Dearest Family,

I love you so much! Thanks for the million pictures from the family reunion! I went on a lil raft! So fun. It just all sounded so beautiful and I really want to go to Bryce and go on all these hikes. I miss Utah mountains. Recently, I've been noticing that the sky feels bigger here. Others have confirmed it. The clouds are just so big and beautiful. I love Thailand. Alma 17:23

Today is Mother's Day in Thailand!! Happy Mother's Day! Too bad I don't get to talk to you twice. Just know that I love you most and I'm thinking of you this beautiful day. 

AH! I was so sad when I realized I forgot to tell you about Breecha's baptism last week! He is the Elder's convert and my new favorite member. He is the most adorable old man. He is 80 years old, has 2 teeth on the bottom and the cutest round eyes (kind of looks like pooh bear).

This doesn't quite capture Breecha's true character, he's a lil formal with picture taking, but just imagine him smiling even bigger and squinting those adorable eyes. He's simply wonderful.

He is so sweet has so much love and respect for us refers to us using the very formal tan that they use for scriptures. Anyways every time he sees us he smiles so huge and whys, usually says ohhhhh before he says anything. We are obsessed with him. The story; After 2 minutes of splashy confusion we finally were able to get the Baptizing Brother( Br. Somsak) and Breecha facing the correct direction with the correct hand placement and everything.There was a moment of reverence and Br. Somsak stated Breecha's full name, than another moment of reverence... a bit shorter because Breecha being the incredibly respectful man he is eagerly popped open his eyes and  said "khraaaap, Khaaphom" in response to hearing his name. Everyone lost it! Some explanation was given and moments later he was shaking and rubbing water from his face smiling from ear to ear, He has sure pure testimony which he shared after the ordinance. I was so happy for him. I love him. Cant wait to baptize everyone!

Breecha's Baptism Day!

Here's a lil story about our experience riding bikes in Thailand. Sometimes I get a lil crazy and our calm steady ride to our appointment turns into a Lance Armstrong race. I just get lost in thought and don't realize how fast I'm actually going. Then I turn back to look for Sister Tilley and she's way back there. So I've steadiest the pace, and we've been much happier and less sweaty. Sometimes though I'll look back and Sister Tilley is just nowhere to be found. Then moments later she emerges from the crazy traffic triumphantly holding up the one baht coin she stopped to pick up. I would just laugh and congratulate her on the rich find and we'd press on. This week though, it happened literally every time we set out somewhere new and I just had to ask how she always found these coins. Obviously she's just looking for them. I've just never been looking for coins. I usually look up to make sure I don't hit any cars or I'll look at all the crazy color buildings and make an attempt to read the fast passing signs. Whenever I look down at the road I usually just see trash, plastic bags, and rubber bands. Thai people use plastic bags for everything. They'll put your drink in a bag. And then they'll put that bag inside another bag. And then they'll put that bag in a bag, and then they'll put that bag in a box and then they'll mail that box to themselves, and when it arrives, they throw a rubber band on it. So The buildings and people are usually much more enjoyable to look at than the dirty ground, but as soon as I started to look for coins I found them!

I promise this is a real elephant. It walks the streets of Pak Kret. Last week we were riding our bikes home and it was walking against traffic right in front of us!! Believe it!

We rode our bikes from the Big C Extra to Hollywood Major probably like 6 blocks and between the two of us we found 14 baht! Seek and ye shall find! 14 baht is not very much, but the small victory of finding those coins was really exciting and reminded me of all our investigators that are learning little by little the many blessings that come from the gospel. When you are looking for answers they will come, even if it's just a little bit at a time. All you have to do is seek and ask! DO it!

We've been spending a lot of time rehearsing for this concert, I don't know if I told you about it. Beyond 5 is this boy band group from the states and they're coming here and there's this concert on Friday I should probably know more details, but all I know is that it's been a lil worrisome spending so much of our time to be missionaries singing. It's just a testimony to me that this is the Lord's work and nothing will stop it from progressing. Even though we didn't have as much time as usual, we still saw everyone we planned to see and we were able to find new investigators. 11 new investigators actually. Sister Tilley and I were erupting with joy and happiness yesterday it was just the biggest shower of blessings. There's just so much joy in my heart it doesn't even fit. We feel so blessed, it's amazing to see the many miracles that are happening here. AH! And our investigator May is getting baptized next Sunday I am just so happy. 

