The Church is true...la iglesia es verdad...ศาสนาเป็นความจริง

all of our food. there are eight sisters and we all donated as much as we could to the cause. it was a huge success.

there was this spicy thai tuna that sister brown's mom sent to us! we were all a little apprehensive to try it but sister Alley, sister Mamea and I had the guts to do it and it turned out really good!

district pic!

sisters having fun pic!

In the last almost three weeks, we've had devotionals from Elder Quentin L. Cook, Elder M. Russell Ballard, Sister Sheri Dew and Sister Janice Kapp Perry. Because it's the new mission president conference for the next few days, we've had 14 of the 15 apostles on our MTC campus (we haven't seen really any of them though) and yesterday the Elders in our district had the opportunity to pass the sacrament in the same room as President Thomas S. Monson. This morning my companion and I were coming back from the temple and we totally saw President Henry B. Eyring! He waved to us from his car. Nooooo big deal...our lives are kinda made. ;)

We said goodbye to the older Thai elders this week! They actually just left today. We were all sad to see them go but excited to see them when we hit Thailand in six weeks and at zone conferences and stuff. Crazy how three weeks with people can make us feel so connected and close! That's mission life for ya.

Well, if I've noticed any patterns in my life, it's that really hard stuff leads to really awesome stuff. Sometimes they occur simultaneously. This week has been a week of the Spirit. I've received so many answers to prayers and questions in so many different ways and it's been physically exhausting because it's so spiritually intense. It's awesome.

The gift of tongues is real. As we put in the effort to speak the language all the time, we have been blessed to learn faster and feel the spirit more powerfully. I have been struggling to learn the word "special" for almost a week and was really frustrated that I could never remember it, but as I was sitting in a lesson on Saturday our investigator used it in a question and in that moment I learned the word and pronunciation and I have not forgotten it since. I have been sitting in lessons struggling to remember words or phrases to use and out of seeming nowhere the Spirit will bring a word to my mouth or a thought of what to say. I'm so grateful to be learning Thai.

All the sisters in our district have decided that we're going to do "Friday Night Food Parties" every friday night! We collect all the food we're sent and go crazy. This week's special was this "spicy Thai tuna" courtesy of Sister Brown's mom! We were all a little scared to try it but it turned out to be soo good! We're already pumped for next week. Apparently we have a bit of a reputation in our building of being the loudest district because we're always singing, laughing, and being generally happy and awesome. We're really cool with being gossiped about that way.

Sometimes when Sister Herrmann and I get bored during study we go outside and bear our testimonies in Thai to missionaries or employees to help us practice, and we've had so many good experiences come from that because even though no one can understand what we're saying (and we're probably butchering the words that we are saying), the Spirit is there and conveys the message anyways. As we were walking I felt impressed to share our testimonies with an older couple that were walking around campus but as we introduced ourselves we realized that they didn't speak English! They were the new mission president for the Argentina Rosario Mission and were there for training, so their English was broken and about as good as our Thai. We bore our testimonies in Thai and I was able to speak with them in Spanish afterwards! It was suuuuch a tender mercy for me because I LOVE Spanish and it was such a blessing to feel like I could still speak and understand it as well as I could (although I don't doubt that the spirit was there to help me as much as ever). The Church is true in every language, in every country, in every time and place. The Lord has given us the privilege of serving Him and furthering the work. 

Go watch "Missionary Work and the Atonement" on youtube. it's our district's favorite video.