God, who has been mindful of wanderers in a strange land

A member named หนิง took us to the lantern festival.

This is หนิง. I can't speak a lot of Thai, but I love her because of the light she carries in her life. She is a testimony of the work we do here. She is truly elect. She also took us to the lantern festival down by the river in Pakkret this last week. It's really cool except for in my area we can't light off any lanterns into the sky so that was unfortunate, but we lit some floating water thingies into this canal which they call a river near us.

A street in Pakkret

Pakkret is super, super city here (busy, urban), but surprisingly everyone is so nice. Even the people that reject us just smile and wave us off. I still get discouraged and nervous though talking to people--that's a continuous thing I'm working on.

Church meetinghouse in Pakkret

In other news, we lost an investigator this week. Although "taken away" is a better way to put it. Our investigator that flagged us down a few weeks ago came to meet with us at the church for a lesson. He was supposed to show up at the church at 1:00 pm but when we called him, he said he was sleeping so he couldn't come until later. We left to go make better use of our time and invited behind the church, hoping that perhaps he might change his mind for God. At 3:00, it did. He called us and a few minutes later we returned to find him waiting at the church for us. Just as we were opening up the gate to teach a lesson, a bunch of police officers came and arrested him right in front of our eyes. Apparently they were immigration authorities and our investigators passport expired three years ago. So we think he's in jail now.

Me and my companion, Sister Forte

We had an awesome Thanksgiving! We went to a family in the international ward and dinner was amazing! Who knew the name "Anderson" would show up in Thailand? I am getting to know the international ward better and better and I love it.

An American Thanksgiving, in Thailand!

The Andersons made us really delicious traditional everything thanksgiving, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, yams, pumpkin pie, it was so, so, so good and made me miss Mom’s food.

The only christmas-y things here so far is they play christmas music at the mall near us and they put up some lighted signs at the mall too. Oh and our ward is doing this thing called "Journey to Bethlehem", it's this big pageant thing where the whole community is invited and we turn the church into a "passage of time" where they go through and witness all these different biblical events leading up to the birth of Jesus Christ. Then outside the church they turn it into this festival with food and music and you exchange your money at the door for rocks and pay for everything at the festival with rocks which is interesting but cool. I saw a rehearsal the other day and it's gonna be pretty cool! They've put a lot of time and money into it.

If you haven't taken a look at Alma chapter 26 before, do so. It is perhaps the greatest scripture of thanksgiving I've read yet, and it's changed the way I look at things serving here. My favorite verse is the last two verses, 36-37, which reads:

"Blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers in a strange land. Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever."

I join my voice in unanimous harmony with this scripture. Although I am a wanderer far from home, God has been mindful of me. How great it is to see that God loves all his people. I give my thanks to Him for this opportunity I have--to share His love and mercy to the people of Thailand through my service.

Now for some answers to Mom questions...

We don't really have dryers here but I think that saves my clothes haha. I don't have a bike yet, we just walk and get into these white vans that are like buses but smaller and they stop just about anywhere.

I'm definitely getting to know the ward members better! I love them so much. Although they are way different than Thai ward members--I attend both the English ward since it's the ward we are over plus a Thai one to help me with the language. We talk about [a variety of] things in sacrament meeting, basically just all the same stuff as in our ward back home. The Thai one is different and I can't put my finger on it yet because I don't understand the language but I will let you know when I do. Oh and everySunday the Thai wards all bring tons of food and we eat it together. That's pretty nice. :)

Sleep is okay, I usually wake up a few times in the night but I go right back to sleep. My bed is really, really, really hard haha, but I'm getting used to it, and I forgot what a soft bed feels like.