Dances with Scarves

Hey everyone! 

Today we are going to this place called Mugh-tahan. It's the province that borders Laos, so you can look across the river and see Laos. Hopefully I'll have a couple of minutes to email again later today. 

This week we had an investigator, named Sister Yu, get baptized! She is so cute and was so ready. We taught her a couple times this past week and in one of her prayers she said, "Heavenly Father, you have shown me so many good things and miracles each and every day,  you have me asking....what is going to happen today?" Her whole family came to her baptism too, so hopefully we can start teaching them this week. 

Okay- I should have started this email by explaining Sunday a little bit, because it was crazy! Mahasarakham is the only "all sister missionary" area in the mission. So it is just me, my companion, and the 2 other sisters I live with that organize everything. So this Sunday I was running back and forth translating, playing the piano (SUPER badly mom...I haven't played in 6 months), and cleaning and filling up the baptismal font. Then right before the baptism, some ward members wanted to do a special musical number so they got us to practice...right then and there!  (While the people that were going to be baptized, and the other ward members, waited for 20 minutes in the other room.) Thailand is not like America....it's super chill, thus very unorganized.  We then had to teach the guy baptizing how to baptize, as there were only 3 priesthood holders there. I was a little stressed. Probably the best comparison of Mahasarakham would be that it is the Cotswolds of Thailand, mixed with Black Diamond, Alberta.  

After church, some members picked us up and drove us all around Mahasarakham visiting less active people, and a few potential investigators...church members here are seriously awesome. 

Some random facts from this week:

- I killed a centepide (a poisonous one) with a coconut. 

-For Family Home Evening, we played this game where you ask questions and if you answer incorrectly, you get baby powder smeared all over your face. 

-Our district meeting is one hour away by bicycle. That's where the closest elders live. 

-This week was the hottest week of the year in Thailand...and I can definitely attest to that!  I now am basically as tan as a Thai person. 

The funniest thing that happened this week was when one of the recent convert's sister, Gwang, invited us over to her house. She said that she had a ton of investigators for us to teach!  So, we go over there, and it turns out that it is actually an activity for the university (here in Mahasarakham) to learn about self-sufficiency and personal development. There were probably 100 people there, and they were NOT expecting to hear from the missionaries. They did however enjoy taking pictures with "falangs". (white people) Anyways, there was this tent-like thing with everyone in it and a make shift stage.  Sister Gwang had us come up "onstage" and introduce ourselves and then sing a song.... it was embarassing, as there were only three of us! #Icantsing   After that, we sat down and they started teaching all the students (and older people there) how to exercise  with scarves or fabric. They turned on this thai music and were all doing these funny exercise moves. Apparently SIster Mckinght and I were doing a pretty good job, because they called us up to the front to show everyone....sooooo embarasing. 

However, after that we got to teach 5 investigators and 2 of them have baptismal dates, so it wasn't all embarrassing craziness. 

When we teach investigators here, we ride our bikes out to their houses which are very far away. We always sit and teach on a mat on the ground (I am so bad at sitting crosslegged for long periods of time). Although most of the people we teach understand Thai, they prefer to speak Issan, which is super hard to follow, and some of the older people we are teaching only speak Issan, so they don't quite get what we are saying....the struggle. It's alll fun and a great adventure though! Whenever we ride our bikes out to these smaller communities to teach people, we hear people yelling, "falangs...falangs." It is pretty funny.

To close my email, I just want to briefly talk about the Atonement. I had this quote all ready to share, but I forgot it at home so in brief it basically says, "The Atonement can strengthen us...it can strengthen our desire to serve, as well as our personal capacities." I felt like I hadn't ever quite thought about the atonement like that...that it can give us a greater desire to act and to serve, as well as strengthening our natural capacities. Basically it seems that the Atonement is for everything we lack.  We just need to ask for that help from our Heavemly Father, and I promise that if we do...we will be given it. 

Love,

Sister Remington