ѷ!!! Donut!!!

Have a wonderful week! Remember who you are! Really though, we are children of God. He wants so much to help us have happiness in this life. Trust in him and move forward with faith!

A sad dog

Love, 

Sister Sahagun

Dearest Family,

How was the family reunion! I can not believe that it is August. It doesn't feel like the last time we were all together was a whole year ago. Crazy and unreal. Did you do skits again? Dancing? Karaoke? I'm sure there was at least an hour of just letter writing to us missionaries. Just jokes. I just want to know how everyone is doing and all the silly embarrassing things that happened - you know how I don't like missing out. 

Jessica and Tyler! How has your summer been? What's the countdown? How many days until school starts? Remember when we made that baking show movie? Flat bread. Haha I don't know why I just thought of that, but you two should make some movies and document this time of your lives. 

Mom and Dad, are your classrooms ready? It's okay, stress just means you're alive. I did this stress management thing with Sister Tilley for training this week and I realized I'm at a healthy level of stress!! In the green zone. Yay! All is well.

We had a lovely lesson with our new investigator โดนัท (donut) on Wednesday about the Plan of Salvation. She is so sweet and humble. Her face lit up when we talked about eternal families and then minutes later she just looked so sad and sick. She made this weird noise, grabbed her stomach, and ran out of the room. I felt so bad! She threw up a couple times and then we had a member that was at the church give her a blessing. The spirit was strong, and we were able to bear testimony of the power of the priesthood. I'm grateful that Brother was there to help! 

Right after that lesson we went onto the foyer and there was this lady there that was asking to work at the church. She saw Sister Tilley and just had this unbreakable stare and would only talk to her. It was a lil scary and none of us could understand anything she was saying. The members that were with us helped us explained everything, it was just really sad because she was asking for a place to stay and we couldn't really help here with that. She's not really all there and has been camping out outside the gate of the church for the past 5 days. The Elders have tried to teach her, but she's not interested at all. I just wish we could help her more! 

I love serving in the International branch. Also, Relief Society is the most organized inspired organization ever. One of the Sisters invited us over to her home for a luncheon with all the other Sisters. Sister Tilley and I gave a lil lesson about Family History kind of more of a pep talk maybe and offered to have a Family History night once a month at the church. We watched this wonderful clip from Elder Eyring, go find it, called The Doctrine of Family History. I know that family history is so important! I want to do family history for the rest of my mission! That will just have to wait for later though. Those women are all so amazing and I'm just so excited for when I can have be a wife and mother and have a cute lil family.

I'm so grateful for fasting! This week was good and hard and that just means growth! Things are much easier said than done. I just have to remind myself to be myself and not make this work harder than it needs to be. I am so grateful for personal study time and time during the day when we are biking and I can just self reflect. I felt so much peace yesterday. I'm grateful for revelation. Church is the best place to receive revelation. I'm grateful for hymns and the spirit that they bring. I know that my Redeemer lives. I know that if we will simply ask and seek that we will find the answers that we need to help us feel the peace of God's light in our lives. I love you all so much. Have a wonderful week.

Love, Love,

Sister Sahagun

Christmas in July

Dearest Family,

Hello! Thailand is still the best mission in the world and this was a wonderful week! One of my favorite things about Thai is how polite people are. "kha" (for girls) and "kha phom" (for boys) is just the polite word that you say at the end of your phrase or it just means yes and it's really polite and adorable.

I love it. 

This week Sister Tilley and I celebrated Christmas in July! We taught everyone about Christ (like we do every day) had a breakfast Christmas casserole, wrapped up PJ's and put them under our pretzel Christmas tree, we jammed to some MOTAB featuring David Archuleta, and you know I found some curlers and kept up that great tradition. The curls were great for about 5 minutes and then quickly vanished. It was a wonderful day and I'm so excited for real Christmas! Joy to the world! 

Jesus Christ is our Savior! Let every heart prepare him room!!

