It's like a symphony: just keep listening, and pretty soon you'll start to figure out your part....

1. Our wonderful district in traditional Thai clothing on Saturday! The Elders were doing a part in the cultural dance that involved a lot of hip-shaking and jumping around. It was hilarious.

2. Elder Walker, me, my companions, Elder Evans and Elder Chamberlain, just a few of my Nong-Thais. I was so happy and grateful to be able to spend the weekend with a bunch of the Elders who I met in the MTC who are just rock-solid missionaries. They're all doing so well!

3. After Zone Conference on Monday, we went home to Kalasin and then to a member's house for FHE. We had chicken, salad and french fries, which all tasted very American and amazing. I was overwhelmed.

Sorry I'm late emailing this week, but we had District Conference this weekend so our P-Day was moved to Tuesday! Ballerrrrrr

This was a crazy week, but gratefully, one of miracles, which were so desperately needed, because I was dying last week in more ways than one. On Wednesday I just felt dead, but I pushed through hours of inviting and contacting at random places with little to no success until about 830. My companions wanted to head home and I did too, but I felt like we needed to go to our local grocery store "Big C" before we went home. So we went to Big C, and waited for 10 minutes...it was 850 and we needed to head home or we were going to be late for our 9pm curfew, so we went to our bikes and started getting our helmets on when suddenly a man and woman on a scooter drove by. My companion was closest and so she asked them if they wanted to go to church, and the woman without hesitation said, "Yes, I'm very interested!" While my companion got her phone number and talked to her more, I bent over my bike and just poured out my heart in gratitude, because I didn't have the energy to do anything else. It was such a huge miracle to meet someone who was so willing to learn about the gospel!

We spent most of the week getting ready for District Conference in KhonKen, a city in our zone where all the members of the church in the Isaan gathered. We were blessed to hear from Elder Gong, a member of the seventy. At the conference, we learned that they're splitting the Isaan districts (Udorn, Ubon, KhonKen) from three to two to increase membership and focus on getting two more stakes in the Isaan within the next 4-5 years! We're so excited about the change and excited for what it means for Thailand. In the next 5-10 years, the goal is to go from 2 stakes (what we currently have in Bangkok) to 7 throughout Thailand. A temple is going to happen here, for sure! And we have the blessing as missionaries to be able to help that come about.

There was so much that happened this weekend. On Sunday evening we had a special sacrament meeting for all the missionaries with a testimony meeting afterwards. I've been feeling really spiritually dead lately, but during the testimony meeting all the missionaries just opened up -- turns out I am not nor have ever been alone in my feelings of inadequacy or my spiritual struggles. As missionary after missionary went up and talked about how hard this mission is, and how much they've learned to turn to the Lord and how they've found ways to keep going when they didn't know how they could...well, it made me very aware that I've been doing the same thing these past 11 weeks in country.

As for my health...well, we don't think it's parasites anymore, although that could be a contributing factor...now they think it's a byproduct of stress, which is weird because I'm waaaay more relaxed than I was last transfer. But it's very common for missionaries here to have physical side-effects from stress. So I'm supposed to relax more. Which is pretty much impossible because we're in the Isaan! Ohhh well.

You know, as hard as it is here -- and believe me when I say it's hard out here -- I love it. At Zone Conference yesterday we watched a video of members of the Church here in Thailand put to the song "Glorious" by David Archuleta (go listen to it!) ...I was just overwhelmed with how much I love the people here, from the kids to the families to the drunk old men and women whose brains are so gone they can barely function. These people are so special to our Heavenly Father. I love our tiny, sometimes dramatic branch even though only 25 people are really active. I love the missionaries here in the Isaan. They're a special brand of missionary...it takes a different kind of strength and character to be able to work out here because the work is brutally hard and largely unfulfilling as far as results in baptisms and retention...but that's not what we see when we invite people to be baptized on a daily basis. We see (or we try to see) people as they really are -- the potential they have to our Heavenly Father, which is infinite. I remember a conversation I had with a good friend of mine last year at BYU about how Heavenly Father sees us, and my friend made the comment that Heavenly Father sees and values us not as we are right now, but as we have the potential to become in the eternities. And that being is of infinite worth and value. And as we serve God's children all around the world, we learn to see them the way God sees us all. And that's a beautiful process.

I love you all! Thank you for your prayers and support -- I felt the prayers on my behalf this week, and it kept me going past the point I thought I could go. Have a great week!

Love, 
Sister Zoller

BONUS VIDEO -- a summary of the weekend events!
http://youtu.be/BEScPySnDoY?list=UUvioo8VBAWg12GjXDDLSyKA

Cue the end scene from The Breakfast Club, when Judd Nelson puts his fist in the air, and the opening chords of "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds

1. Flooded parking lot. So. Happy.

2. They have ice cream on hot dog buns here. With rice. And peanuts. And condensed milk. 

It is so very Thai and it's really good :)

3. Highlight (or lowlight...): We moved a bookshelf out of our apartment (the one that had black mold on it) and we found mushrooms growing out of the side of it. #baller

4. The actual highlight: two baptisms!!!!!!!

This week was my first two baptisms in Thailand!!!!!!! and icing on the cake: it was a family, a single mother and daughter, แนน and น้ำ. AMAZING. Just awesome. The two of them have been so spiritually prepared and they have so much faith and they love the gospel. They just fell into our laps, literally they just walked up to the church building a month ago because they were new in the area and wanted to go to church. And now they're our newest members here in Kalasin.

Well...it didn't rain as much this week, but it poured on Friday, enough that a few streets and a parking lot flooded! So. Cool. I loved it. My companion did not. Shoutout to her for putting up with my ecstatic response to biking through pouring rain and six inches of water!

