Week 13: Miracles in Chaing Rai

Week 13: Miracles in Chiang Rai

อาทิตย์แห่งปาฏิหาริย์ที่เชียงราย

How's everyone doing? This week was one of my favorite in Thailand!! First, on P-day we went to the border of Myanmar and Thailand and everything was in both Thai and Burmese which looks so cool! 

This week started off with a switch off with the zone leaders. So I got a new companion for one day. I got to lead all of those lessons and talk with our investigators way more than before, which was super cool! It really boosted my spirit and showed me that I'm capable of doing great things with the Lord's help. Also, he taught me the importance of talking with literally everyone we see. So that's what we did this week...we talked with every person. We were just walking one day and heard out of nowhere "hey I just saw some Mormon boys" lol. Immediately we turned around and started talking to a group of Americans. It's funny how many Americans I sometimes see at night. 

This week I also got to do some cool inviting on my own. My companion and I just started talking to some people early one morning and I started talking to these two guys that  had their shirts off, smoking and drinking whiskey at 9 in the morning. I started teaching them about what we believe and one of them said he's been wanting to change religion for a while now. His name was ออ๊ด. He was interested so we started teaching him.  We taught him how to pray. He said a wonderful prayer and the spirit was definitely there. 

I had a goal to talk more this week and even lead some lessons and that's what I did. On Sunday we only had one investigator at church, which is sad because we commit so many to church every week and then they just don’t show up. Its heart breaking. But once church ended something really cool happened. 

We walked out of the church - just saying goodbye to some members. We saw this guy just walking past the church and we asked him if he’s ever been in a church before. He said no, so we invited him in and he toured the church. We asked him if we could give him a lesson and he was down. I got to lead this lesson and we just taught the plan of salvation and the spirit was so strong that we invited him to baptism in a month and he said yes. Life is full of miracles seriously! 

One more miracle was on Saturday this week. We were looking for ออ๊ด and ending up just finding another girl. We started chatting with her and told her we were missionaries. We asked her what religion she worshipped and she said she was Christian, so we started talking about the book of mormon and testifying of its truth. I opened my mouth and told her I knew the book of mormon would change her life because it has truly changed mine. All of the sudden she started breaking down in tears and told us she hasn't been to church in years and that she used to be such a strong Christian. The spirit was so strong!! We were invited to her house and taught the restoration and gave her a book of mormon to read...it was nuts. 

Spiritual thought: 

One day we were talking with two of our investigators, จง and เมย์, who just don't seem to follow any of our commitments. We have invited them to church numerous times and given them specific powerful scriptural passages to read. But they just won't ever read. So we used an analogy so they could kinda understand the importance of going to church and reading the scriptures. I especially enjoyed this analogy because it is about soccer. In soccer you have different positions, a coach, assistant coaches, and another team. The coach gives us direction and helps us achieve our goals of becoming champions. The coach stays focused on his one team and doesn't have multiple teams that he coach. We related the coach to jesus christ. He gives us direction and tells us how to win. The assistant coaches are missionaries who provide help along the way. In this analogy we said to be better soccer players what do the players have to do. They said practice and listen to coach. We said practice is on Sunday at 9am als church. The only way we can become better is if we go to practice. However the best players practice at home too. This is reading your scriptures, praying, and doing those simple things to draw closer to Christ. They understood completely that they went progress if they don't put any work in themselves. 

Sorry another thought we explained that's more applicable here in Chiang rai. For those who don’t know Chiang rai is so beautiful and surround with amazing buildings and nice people and a lot of wads (or buildings for the Buddhist people). However, the church we have here in Chiang rai is to say the least not that appealing, so when people come they say they would rather go to their prettier, bigger church. However another analogy to explain this is: imagine you have 2 cups. One is half full and doesn't look like clear water either, but the water is in a very smooth and nice looking glass. The other glass is full with clear water but the cup isn't colorful or that appealing. Which one would you rather have? That's how it is here in Chiang rai...we have the full doctrine (full water) with no distortion of truths (clear water). I love this area so much and which they could partake of the blessings of this church. 

On Friday we met this lady who is catholic. It's funny cause in Thailand if you are catholic, it's like you are Buddhist and have a shrine of some crosses and jesus. Kinda interesting Haha. Well we taught this lady named วิท and got to explain the restoration of the gospel. She could understand everything so we explained it in a variety of ways and she realized that her church was wrong and got a little confused with her life Haha. But we invited her to church and unfortunately she didn't come. Oh yeah and I got to eat some Mexican food! So soooo good. It's the best tres leches I've ever had by far. 

Love

Elder Lowe 

1) service cutting down some trees

2) the Mexican place with our tres leches

3) view of the split of Thailand and Myanmar 

4) view of Myanmar