A Great Start to the New Year!

The weeks go by so very quickly. We love working with the Saints in Northeast Thailand. We serve in the district in men's and young women's programs, teach English at the church and at Ratchathani University.





We have made visits to members who live in remote areas, and have visited families encouraging them to research their family trees and prepare to go to the Temple.

Jim with his expertise helps them log into the FamilySearch system and begin their research. The family we visited this week was very excited as you can see from the picture.

Many saints of very little means make great sacrifices to attend the Temple in Hong Kong, others can attend every year, but they all look forward to having a temple closer in Thailand.

Lots of people we meet are interested in why an older farang couple are riding bikes around town, so we tell them we are missionaries and easily start a gospel discussion. It's so much easier to talk about religion here than it is in Canada. Less than 1% of the population of Thailand is Christian. We feel they need to know about Jesus Christ, and we feel so happy to tell them of our Savior and his love for them. This week we met a nice couple at the bike shop while my bike was being repaired. After the usual preliminaries I asked, in Thai, if we could visit them at their home and share a message that God has for them. They accepted. I smiled not only because they accepted, but because they had understood my Thai-Yay!

The Thai sister missionaries here are incredible!

 We gathered at the church to go visit some of the young women who haven't been out to church for a while. My group went to visit Yaa who lives an hour from the city. We caught a taxi but we didn't have a real good address for her, so we walked around talking to her on the cell phone for a while before we found each other. Sister Sombunit Cheerfully suggested that the Spirit would guide us. Sunday morning Yaa and her mother took a bus for an hour to get to church. 

This is the kind of bus we took back from her house. We arrived back at the church just as Jim showed up with two bags of somtam and sticky rice for lunch.