This week beat me to my knees in a lot of ways, physically, emotionally, and mentally. Tuesday I woke up just feeling awful (I don't think it was food poisoning, but it was pretty intense and painful, almost puking...all that good stuff). Then most of the week was hot and the sun just beat down and I really don't think I'm going to like the hot season at all haha...we worked our butts off this week and by a series of miracles we made all of our goals, which hasn't happened once yet this transfer. And then Sunday we had baptisms! So it was all worth it...I suppose. I've really been looking at this mission, and every day, and every week, with a long term perspective -- in the long run, all the work that I put in is making a difference. Our work here is worth it, in the long run, even if it doesn't feel like it. I come home every night knowing that I gave it my all and I know that when I can come home I can do so with my head held high, knowing I did it! I served God with all my heart, might, mind and strength. And it feels good.

Don't really know if that made much sense...

In personal study this week I was reading in 3 Nephi, when Christ is expounding the words of Isaiah and other prophets to them, and I thought, "how cool would it be if I could sit down with Christ and listen to Him expound the scriptures with me?" And then I stopped. WAIT. He expounds the scriptures to me every time I read them! When I'm reading and a thought hits me that I haven't had before, or I get a new insight, or get an answer to a question by reading, that is God helping me to understand the scriptures! How cool is that? We all have the ability to ask for that and have that greater understanding.

Also, for Sunday night dinner we made french toast. It was amazing and so, so American. aka...perfect.

Well, I feel like this weekly letter was a little lacking and a lot all over the place. Oh well. This week can really be summed up in a single moment from yesterday, when we were coming back from meeting with our final investigator and we'd met all of our goals for the week, we'd just had two baptisms, and I put my fist in the air, Judd Nelson style, as the end of "The Breakfast Club" played in my mind, knowing that we did it! We did everything we wanted to do. We couldn't have done any of it without God's help, but we believed and we worked and we saw miracles!

Thanks for all the support and all the emails. I love hearing updates from everyone! Have a great week!

-- 

Sister Zoller

Blame it on the rain (yeah, yeah)

1. Sister Fon, one of the members here, has a little dog and she's 

the cutest thing. So there's me, the dog, and Sister Ladle!

2. Elder Burke and Elder Hunt, the Elders in our district. 

They're an hour away in Maha Sarakham but we get to see 

them every week and they're hilarious. We love them.

3. To help us out, our Elders came up to Kalasin to help us do some finding, 

and then we ate at this Vietnamese place afterwards. Selfies ensued.
#ElderHuntdoesntknowhowtosmile

4. Me and Sister Ladle with Nate, a 15-year-old member. She and I definitely don't 

sing/dance Kpop songs every time we're together...anyways, she's preparing to go 

on a mission and she helps us out in lessons all the time. She's the bomb diggity.

I've been here for a month now! In Thailand, there are three seasons: the "cold" season ("cold" means about 70F), the hot season, and the rainy season. Sometimes they all happen on the same day...but right now, we're in the height of the rainy season and it's just the greatest thing ever to see these big black clouds rolling in and then the temperature drops dramatically and it just starts dumping buckets. This week's biking challenge was biking through flooded streets. It wasn't really a challenge, actually, it was just really really fun to have an excuse to get wet. Thai people hate the rain so it puts a huge damper (haha...damper) on the work here since the whole town shuts down, but it just makes me the happiest person in Kalasin.

On Monday, we had FHE with one of our favorite members and her family (she has a 13-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son who was just baptized, and her husband who is not a member). It was the first time I've been here in Thailand that I've felt home, just sitting around eating and having a lesson and then playing games together and NOT watching the football match that was on when we walked in... ;)

We were talking to one of our investigators after a lesson, and he was talking about how because missionaries are "born" (start their missions) in certain cities, they are children of that city. So because I was born in Kalasin, I am a dinosaur child because Kalasin is known for its dinosaur statues and museum. So that's pretty cool.

On Thursday, it rained a lot. It started at 7am and didn't let up for about three and a half hours. Just dumped and dumped. It was great...until it started leaking into our house. Through the light switches. Hehe...that was fun. While moving furniture around to keep it from getting wet, we also found a bunch of black mold on the wall. Despite all this, nothing was damaged, and when it stopped raining everything went back to normal.

Most of the time, all we hear around here is random Thai music, but in some stores they play American music. So we were sitting in Kodak because we had to take a picture for my work permit and while we're waiting, The Final Countdown comes on. It was the greatest moment of maybe the whole week. We left the store just super pumped up.

The members here in Kalasin are just amazing. They're all converts, all from part-member families/the only members in their families, and their faith is incredible, but not nearly as incredible as their understanding of the scriptures. They get it. They know how to really read the scriptures and apply them. That's all church classes are here, just reading the scriptures/manuals/resources and then applying them, not talking about them and planning to use them and having menial conversations about the deeper doctrine that doesn't matter. They go in, get everything out that applies to them, and then they go to work and do it! I am so grateful for their example and their understanding of the scriptures.

This Sunday was also the first Sunday I actually understood a large part of what was going on, language-wise. Awesome. Normally that doesn't come for like...months. I feel really really blessed to be able to go to church every week and to be spiritually enriched, even though I couldn't understand everything that was going on.

Also, Saturdays we eat at KFC. Thank the heavens for American food! Even though it's not really American food...it's like...Thai version of American food. Oh well. The ice cream here is legit, at least. #dairyqueenfordays

Shoutout to all the people starting classes this week at BYU! Have a great semester!

--

Sister Zoller