Week 7 - Only two more weeks until we are in Thailand

Only 2 weeks left till Thailand baby!!

Wow what a week! Definitely a tough week and such a humbling one.  So much happened this week so here we go:

First, on Tuesday night I had the privilege to hear from Elder Ballard here at the mtc. Right before that I had the opportunity to speak to a คนไทย or a Thai person and they were speaking so fast. I was getting so stressed and overwhelmed that I can't do this, but after hearing elder Ballard's message I knew everything was gonna be okay. He spoke about the humility, strength, and integrity of not only Joseph Smith but also his older brother Hyrum. They had so many worse tribulations and afflictions in their lives, so worrying about a language is honestly a little silly when you put it in perspective of what they had to endure in their lives.  

Well the next day we got 39 new missionaries in the zone and our dorm just got a whole lot louder and way more crowded. It was nice to see Elder (Tag) Wilson in my zone now. But, seeing where all the new missionaries are at with the language and how little they know was kind of a confidence booster and showed me how far I have come along. 

But this week in the lessons it became especially obvious that I don't get much of an opportunity to speak. Every time I want to say something my companion says something or he goes on for like 10 sentences and never gives me an opportunity to speak. But after watching the talk by Elder Holland about opening your mouth, I realized that I just need to open my mouth more and not be afraid to speak. I've been trying to open my mouth more this week and realize that I'm going to make mistakes but that's how you learn. Now, the lessons seem way more unified and and we both do a good job of helping each other out. 

Another reason it was a little bit of a longer week this week was because on Friday I got the opportunity to do a Skype TRC where I got to Skype an actual person that is in Thailand right now, and speak Thai with them and give them a lesson. It was so cool and I can already feel the love for these people. I can't believe I'll be in Thailand two weeks from now or at least on a plane going there :)

To try and start making better progress with the language, me and my companion did an English fast on Saturday and Monday this week. Meaning that we spoke only Thai  (no english) for both of those days. I gotta tell you it gets really tiring and my head was killing me by the end of the day, but I know that I improved so much because of it. I would say listening is my biggest weakness, but being forced to speak only Thai and listen to it all day really helped me develop better focus and listening skills. 

It's been a good week though and I feel way more confident now than I did before. We were able to teach an "investigator" over the last couple of weeks and invited her to get baptized recently and she said yes. The spirit was so strong and I realized that I can do this if I rely on the Lord and have faith and trust in him. 

Also it's been pretty cool to help out the new missionaries, and give them some good tips. Oh yeah, we also had a day where we put out this Thai mat in the middle of the classroom. It is very disrespectful to walk on the mat with shoes on so we took them off for that day lol. We were practicing our Thai squat that we will have to do all the time in Thailand according to our teachers.  สนุก. 

I hope that everyone had a great! Love you all!!

มีอาทิตย์ที่ดี

Have a good week

Learning to squat