Dear Family,

I am loving this missionary life. I try not to be so crazy obsessed sounding when I write you these emails, but really the truth is I just love it all. I love planning. ME: "Tomorrow is be productive and be flexible day." Sister Carter: "Like every day..." Pretty much. I love that nothing goes the way we plan and I love that a million more things come up and we meet more people to teach and fit into our schedule. I thrive on this randomness and filling my day with good productive things. It's a happy life being a missionary.

Sorry this is literally the only good picture I took this week. we pass this man every day and every day I think "It's Sirius Black." I hope you can zoom in and get a good look at him. He's actually a former investigator from a while ago. I think I'll ask him for a real picture with him this week. :)

So every day on our way to the church we walk across the the bridge over the Klong and it is absolutely disgusting. We rode on it for the first time this week. Woof. Smelt wretched. I'd rather not do that again. "Water" splashing on our faces...ick. Some things I've become less grossed out about here in Thailand like eating bugs, questionable meats and street food, eating with my hands, I stopped worrying about the cleanliness of dishes as well as the water that people give me. I could go on and on. But when it comes to smells I'm such a wimp. 

Our bedroom has been smelling like cigarette smoke the last few days...we can't figure out where it's coming from. Very concerning. And why is it just that one room? We're moving our beds today. Still not quite settled. Hopefully we'll have some hot water this week.

Wednesday was mission leadership council and also the craziest day full of lil hiccups and tender mercies. First with MLC: The mission is pressing forward with the work. Just when I think the work has been sufficiently hastened, some other miracle happens and another prepared person comes into the church who has been looking for truth is baptized. I'm excited to learn more about how we're going to keep up with all this hastening at zone conference this week. 

So after the meeting Sister Carter and I began our quest "down the street" to the Bangkok hospital. We just needed to pick up some medicine and the Elders told us it was just down the street. So we walked and contacted everyone we walked past and then all the sudden it had been an hour "down the street". Minor hiccup. We walked some more, found a seven, bought some water and eventually came upon some signs directing us to turn left and then left again walk straight and then turn left to get to the hospital. That was an adventure. We went inside, met this interesting doctor that wan't very helpful. We were making phone calls back and forth with Sister Senior and some of our investigators and then our phone died. We could no longer use the tool of our work! Hiccup. So we finally got what we needed and left the hospital. We were late to our appointment and had no way of contacting our investigator. I felt surprisingly calm about the whole situation. So instead of walking the hour down the street back to the church, we hopped in a taxi. Tender mercy yay public transportation! We quickly realized the driver was kind of not really all there, not listening as we told him where we'd like to go and his face didn't match the picture on his lil license thing. Hiccup. So we got out. That was easy. We found a new not sketchy taxi. We got to the church safely, tender mercy, phone still dead and in walked our two investigators whose appointment was set for an hour earlier. Tender mercy! They apologized for being late and we thanked them! We were able to teach all the investigators that we thought we'd be late for and everything got done! It wasn't how we expected it, but we had faith that things would work out and they did! There were a lot of lil prayers throughout the hiccups and the tender mercies and it was really comforting to see how the Lord's hand was in the work all day in everything that we did including the people that we met along the way contacting. 

I'm so grateful for prayer. All day every day. We can't progress without prayer. 

Dad, that is so sad about the lil boy that cried during this self worth activity you wrote me about. I was actually thinking about this last night as we were walking home we walked by this group of teens that weren't interested in our invitation I just thought if they would sit and listen for five minutes they would know that the the gospel of Jesus Christ can truly heal our hearts. Knowing that we are children of God gives me so much confidence and a feeling of self worth. 

We had this awesome lesson with our investigator Rae yesterday. She just has real questions and a sincere desire to know truth. Her heart is open. I wish those kids would open their hearts to listen for just even a minute. I loved that lesson with Rae so much because it was just so real. We talked about the principles of the gospel and the restoration, but we made it real and applicable to her and her own life. The gospel is like that for each of us. Rae has been going to churches since she was 14 and now she's 29. She said that our church is very different than a lot of other meetings she's been in. She observed that it is very personal, more internal. She was so surprised at the simpleness of the topics that were talked about, faith and repentance. I realized what a blessing that is for each of us to be able to go to church and no matter where we are in our understanding and testimony or conversion, we are able to come and be taught by the spirit personally the things that will help us the most. It is very internal and if we're not prepared or we aren't proactive about acting on these personal internal impressions or thoughts we receive we won't really be changed be what we learned and all these meetings that we have won't be of much worth to us. But if we are attentive and listen, the spirit will teach us exactly what we need personally. What a blessing personal revelation is and the opportunity we have to learn and grow each time we gather for meetings or whenever we study on our own. 

I hope you all have a wonderful week! I love you so much!

Love,

Sister Sahagun