Korat is hoppin!

Family and Friends!

Oh man... so many miracles happen when you are a missionary! I wish I had the time to just type up my journal for all of you to read (mom would really like that...) but, as a missionary usually is, I am short on time and only have time to share a few of the many miracles I have had since being in Korat. Plus I want to talk about some cultural things and our adventure today!

OK... so first of all I had my first Zone Conference yesterday. It was INCREDIBLE!! I can not even describe how much I love my mission president and his wife. I feel so motivated and uplifted. Missionary work is the most amazing thing in the world. I have so many plans and goals for the little branch in Korat. We all wrote vision statements as a district and ours is awesome. It is cool that President Smith served here 40 years ago when there were 2 branches in all of Thailand... Now there is a stake and well, i dont know how many branches, but a lot. We are working towards another stake soon in the Isan (north east of thailand) and I just know it will happen. One thing I want to do is start up a choir and go out into the community and sing I am a Child of God, I Believe in Chirst and Joseph's First Prayer, with narration in between. It sounds great in my head, we'll see how it works out.

At zone conference we were eating lunch and this women came and sat with a bunch of us, but for whatever reason, wanted to talk to me. My Thai is still not that good, so it was hard at first, but I really started to understand her. She had just gotten a job cleaning the church, but had not been taught by the missionaries yet. I gave her a BoM and taught her about prophets and baptism. She loved it!! She told me she wanted to get baptized! So we set up teaching with the elders who lived in the area. It was a miracle!

Another miracle that was really cool was on friday we got a mysterious call from a member Sister Bradfield didn't even know. She just said that she wanted to meet us at the church at 7 and for it to be just us, no one else. It turns out it was a girl who has been a member for 7 years, but inactive for 2. AND she brought a friend who wanted to learn! We taught the friend (Gigi) and she loved it. She has been reading her BoM and we are teaching her again tonight. The girl, Nan has had a pretty hard past, but I think the Lord is working on her and she will be coming back to church. I am so excited!

Church is amazing! There are about 70 people who come weekly, which is good. The chapel is small so it is pretty full. The members are amazing and they love me :) My favorite is a recent convert named Nok who is awesome. She knows some english, but not too much so we have a lot of fun talking!! :) It is so funny how close we have become and we can't even really talk that well together. We have lots of fun together. We also went out to ice cream with 2 girls May and Kay who are cousins. They are 15 and 18 and we had SO much fun laughing and joking around! It was good because May is still investigating and Kay is very sweet but was feeling left out because we always spend so much time with May teaching. It was good fellow shipping and a lot of fun!

I am just having the time of my life here! Sister Bradfield is amazing. She is the best trainer I could ever ask for. She is so patient and low stress and is always giving me compliments and bringing my confidence up. I cant imagine being here without her! Dad asked for my address for google earth... I think it is Mucamoga street soi 13... I dont know what that will do. We have ac in the room and fans, so that is nice.

Mom, I am gonna need you to put some money in my personal account. As for packages... american treats are fun. We can pretty much get anything here but its a little different. Mostly healthy please, but some treats are nice too!

So KURTIS HAS A GIRLFRIEND?! plag plag... hahah. Thanks for sending pictures. She is really cute and I wish I could meet her. I know anyone Kurtis likes has to be amazing! And since mom and dad both say she is great, I certainly believe it! I was going to make that my subject line for my email, but I decided to save Kurtis the embarrassment and let only the people who really read these to know about it ;)

OK well there is still so much to say, but time is of the essence! I'll have to tell you about my adventure next week. Love you all!!
Choog dii!!!

Melissa