Tuesday was the best day ever. I've never felt so productive on a Tuesday. District Meeting and English class take up a huge chunk of the day, but this week we had three lessons with members, invited our new investigator นำพัน to be baptized, and prepared a sweet lesson for English class. At District Meeting I finally got to watch the Work of Salvation in English! I'm so motivated, I'm going to be the best member ever. English class turned out to be so quiet! It was raining so not very many people came, but usually we have about 40 15 year old kids and it's a zoo. But this week no one said anything! It was weird and really hard because no one was participating! Any suggestions for fun things we can do to get people to participate. Usually a good game is the trick but this week that didn't even work. I think we may just need to speak more Thai since it's the basic class. After English class, this cute 18 year old girl named Donut came up told us she wanted to learn about Christ! Yes! She is so humble, I'm so excited to help her prepare to be baptized!

We met with this amazing recent convert family from Shri Lanka on Saturday, I love them. Their dad died in the war 6 years ago and the doctrine of eternal families has blessed their lives so much and brought them a lot of comfort. We talked to them about doing family history and they are already doing it! They are refuges trying to move to Australia. It's really humbling to meet and teach these people that have been chased out of their country that have so little and then give so much to us when we visit. I love them.

Yesterday Sister Tulley and I were talking about how the Lord has called us here and simply needs us to be ourselves, using all of our talents and improving who we already are. We're committed to being real with our investigators and being more ourselves. We went contacting last night with this commitment in mind and it was so much more natural and fun to talk with the people that we met and then to share the gospel with them. This week we also had a companion exchange and I learned so much from Sister Wiganda. I'm going to focus on helping my investigators apply the gospel to their lives. Our investigators right now are two 15 year old girls and two 20 year old girls, so it should be easy to relate to them and help them see how the gospel can bless our lives each day. I'm grateful for the things I'm learning and for the Atonement that makes it possible for me to become better. 

I love you all so much! I know that the source of peace in this life is through our Savior Jesus Christ. John 16:33 Trust in Him! Have a wonderful week!

Love, Love, 

Sister Sahagun

Thailand is gorgeous!

Dearest Family,

Life is sooo good! We are here in our favorite internet cafe with all these lil asian boys that are yelling at each other and playing games. It's really intense and I'm struggling to not get caught up in it. My heart is seriously racing right now it hurts. I just wish I knew which person to cheer for and then I could really be a part of this. Sister Tilley is just yelling to add to the noise. We just have to laugh at ourselves.

So sorry my emails have been a bit lame lately...Mom I took some notes this week in my planner so this should be a lil more exciting. First off, Thailand is full of confused people. Have I ever told you about the lil graven image shop by our house? Super classy, barbed wire fence, every animal you could think of plus this really nice pile of broken ones. There's this big elephant statue outside our apartment too and this morning this lady came out and put a perfectly good plate of delectable mangoes right in front of it. NO! Those are for people! Such a strange culture. 

This was on the street just up from our house. I'm pretty sure it's not legal to ride one of these in the street!

I can't believe how fast this week flew by. Sister Tilley and I did a lot of less active work this week and focused on having balanced key indicators. We were busy and tired everyday and just so happy. We were so blessed this week! We had two referrals from members to teach their family members and got four new investigators. I know that we have been blessed for the time we have spent contacting. Yesterday, these two 15 year old girls just walked into the church looking to learn about Jesus Christ. There truly are people prepared to hear the gospel. I am so grateful for the many miracles that we have received this week. I love being a missionary. The good things that are happening here is truly the work of the Lord. I am trying to be a better vessel for my Heavenly Father each day.

One of the less actives we visited this week is Brother Wolf he's American married a Thai woman and really I just don't know how to explain him. He is about 50, quite the talker  has a bajillion life stories, loves food, loves to cook, loves to eat. He just recently got out of the hospital and is wheelchair bound. We went over to see how he was recovering and he just talked our ears off and fed us food that just about made Sister Tilley throw up on me. He served us white anchovies and 14,000 baht caviar. So fishy and so salty and just a really rough experience. He also fed us goose liver. I actually liked that better than the anchovy. The highlight was that he asked us to teach his wife so we're just focusing on that. We'll see if we can avoid any dinner appointments there.

