Happy Fourth of Thai-ly!

Day 42
July 4, 2017 Tues
Provo, UT

So I read this amazing document this week called the Ricciardi letter- I highly recommend it to those about to or are on a mission. It is very inspirational and has motivated me to reevaluate how I am performing as a missionary.  It pushed me to be introspective and how and what I can improve to be a better missionary.

During this week for one of our teaching activities, my companion and I tried something new with our harder investigator, กบ (Gòb). Since he likes to help missionaries practice their Thai, we asked if we could just practice going through the lessons with him (which we haven't been doing, since he's gone through them like twice already). He agreed, and we've started making some good progress on the flow of the lesson!

We had a class instruction on asking inspired questions and letting the investigators lead the direction of discussion. I am excited to start really trying to ask deeper questions and (struggle to) understand their thoughts, feelings and concerns.  These classes help us to focus on the people we talk with instead of just trying to focus on our "agenda".  

Yesterday we had a chance to go on splits. Since Elder Namtam was transferred to an English branch last Wednesday we changed up companions.  Elder Brown and Elder Tuft (Cambodia) became companions, which means they are together outside of class. So it was just me and my temporary companion, Elder Guanzon, yesterday! As much as I love my companions, it was nice to take a small break from them.  I was able to learn from someone else and study his teaching methods.  Gave me a chance to also just kind of hang out and get to know him better. It really changes my perspective when you find out some of the backstory and what makes a person "tick".

Saturday was Canada day which is extremely important, because (1)  we have a Canadian in our district, (2) we are starting to go crazy after so long here, (3) we love any excuse to celebrate.  So like any good group of missionaries we went a little "wild" - well only as missionaries can of course. We actually sang through the Canadian national anthem for our opening hymn, with a slight delay between Sister Peterson (who was the only one that actually knew it), and the rest of us following her- complete with hand motions. That same evening, we gathered as a zone/branch for a religious freedom devotional/discussion which concluded with watching the Stadium of Fire firework show from the top of the new buildings. It was a'right- more then I was expecting, but tragically not as good as Possum Kingdom Lake where I staffed at BSA Camp Constantin for several summers.

The following Sunday was slight death- fasting, sleep deprivation (bed time was around 11:30), and a bunch of extra meetings. It's all good though, because I (surprisingly) didn't get hangry and when we went to the temple it got cloudy and windy which felt amazing. At the temple, my companion studied out our ponder topic and discussed it, and I realized I got the answer to the question I was fasting about! Not exactly the answer I was wanting, but I guess I have to follow through.

I taught the Priesthood lesson, which was slightly intimidating as our District President, Pres. Mehr, was with us through all our meetings that day. I ended up getting an impression that I ran with to teach the topic (Christlike Attributes) in a completely different way than the 2 other ones I had prepared. So that was wild, but it definitely worked out the best as there was good class involvement and  the spirit was present. 

Our evening devotional was the President of the MTC (Pres. Martino)'s brother and nephew. They did like a Christmas program-esque type deal, where they sang and narrated the life of Joseph Smith. Since the brother, Trey Martino, was in several presidencies for Texas Missions, they apparently performed it for 15 years on every fast Sunday. It was certainly interesting and different.

The movie we chose to see was The Ministry of President Thomas S. Monson. It was interesting and enjoyable, but maybe best of all we got out 20 min early. Which was great, because then we celebrated my companion Elder Wilde's birthday as best as we could (with junk food and candy).

I'm getting better at reading Thai, but it's still difficult, and there's so many things to remember and keep track of. One of our study materials, a Thai-English dictionary nicknamed the Green Dragon, has been particularly helpful as I've been translating things.

WE GOT OUR THAI NAME TAGS YESTERDAY. IT IS VERY EXCITING. That is all for that matter.

We are singing a weird (I've just never heard it before) but fun arrangement of Battle Hymn of The Republic. As more missionaries have arrived, the choir has grown. We now fill up the majority of the bleachers, which is most of the seating for devotionals, so we basically have about half of the MTC in choir (my estimation is between 1200-1500 missionaries, from my experience in the cafeteria).  As you can imagine, we may not be the best but we make up for it with our enthusiasm!

Because the temple is now closed, we suddenly have a 3 hour open block for Pday today which is so strange- normally we are rushing from activity to activity. We'll probably take a nap and do some personal study today, which I'm so pumped for.  Although I'm missing the temple and the extra spiritual boost it gives me to help push me through the classes trying to learn this language.

Enjoy life, and check out 1 Nephi 19:23 before the next time you read scriptures! 

Blessings be upon ya!

--

Elder Montague

เอ็ลเดอร์ มอนตัร์กีว

(I'm pretty sure that's how it's spelled. I forgot to bring my name tag with me, so I just went for it with the spelling. I'll upload a picture of it though!)