2010!

Sawatii Pii Mai!!

A new year; a new decade. Yesterday I was thinking back to December 31, 1999. I remember walking home from Desiree's and thinking wow, a new Millennium... since then I have graduated from 8th grade, high school and college and served almost half of my mission! What a great decade... I read the conference talk from last October by Dieter F. Uchdorf about the Love of God. I meant to write the quote down to share it with you all, but forgot, so I will have to paraphrase. He talks about the love of God and how it is infinite. Then he talks about how we can love God more. He says we show our love to God by keeping the commandments and being obedient. The way we become more obedient, he says, is to simply try. He says to take something difficult and try until it become possible. Then take that thing that seems only possible and keep trying until it becomes a part of you.

SO i have decided to make "love" my goal for the new year and the new decade. I have come up with two things that are difficult and will try until they become possible, and then two things that are possible and try to make them more of a part of me. In all my goals, love is the motivation. So the first two will help me to love others and to love myself more. First I want to not be so selfish with things. I want to be a more giving person and give before I would take. Second I want to not eat when I'm not hungry... (that's to love myself more :) It's hard here where there is food EVERYWHERE and people give us a lot of food too! So those are things that are difficult that I would like to make possible. Now for the possible things that I want to become a part of me are, first, my prayers to be more sincere, and second my scripture studies to be more meaningful. Anyone who has served a mission knows that awesome, heartfilled prayers are amazing, life changing scripture studies are possible. They really do happen. But I want to make every prayer, night and morning, more personal and every scripture study a little more meaningful until those two things become a very part of me.

We talk a lot about progressing investigators, which is an investigator that is keeping their commitments and, well, showing progression. But Sister Neilsen and I have been focusing lately on being progressing missionaries. Missionaries who are continually keeping our commitments to the Lord and serving with all our hearts, might, mind and strength and continually recommitting ourselves to the Lord. We are so blessed. I love it.

OK, so this past week has been just amazing. Probably one of my hardest in some aspects, and my best in others. Ah, the mission.... gotta love it. Ok, so hard: Like I said before, they don't celebrate Christmas so New Years is a huge huge deal. Everyone goes home and spends time with family. The way Thailand works is a lot different from home. Everyone sells stuff on the street, so a lot of peoples stores are also their homes. Well, because it is new years, a ton of people aren't selling so the streets are WAY quiet. It's weird. Anyways, every appointment we made canceled on us and I have only met one of our investigators because everyone we call told us not until next year. Even today, which is the 2nd, the streets are still pretty empty. So Tuesday was one of the hardest days for me because I realized that this area is just a lot harder than my first. In Korat we had tons of people to teach and people were progressing. Here there are more people but the people are more busy and less open to the message. Inviting was something that was the very last option, if everything fell through, in Korat, and here it is something we do every day.

Well, we are going to turn the work around here. Because we don't have a lot of investigators, we are going to turn our focus to the less actives and start asking for referrals. Everyone we taught in Korat was a referral... So the past two days we have spent in the rosters calling members we don't know. I feel like I am getting a good grasp of the ward and the area. We have already seen miracles by making appointments with less active members who are willing to see us. (that is always a good thing) I am also experiencing for the first time members who don't like the missionaries... that is sad. So things are looking up, we have tons of people to visit and I am just so excited to see this area start booming! All it takes is lots of faith and hard work.

So for the good things that happened this week: first off I had probably the best companionship study of my whole mission... Sister Neilsen is amazing and knows the atonement more than anyone I know. We read Elder Hollands talk from April 2009 about Christ walking the lonely road and we both just cried as we felt the reality of the atonement. It was incredible.... life changing. I see now how every trail in our life just makes the atonement so real and how much trails are blessings. I feel changed.

Yesterday was pretty sweet too. We went to this American grocery store and I coveted the cereal. Oh man I miss cereal!!! I almost spent 200 Baut on a box of cinnamon toast crunch (that's $6) but decided that I can eat all the cereal I want when i get home... and it will probably taste better then anyways... haha.

AND! I got a package from Lyndsay!! :) AH! I love her!! Thank you, Lyndsay!!!!
Everyone please write me!!! I would love to hear from all of you!!

Love,
Melissa