Thailand Bangkok Mission ... สตีลน้องสาว

WEEK 3-MTC

Hey everyone!

I can't believe it's already p-day again. Weeks just fly by and it's crazy that I've been here 3 weeks now. Time is really warped. This week has been REALLY good. hard too. But good. It's weird because I'lll have discouraging moments where I know my Thai is terrible or that I'll observe teaching in English and then think...how am I supposed to say all that in Thai? But i forget those moments super fast because overall, every day is amazing. this week has been a prayer/spirit theme. my companions and i have been teaching an "investigator" which is really our teacher, and we had taught him one lesson so far, and it went ok. as we prepared the next lesson, things didn't really feel right, and we couldn't really move anywhere. Our other teacher taught us a lesson on How to plan a lesson. Yay that was really helpful. We realized we really needed to think of the committments he needed to make before planning everything out. we adjusted what we had, and PRAYED. a lot. sidenote: i've prayed more than i have in my entire life. i pray 15+ times a day vocally, and then lots and lots more in my head. we prayed really hard to have the spirit in our lesson. right before we went in i forgot everyting i was gonna say...and we were trying to do it without any notes this time. we said one more quick prayer before we went into the room, and as we said the opening prayer of the lesson, i remembered what i was gonna say! we started our lesson, and something just felt different. we were teaching about faith, and i asked him if he knew what wind was. i asked him how he knew waht wind was. He can't see it, but he can feel it (thank you "walk to remember" :)) yeahhh i knew it was kinda cheesy but oh well. and then i told him it was the same with God. we can't see him but we feel his love, and that's what faith was. Then my companion started talking...and...was he crying??! yeah. he was. we shared a really cool scripture with him too. he committed to continue to keep the WOW (which was a problem), praying to know if God was real and if he knew he was real he would prepare for baptism! At the end of the lesson, he asked if he could break character for a minute and talk to us as the teacher. he said that it was a great lesson, but not because our Thai was perfect, but because the atmosphere was perfect. The Spirit speaks all languages. I can't speak Thai, and I probably won't for a long time. I don't know waht these people need, but God does. Prayer and the Holy Ghost = SO IMPORTANT! anyway, we were pretty much high-fiving eachother for the rest of the day. it was a boost we really needed, since the lesson the night before didn't go too well. Oh, and we started teaching at the TRC on Saturday. Real live volunteers come in so we can teach them. WHOA. haha. most of them are just RM's that served in THailand. We teach them as members though, so it's kind of different than teaching an investigator. It went well though.

So here's for the random facts of the week:

Music and the Spoken word. What a gem. haha sometimes I fall asleep...but usually it's good. probably because we never get any other types of music. This week I got a letter from my friend Jen Itri. She's serving in Thailand right now! and she was in my ward freshman and sophomore year. I always meant to write her about my call before I left, but never got the chance. anyway, it was great to hear from her! and good to know taht there are good things to come...she told me that the language would come so not to worry. that's comforting:) I've seen Christina Augustin here a lot lately! She's going to the PHilippines. Dad, you'd be proud to know taht I am not the most directionally challenged person on the planet. One of my companions is worse haha. She's always heading off in random directions, or just waits to see where SIs. Yim and I will go. We call her Dory (from finding nemo). Because she's spacy, but in the best way possible haha. One time we were walking to gym and she realized she had her pants on inside out. HAHAHAH I couldn't stop laughing. We get to go on a temple walk every Sunday. It's nice to get out of the MTC bubble, but EVERY missionary goes, so it's super crowded adn hard to get a picture with your district taht isn't being photo-bombed. My companions found out about my singing in the mouth trick. then i had to do it for my district. the word spread and now they want me to sing in tonight's devotional.....just joking. that would be blasphemous.

Will someone let me know if i'm being boring? because I don't want my letters to be boring. so the song that we sang in choir is "A marvelous work is about to come forth". This truly is a marvelous work! not a day goes by that I don't thank God that He has given me the opportunity to be a missionary. I can't even imagine myself not being here. Every time I feel inadequate as far as the language goes, I just remember that it's been 3 weeks, and I'm already reading in THAI. and that instead of 3 hours of lesson planning, it takes 30 min. now. and we can give a lesson without any notes. I remember that every morning before I came here, I would wake up and be super tired and grumpy, and think, how am i going to wake up every single day at 6:30? waking up is not even a problem for me right now. somehow I have strength that i didn't know that i had. I know that this gospel is so real, so true, and so individual. God has a plan for each and every one of his children, including me. it's easy to feel like 1 in 8000 here, and that i'm just one more missionary that God has to worry about. but i don't feel like that. Every day I know that God loves me and that He is giving me everything He has. "Shall we not go on in so great a cause?" My time is almost up...but i jsut want to say thank you for the prayers. i feel them EVERY day. not an exaggeration. I love you all!

Sister Steele