9/3/13: Called to Serve in Thailand!

My mission went foreign this week. But only for a day. It was nice.

 

We got permission to go to the Hmong Tournament in Osh Kosh this week with a less active. It was crazy cool. We also taught lots of people :)

 

It's called a Tournament because there's lots of sports, apparently. I didn't see any of the sports though. We just looked and the clothes and the gifts and the food and everything besides the sports. That was PLENTY to occupy our time.

 

I ate purple rice. And green rice. And tapioka every color of the rainbow(in a cup). and pig intestine. and fruit with spikes. and dragonfruit. And Hmong food redefined 'hot' for me. It's HOT.

 

I also put on an awesome Hmong outfit. And I might have bought a Hmong skirt. Gotta have something!

 

The rest of this week was amazing. I don't know how we have three solid progressing investigators and a fourth on the way when hardly ever spend any time NOT in planning or on exchanges, but our area is exploding. We only had one exchange this week, and it was fun. I got to go to the Upper Penninsula of Michigan for a day. Lake Michigan is super pretty :) And Sister Reese is a fantastic missionary!

 

We had Zone Conference AND Mission Leadership Council this week. They were both SUPER amazing. I love President Cutler. He's a genuis. He's also like your best friend :) He really wants the prayers and consideration from the mission leadership in everything he does, which is actually quite different from our last president. I love it!

 

Lesson learned this week: Replace 'grace' in the scriptures with 'enabling power of the Atonement' and it makes like a million times more sense. And it's accurate.

 

I'm also reminding myself to stop worrying about numbers and care about people instead. I knew that forever, but I think I need to refocus on it. 'member present lessons' and 'less active and recent convert lessons' are key indicators, but they don't mean that we can't bring active members to less-active lessons or that we can't being less-actives to investigator lessons. Doing these things in genius. It all works together.

 

I love the Atonement. We teach it to everyone. Maybe that's why we're having such great success. It really is the best thing to hit the face of the earth for everyone, everywhere. Love it.

 

Sista Neal