Thai people are so happy and smiley and just pretty matter of fact. Everyone is super open about weight too. Last week one of the members came up to me and said Sister Sahagun you gained weight! Uh,Thank you? Sister Tilley and I are still trying to figure out how to respond to that one...it's a lil depressing especially because I don't feel like I gaining any weight as we bike all over the land every day haha oh well. 

Yesterday at church these two adorable girls came to church that had come I think two weeks ago. That was Sister Tilley's first week and she was panicking running out of things to talk about and the girl just grabbed her hand and said Justin Beiber. It was hillarical. Anywho, we were so happy that they came back we gave them The Book of Mormon and can't wait to give them Justin Beiber stickers and teach them more about the gospel.

Remember my stalker? Well, he managed to find us 4 times this week while we were out and about - out of the 16 million people here...anyway I usually don't understand about 60% of what he is saying but this time during his lil tangent of Thai with a slight lisp we heard the English word lover and freaked out. We were just real frazzled and I just told him that wasn't appropriate and bore my testimony and told him why we came to Thailand...just what missionaries do ya know. He received that well and quickly rode away. There was no citing of him at church and we are ever so grateful. I hope he reads the restoration pamphlet and learns with the Elders someday.

I love you all so much! Have a most glorious week. Keep being consistent in the things that you know are true and expect miracles! 

Love, Love,

Sister Sahagun

Dearest Family,

I'm so happy! Happy as a dappy! There's just no way you can understand how great it is to be a missionary here in Thailand right now with Sister Tilley. Our favorite thing to say is "tight". Like we had a tight day, or our  our schedules pretty tight, or our muscles are tight. Maybe it's not that funny. Did I mention we have a new district leader? Well it's the truth, and well he just makes everything really intense. He's really great, everything is just a major big deal and we are way chill so it's funny. I don't know why I'm telling you this random information.

Saturday we spent the whole day with the youth! It was a missionary preparation activity and they were all at the church from 6:30 to 7:30 - pretty close to a full day of missionary work! They had a transfers meeting in the morning, companions, nametags, the works, and our job was to take them out Dan Jones-ing and support them in giving out a Book of Mormon and just contacting. It was so fun! They are so bold! A couple of the Elders said that the young men that they were with were on fire and just about gave this woman a baptismal date! These kids are so ready to be missionaries. I love contacting. Talking to people is so fun. We met a man from Israel who was super strong in his beliefs and not really into changing, but was very respectful of us going out and sharing what we believe. These youth were a really good example to me and reminded me of that fire that we need to have as we go about sharing this gospel. This is exciting news! They were literally running from person to person, it was hard to keep up. One girl, Bukkhi, was just showing us all up and didn't miss a single person that walked by her. We would be walking up the stairs, realize she wasn't with us, and then turn around to see that she was testifying to the lady with the food cart! Such a good example to me! I'm recommitted! Talk to everyone. 

We did most of our contacting at Central (the mall) and there was this huge animae (how do you spell that)convention happening and all these people dressed up as Asian cartoon characters it was hilarious and great. I wish I'd taken better pictures, but I'll send what I've got. 

On Wednesday night Sister Tilley and I were on our way home from a lesson when we almost quite literally ran into this man. He just stopped us and asked us what we were doing here. He was speaking English, he's from Ghana and then he just told us hes' been looking for the Church. Perfect! He's amazing. We met with him at the church the next night, gave him a tour of the chapel, gave him a Book of Mormon, he came to church on Sunday, I'm just so impressed by his faith in Christ. He's had aso many crazy life threatening experiences and terrible trials that have brought him closer to God. After talking with him, I really felt humbled and was reminded of the goodness and glory of God. He is our loving Heavenly Farther and protects us in so many ways. He places people in our lives that bless us and help us grow. I am so grateful for these teaching experiences that I feel like I get so much more out of.

Our little soi that we live on is so cute and I just love coming home at night and seeing the herd of angry dogs ferociously barking at us. It's really terrifying. Friday night there were literally 11 dogs that chased us down the road. Sister Tilley and I thought it was the end. We rode as fast as we could and then as soon as we were away from them Sister Tilley stopped and wanted to turn around and go back for a picture! What? We're crazy. The picture didn't even turn out.

