. We let him know that he is already a member of the church. He came to church on Sunday which was really good and then we met with him later in the week to make sure he would keep coming to church and everything. Later, during this week, we had some senior missionaries come in, Elder and Sister Barlow. Elder Barlow was a missionary in Thailand a while ago and he told us about how he served in Chiang Mai. So then we go to Church yesterday and Jackie is there again and we are talking to him after Sacrament Meeting and he is talking about when he went to church 42 years ago and he had been taught by Elders Barlow and Wall. Then we pause for a second and then run and grab Elder Barlow from across the room, and they have a cool reunion. It is crazy how unlikely that is to happen, especially when you consider how small the church was 42 years ago.

 

My companion, Elder Parish said, “Wow! What a testimony of how God is aware of His children and wants us all to return to Him. I feel so fortunate to have played a part in God's plan of bringing a lost sheep back into the fold.”

So Ostrich Riding was really fun. It was kind of interesting because the ostriches aren't really tamed to ride they just grab the ostriches neck and pull it down and the put a bag over its head, then the ostrich won’t move anywhere because it can't see. They then put a step stool up to the ostrich and you just climb on. It is weird you just grab the wings and that is how you hold on. It felt like you were about to rip the wings out but I think they know what they are doing. Then the workers chase the ostrich around with a metal pole to make it run. There is also no set time limit you have on the ostrich it is just till you fall off. I was on for about 15 minutes which is pretty good. The ostrich’s knees bend the other way it is really odd. So sometimes when the ostrich would run it would just start clawing my leg with its foot.

Later in the day, last P day, we went up to this all white Buddhist temple. It was cool. That temple is really well known because it is the only all white one. Most of the other ones are really colorful.

This week we have had a little more success. We got to meet with a family and they have a Baptism date for the beginning of April. They also came to church yesterday which is very good. We are in an area call Sun Sai which is about a 40 minute bike ride and probably a 20 minute car ride to the main part of Chiang Mai. So it is pretty hard to get people to come to church when they have to travel a ways to get there. They are actually the first investigators to come to church that live out in Sun Sai.

Not that much else happened this week

-- Elder Cheney

ฉะนั้น, หากเจ้ามีความปรารถนาจะรับใช้พระผู้เป็นเจ้า เจ้าก็ได้รับเรียกมายังงาน

 ่่้เอ็ลเดอร์ ซีนีย์

Siam Insect Museum

So, I don’t have any time to write today. I just got back from riding an Ostrich. I will explain it more in detail next week. It was really fun. However, here are some pictures from the Siam Insect Museum. We went there last week. It was a lot of fun. 

-- Elder Cheney