Email from a member

Dear Tilley's and Sahagun's,

We are a family living in the branch that your daughters are serving in.  We wanted you to know how much we like your daughters. They are doing a fantastic job and setting a great example for many.

We had them over for dinner tonight and thought you might like to see a photo of them. Please know how proud you would be if you could see them.   I have three daughters and they have set such a great example for them.


Thank you for sharing them with us and the wonderful people of Thailand.

Best,
Diana Nelson

Dearest Family,

Thanks for your emails! Mom, you have the cutest ideas and I just hope I can be as fun and creative in my classroom. The activity with the marshmallows and spaghetti was so cute and we actually did something really similar this week in our district meeting. We all had paperclips, pins, paper, and other random things and had to build a boat but then we compared it to building a stake! It's going to happen, but only if we focus our efforts and all work together! My boat turned out great just in case you were wondering. 

The other day we were contacting at this bus stop and I noticed that this man had a way cool plant thing and I really wanted to talk to him so I just told him I liked his plant and then immediately regretted it. I had forgotten that if you tell a Thai person that you like something they just give it to you. I turned to Sister Tilley and was like "Oh, no know this man is going to give me this plant thing!" and that's exactly what happened! 

I tried to tell him no and that he should go give it to his mom, but he insisted that it was just a random thing from a meeting and he had no use for it. So then I tried to give him a pamphlet in return but he wouldn't take it! That doesn't seem fair. I wish he would have just taken it. Anyway, I was thinking about how last week we had that "rude" rejection. It was pretty mild compared to all the rejections of missionaries in other places in the world, ancient apostles, and the rejections that Christ experienced. Then I found this scripture in D&C 60:15 and that's it. I am so grateful to be here inviting others to come unto Christ, helping them know how to better use their agency and to have true and lasting happiness in their lives. Not everyone accepts the message, but we'll just wash our feet and keep going and spreading the good word.

Yesterday was the happiest fast Sunday of my whole mission! ซี (C) was baptized!!!!

She is May's best friend and started learning with us right before Sister Carter left. She was already Christian (that never happens) and had a sincere desire to learn more about Jesus Christ. It has been so incredible to see her grow and come to know her Savior more. She bore such a sweet simple testimony and shared her desire to learn even more as she continues to read in the Book of Mormon. I love her so much! I love May for bringing her friend to church with her! I love repentance and I know that the next baptism we have we'll remember to have a towel. Heavenly Father loves us so much and He helps us work out even the little things because He knows they are important to us. I know this church is true!

We had the most incredible coordination meeting with the branch mission leader for the International branch. I love agendas and organization. My favorite part was this story that he told us from his mission in Fiji. In Fiji, there's a lot of fishing yes so these fisherman go out and they look for the birds. Where there are birds, there are fish. Without the birds, you can probably still find some fish, but it's hard and takes a lot more time. It is the same with members and missionary work! Members are the birds and the fish are our friends and people who are ready to receive the gospel. Isn't that nice? So be a helpful bird.

I love you all so much. I can't believe Nick is speaking Spanish, I can't wait to hear that. Tyler, give Mrs. Dowse a chance okay? Be nice. JB, I got your letter and your beautiful artwork! Thank you so much! I sent the fam some artwork of my own, I hope you enjoy that. You're all so supportive and just the best family I could ask for. Have a fabulous week!

Love, 

Sister Sahagun

Dearest Family,

You're all so busy with school! The school schedule here is way weird I have no idea what the deal is or if there is even an actual set thing. The international school is normal, but all these other Thai kids have been in school since I got here in April. I feel like everyone is just in school always everyday all day. Not exaggerating. Oh, except if there is a Buddhist holiday which sometimes feels like every other week. Most kids have school on Sunday (university kids too) and it's hard to find a way for them to come to church. A lot of the youth will wear their school uniform to church and just try to work around it. I'm grateful that there is no school on Sunday in America.

Our investigators นินู (ni noo) is just the most adorable happy 15 year old in all the land.