We had zone training yesterday, Sister Tilley and I were asked to make cookies. Specifically cookies with too much salt that tasted bad. Object lesson! Unbalanced ingredients means not good cookies. Similarly, unbalanced key indicators means not good missionary work! This week we are committed to having balanced key indicators! Numbers are important! The Lord numbers his children, right?

I love you all have a wonderful week! The church is so true!!!

Love, Love,

Sister Sahagun

I'm a Trainer!

Dearest Family,

So I had a nightmare about a week ago that it was transfers meeting and I was standing in front of everyone just waiting to hear who my new companion was. It was just way too suspenseful and embarrassing and finally President Senior shows my picture and my new companion's picture on the screen and says "Surprise! You're training!" I felt so betrayed that no one had warned me and confused and I felt bad that my companions first impression of me was freaking out...haha!

So here's reality. Thursday morning I got a phone call from the AP, "Congratulations Sister Sahagun you will be training this transfer!" I had already had a nightmare about this moment and was prepared for this! This week was a lot of change and transition, but I have felt so much peace. Before Thursday I thought okay if that really were a thing I would maybe cry for a lil bit because I can't understand Thai, but then I would be fine because all I need is the companionship of the spirit, to be obedient, work diligently, and the Lord will take care of the rest! I have felt so much peace this week. The Lord trusts me, so I need to trust myself and see myself how He sees me. I'm exercising every ounce of faith that I have and praying so earnestly for me and to know what I need to do to be a better missionary. I'm so grateful that I'm still in Pak Kret. I know the area, I know the members and our investigators and that familiarity is so comforting! My new companion is Sister Tilley. She's from Brigham City, Utah and I absolutely love her. We are so similar and have already had some great experiences teaching together and finding. She is so prepared, really her Thai is way better than mine was when I got here. The word in Thai for greenie is nong kiaw. (nong is younger, kiaw is green) so all the while I've been nong kiaw and I just never want to let that title go, but know I'm ma kiaw (green mom). That's good enough for me. All the members and other missionaries in my district have been so supportive and everyone just tells us that we're going to learn so much and so fast. I surely hope so! I believe it. This is so exciting. There are 7 other Sisters from my MTC district that are training as well. Many of them are in new areas or opening areas where there have never been Sisters! I'm feeling good. I know that youth is know excuse! The Lord trusts the youth! It's really a humbling thought and I'm doing all that I can to be worthy of the spirit and the Lord's help.

So recently as I've shown people our beautiful family picture, everyone points to me and says who is that? I'm unrecognizable. The helmet hair is just too real. Then they point to Nick and Tyler and they're like Justin Bieber! Jessica has her tongue sticking out and everyone just thinks she's the cutest. Mom and Dad you are just so young and beautiful. Sure do love ya.

The word of the week - rawang. (Sorry for the terrible romanized spelling this keyboard is too complicated) Rawang means careful. I learned it a while ago, but recently I've been hearing it at least 127 times a day. Everyone is very concerned about our safety, especially when we tell them how far we ride our bikes. The other day this lady wa-ed me out pretty bad. She said I was going too too fast by this bus and she saw the whole thing but really I feel like the most cautious missionary. I promise I'm being safe. I'll start keeping a tally of that word so I can give you a more accurate account. Exaggerating is way too fun though.

Saturday night, Sister Tilley and I went to go visit Malee and New. (New is the one that likes to study religions) Malee just kind of cut me off mid sentence and said we're Buddhist, we aren't going to change. And when I asked her about New if he was still interested she just said he has already studied with us enough. He doesn't want to learn more. My heart is broken. I sound like a drama queen, but really I am just so sad. It's different when we're just out on the streets talking to people and they reject us, it's still sad, but this was so much harder. That day we read with New in the Book of Mormon about pressing forward with a steadfast in Christ and enduring to the end was so exciting and I saw his faith growing. It's hard to watch how others choose to use their agency. I really hope New keeps reading his Book of Mormon and that someday he'll learn again with the missionaries.

