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

But if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need

1. President and Sister Senior, and our senior missionaries, 

Elder and Sister Stoker, came to visit our ward 

in Kalasin this weekend! So much fun!

2. Cocoa Yen as mentioned in the letter...so good. So good.

3. me and Elder Hinkson (awkwardly taken and 

photobombed by a variety of Elders in our zone haha)

4. The lake at the park where we go contacting most often!

5. Various members and one of our investigators at our Friday night 

Book of Mormon class! The members here are hilarious and awesome missionaries 

and teachers. Their faith and knowledge of the gospel is so inspiring!

This week, there were a lot of big and little miracles in the midst of a really brutal week of work and not very much success.

Miracle number one is called Tiger Balm. It's this weird cream (smell/feels/looks just like vicks, that stuff you use when you have a sore throat) that you put on mosquito bites and ohhh sweet relief. It's a lifesaver. The second miracle is Cocoa Yen, which is basically cold/iced chocolate (think opposite of hot chocolate). It's so amazing. They give it to us free at the hospital where we volunteer every week and it's just the greatest thing.

On Saturday, we went to Roi-Et for district training and most of the zone was there, which was cool because I finally got to meet and hang out with some more missionaries (it gets really lonely up in Kalasin with just me and Sister Ladle for miles and miles in any direction). And guess who's training in Roi-Et right now...Elder Hinkson from my MTC district! It was SO good to see him again! He's doing great, has an awesome trainer, and it loving the work. I didn't realize how many inside jokes our district has until we were talking over lunch and just about every other thing that was said was a reference to something that happened in the MTC.

You know when you hate something for long enough, you start to love it? I realized yesterday that that's what's happening to me and biking. It's still hard and kinda nerve-wracking, but my average number of near-death experiences has gone down significantly, and sometimes at night when it finally cools down and the breeze picks up and it's dark, I realize I'm enjoying it. That's been a miracle, too.

So we get to teach English every week as part of our agreement with the Thai government to teach the gospel here, and it's insanely fun. Here in Kalasin we just have one class for all ages/levels of experience, which is a bit of a unique challenge sometimes, but it's all the same another miracle because I've always wanted to teach English and I passed up an opportunity to do that to come on a mission, and now I get to teach it every week. God really is mindful of me, and I know He is mindful of all of us.

Funny story of the week: we were out contacting and I talked to a guy who seemed really interested, we started talking about the gospel and God and he said he's studied our religion and a lot of others. So we're talking, and then suddenly he says, out of the blue, that he saw God, and he starts describing it in detail to me, how God told him to do whatever and go to whatever church he felt like...yeah...turns out he wasn't really interested. But it was really funny because it's probably the most in-depth/longest conversation I've ever had with a Thai person.

We haven't had a whole lot of success with numbers this week. President Senior sent me to a pretty tough area, and it's hard to have so many good people just falling through the cracks or vanishing. I love the scripture James 1:5 for a lot of reasons. It's pretty significant in our church because it inspired Joseph Smith to kneel in a grove of trees and ask a question of God. But I particularly like that it says that God "giveth to all men liberally." And it's so true! If we want help, if we need strength, if we need a specific gift or just support, all we have to do is ask.

Lastly but not leastly, huge shoutout to Elder Chase Junge because he just got his visa to Brazil! He's been serving stateside waiting for his visa for more than a year now, just an incredible missionary and friend and he's been a huge part of why I'm out here and I'm so excited for him to go to Brazil.

Have a great week everyone!

Sister Zoller