haha I still love living in the future.
This month the mission has baptized 102 people. The total goal for next week is another 110. I'd say that these numbers alone are a miracle. Just remember that Thailand has the highest percentage of Buddhist people in the world.
I have some follow up stories for the "cool stories" I shared last week.
Our goal on paper for baptisms yesterday was 3. We had more than that preparing. Friday night. 2 of our investigators had passed their interviews and the third was going to interview the next day.
Saturday morning we got a call. The girl who had passed her interview the night before and had picked out her baptismal gown in her excitement said she wasn't ready. Her parents had gotten to her. Not as bad as Jack, they had only encouraged her to wait before she made a big decision in life. We set an appointment to meet with her before church yesterday so we could watch the "Lord, I believe" talk by Elder Holland. She never came and we still haven't gotten a hold of her-- We took her name off of the baptismal program.
The awesome investigator who we helped him quit smoking passed his interview on saturday. He never came to church yesterday and we can't contact him either.
We took his name off of the baptismal program 10 minutes before it started, hoping until the last minute that he would come.
Another investigator who we have been working with for a while now and two of his friends have been baptized walked up to me during church after the second hour and said he doesn't think he has any faith. He said that it would be better if he stopped meeting with us. We told him he hasn't been reading and praying and that is why he has no faith. We gave him Alma 32 then watched him leave.
We had a miracle Sunday morning. A random girl who we invited to church came! After church before she left I tried to set up an appointment with her. She said she doesn't want any of "this" and she only wants to learn English on Tuesday. I told her English will pass with death but all of "this" is the only thing she'll take with her. She still said no.
What happened? What went wrong? On Friday night the number of baptisms on sunday was supposed to be 11. Only 8 got baptized that afternoon. (the other Elder's lost another to parents too, they moved to a different city for the weekend so she couldn't get baptized)
Nothing hurts more than watching others fall. Whether they fall because they just lost the spirit, put things of the world before the Kingdom of Heaven, they just don't believe, their parents get in the way, or they just disappear -- I even know Elders who have lost investigators to death just before they got baptized. No matter how they fall, it hurts. But it doesn't hurt too bad. If I wasn't seeing miracles everyday I would have lost hope already. I know I'm not the only one in this mission who is losing investigators like this. I'm sure every mission sees this happen all too frequently.
I know that this isn't the end of the world. My mission will continue, I will baptize others. No matter how many I lose I will bring some to the fold. The rest of the mission will do the same. How can I get down on myself if I had another baptism yesterday? How can I get down on myself when my goal for next week is still two? I watched 8 people get baptized yesterday! Now that is a miracle if one existed. We had just as many baptisms yesterday in our zone as we had all of last month! It's hard to compare the feelings of losing someone and the feelings of bringing someone to God. But It's the same thing as what happened with Brother Jack a few weeks ago, I come out stronger, I come out with experience, knowing how to deal with these kind of things and having the wisdom to help avoid them in the future too. I felt like I got kicked down to the ground yesterday, but I've just learned to stand up again and run faster. Not let previous stumbles get in my way, whether they were my mistakes or the agency of others.
Okay... well there went my dramatic attempt to be artistic and spiritual side of me.
Now for some other stuff!
A couple days ago this french muslim dude ran up to elder wilko and i in the mall and started telling us about how he loves that he and us are so religious and spiritual while the rest of the world is throwing it away. He was way ecstatic about everything and he had a little twitch under his right nostril and under his left eye. He told us all about all of the different thai dialects and advised us to learn some basic thai so we could testify to the people more effectively. We just played stupid as usual and just pretended we didn't speak thai.
About ten minutes later I spotted a pirate at the same mall. I am not even kidding!!! This guy was a literal pirate!! Just pull up a picture of Jack Sparrow and that's him. Plus his arm was in a sling. We were waiting for him to say that his name was barbossa and that he was shipwrecked at the central mall. His name turned out to be gary. Gary the pirate. :) He was from oregon. He lives in Chaing mai and loves to ride his motercycle - which is how he broke his arm. He teaches english in a Wat in Chaing Mai to the monks there. He told us about how he pulled out his computer and projector and showed them a video of the mount st helens eruption and how they thought that was pretty cool. He then proceeded to tell us that he taught them about bigfoot too. Bigfoot. He told us he turned 50 and had no career, no family, nothing. So he moved to chaingmai and started over.
We met a pirate, who rides motercycles, and teaches monks about volcanoes and bigfoot.
Okay... I'm out of time... See ya next week!
Elder Osborn
Look at these studs that got baptized yesterday!!
Udon's birthday celebration with flying people! PS: they set a world record, you can look it up.
Look at the gang!! These guys are the future priesthood of Udon.
Brother นน got baptized yesterday!!
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