My First Baptism!

August 27th, 2017
3 months, 4 days
Thailand, Bangkok, Bangna (บางนา) District
Last Pday, we went with our Ward Mission Leader and his son to a snake farm.  

 It was surprisingly a fun trip, and I ended up holding a snake! We got this Japanese dessert after, where it was a huge mound of flavored shaved ice on top of cut up toast. I don't know why or how, but it was pretty good yo. We went to a park and walked around and fed the huge fish in the pond before returning to a teaching appointment.




We've started teaching this Burmese dude that only speaks a little Thai and a little English. It's hard to teach him because he only speaks a little of the two languages we know, and because there isn't a Burmese Book of Mormon yet. I just gave him all of the pamphlets in his native tongue, showed him a page of how to pray, and hoped for the best.




I went on switch offs on Thursday again, and oh my goodness I've never been fed so much. We did mostly member work that day, so it made sense. I also had my first coconut, which was yummy and surprisingly full.

It was a hard week because three people that we had committed to being baptized on Sunday, that we had worked so hard to have them do what was necessary to be baptized and feel the Spirit, just full on decided not to follow through for the "dumbest" reasons. That was a hard experience to swallow and see people exercise their free agency away from the straight and narrow path. 
A great positive experience though, I had my first baptism! Her name is Jane, she's from Cambodia, and she has 2 children one who was also baptized by Elder Kekahouha.  Her son's name is เทียน (thian) and her daughter's วี (wi).  What was so interesting about her was in our first lesson, she ranted on how Buddhism is so dumb.  She was Christian before.

On Saturday before the baptisms, members from one of Elder Kekahouha's old areas came down and took us out to lunch at some Japanese curry place, then to Cold Stone after. It was yummy!

 On Saturday, the stake also put on Charity Never Faileth the Musical. I didn't understand everything that was going on, or what was being said, but they sang surprisingly good and they invested so much into it, you couldn't help but love it.

I tried to capture Thai life for y'all, and I took pictures of as much food as I could this week, as well as some vendors that we would typically eat from. I took pictures with members that fed us!
Everyone here is obsessed with a delicious ice cream place called Swensons. We happened to run into their promotional mascot Durian, so of course it was a photo op.


That's about it! Love everyone! And a shout out to my sister turning 13!!! Happy birthday Ava!


--
Elder Montague

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