Sunday we had so many people at church! Sister Tilley was so amazing and just talked to everyone and took care of our people. Elder and Sister Taber our amazing senior couple needed a translator. so I gave that a try for about 2 and a half minutes. It was so stressful!! I would understand something but not know how to phrase it  and then they would just speak so fast onto the next thing. I just watched them laugh with me a couple rows ahead and then waved down the Elders to come rescue me. Someday I'll try again. We got to watch the worldwide training...in Thai. Loved it. Can't wait to watch it in English. My favorite part was that movie with the armies of Helaman! So good, I cried.

I love you all so much! Be a member missionary! Choose the right! Remember who you are! 

Happiness is being a missionary!

Dearest Family,

Hello! How are you? I finally got an email from Nick! It sounds like he is doing good, well we are actually both trying to figure out how to be ourselves ha that's fun. I'm feeling more confident about that this week. I was mostly just struggling with being myself around my companion, but things are getting better. Dad, thank you so much for sending that talk. You all send the most uplifting emails I am so blessed!

I am so happy to be a missionary! This week was really good. We met with a lot of less actives one of our less actives referred her less active friend too! That was a happy day. So we've had a couple companion exchanges this transfer, but this time instead of me going somewhere else to be trained by someone else, Sister Zaugg came here and I trained her. She has been here for 6 weeks and I have been here for 12. At first I was worried that it would be like the blind leading the blind, but it ended up being an amazing day with so many miracles. We started out the day with studies and then had to go get our bikes. The day before, Sister Carter and I were on our way to District meeting when she got a flat tire. So we walked our bikes through this neighborhood and found this house with a bunch of broken bikes outside. The lady next door told us if we left the bikes overnight, the man that lived there would fix them and we could just come get them the next day. So Sister Zaugg and I took a taxi to the general location of our bikes ( I was so nervous about communicating effectively to get us there) on the way we talked to our taxi driver and found out that he had a Book of Mormon and that he'd been to church before! We had a great lil lesson with him, got his phone number, and found exactly where our bikes where! The tire was all fixed and it was only 10 baht! That is seriously nothing! Miracles! All day we were able to get to the places we needed to, we understood people, and had good success contacting. Our mission president has asked us to spend two hours each day contacting. I don't mind it at all but most missionaries hate it. So really the hard part about contacting is just getting my companion on board. So anyway that was a great day of leading Sister Zaugg around Pak Kret. 

Thursday we met with May and her friend C. We recommitted May to a new date to be baptized and also invited her friend C who we just met! It was really exciting to see her friend C so excited about wanting to be baptized. C is already Christian! That really makes teaching so much easier. So many people don't know who God is and are way confused about who Jesus Christ is. With most of our other investigators we just teach about the Godhead the first couple of times that we see them to help them really understand.

Yesterday was such a good day! Sister Carter and I sang again in the International branch. I love singing with her. In the Thai branch, Sister Carter gave a talk (she may potentially most likely be moving this week - transfers are Thursday) and her talk was so good! I understood everything!! All day I felt great about communicating with the members in Thai. I speak Thai!! So crazy. There's a billion words I don't know, but the ones I know are the most frequently used so we're good. I'll keep working hard on my language study. Embarrassing moment from yesterday: So they asked us to take care of the music in Sacrament meeting for the International branch. Sister Carter leads the music and I press the start button on the self playing organ to get the hymns going. It's lovely. Well not all of the hymns are programmed into the organ and yesterday I went to start the sacrament hymn and it wasn't there! I had to play it!! It was super rough, I felt terrible, and I'm pretty sure it was for all to hear on the sound system out in the foyer. I need to practice!! For next week, I've made sure that all of the hymns are programmed in there already.

This week I've thought a lot about consistency. I found the Conference Ensign from 2010 in our apartment and read this quote from Elder Scott, " We become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become." I love this so much! It goes along with what we talked about at zone conference with diligence and desire too. I've been thinking about how my investigators know how to pray, they've been given the scriptures and the tools to come closer to Christ, but unless they consistently read and pray, they won't be progressing. It reminded me of the 10 virgins - the five that tended their lamps consistently and added oil had continual light, but the ones that were not consostent or worried about continually tending their light lost it. I want my investigators to have continual light so that they can become truly converted and then be a light to others. I know this church is true. I know that by consistently doing the small and simple things our faith and testimony is strengthened.

Have a wonderful week! 

Love, Love,

Sister Sahagun