She's been coming to church for the past two months, has a great understanding of the gospel, and a sincere testimony. Everyone thinks she's a member already. She has a date to be baptized, but because she's 15 she has to have parent permission so that is the only thing that is holding her back. During our lesson with her this week it really hit me how much she's having to change and give up to follow Christ and be baptized. Buddhism is a huge part of the culture, everything that she has grown up doing worshiping those little spirit houses, wying every statue, going to the Wat and burning incense it's all just what you do here in Thailand. Change is hard. Yesterday at church she told us that her parents are fine with her learning with us as long but she has to give up facebook for a year. Sister Tilley and I just laughed I don't really understand the reasoning behind that but whatever it's fine. We're giving up facebook for Jesus too. It's way better this way.

We had such a good leadership training this week! "I'm just dropping my mom off at this parenting class while I go with the other kids to day care." Sister Tilley and the other greenies went out and carried on with the work while we learned how to be better leaders. President Senior is the best. We were talking about how most people here will tell you that they believe in God but they are confused about who God is. To them God is Buddha. "If I were God I wouldn't want to live in one of those little houses, but I would like a Strawberry Fanta." Strawberry Fanta is definitely the most popular pick.  Those little spirit houses are everywhere and it's just the saddest thing to ride our bikes by one and then see a perfect most beautiful ripe mango just sitting on a plate to rot. I'll have that. 

I experienced my first real sad rejection. We were given a referral of this American family that wanted to find a Christian church. We showed up and the mom was just very blunt and not inviting at all. Rude I guess is the best word. I felt so sad that we didn't really even have a chance to say anything. They just moved here and I'm sure they could use some help finding things or if they needed help speaking Thai we'd love to just serve them. It was just nothing like talking to a happy Thai person. I guess that was a lil taste of missionary work in America. 

Just when I feel like I can't imagine any more miracles happening they do. Of course there are more! This is God's work and His glory and I should never doubt. Yesterday three people walk into the church and attend the International branch. The one lady lives here and was just looking for a Christian church that is closer to her house. She had good questions about the Book of Mormon and we're so excited to teach her! Then there's this guy from Africa and his wife who is Thai and they wanted to know about every meeting or activity that was going on this week. They just wanted to be at the church as much as they could. Unfortunately there's not anything happening this week but the good news is we can meet with them as often as they'd like! These are people prepared to hear the gospel and we are so excited to teach them! We were riding our bikes to this less actives house when this man on a motorcycle flagged us down and stopped for us to catch up. At first I was a lil scared, but the first thing he asked us was if we had a Book of Mormon. What? Yes please. He's met with missionaries before and wants to learn again. 

I love being a missionary. I know this church is true. I am so grateful for the many miracles that I see in my life every day. Have a wonderful week!

I caught a lizard. I wish I could send the video, but it's too big.
It squirmed out of my hands and I accidentally ripped it's tail... :(

Love,

Sister Sahagun

Beyond 5

Dearest Family,

I love hearing from you!! Thanks for all your support and the words of inspiration. Daddio, that Lord of the Rings bit was great. "All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us." When is your next fireside? I was in the Tops grocery store this week when that Carpenters song you've got a friend... winter spring summer fall came on and I was just missing you lots! 

This week has felt really long! Mostly just because a lot happened I guess. On Monday night we had chili and cornbread at a members house from the international branch. They invited us to stay for family home evening and their kids were so excited to show us what their family does. They have a three year old daughter, a two year old son, and a one year old son. As soon as the lesson ended, Wendy jumped up and said now we do ring around the rosie and duck duck goose. That's the tradition I guess, they are just adorable and it was fun to be at an American family night.

On Tuesday, Sister Tilley got pretty sick and we missed the English showcase. (Not too sad about that...) but we had a great language study that was dedicated to learning the words about our health and lack thereof. I went to great lengths to write out the forever long word for thermometer and cream  and when it came time to actually use them, I said it in Thai and the pharmacist just said oh! thermomeTER with the up tone.Yep. And cream is just cream. Sometimes it's just that easy! Not always though...I keep mixing up the words for interview and relationship. ความสัมภาษณ์ and ความสัมพันธ์. That's been a lil embarrassing.  

We had transfers on Thursday! Sister Tilley and I are still in ปากเกร็ด and we now have two more sisters serving in our branch! I'm so excited! That's a grand total of 6 missionaries in our branch! It's just going to really help each companionship focus on a smaller area and hopefully make it easier to find and work with all the less active members.

Friday night was the Beyond 5 concert. I don't even know what to tell you about it. I just find it so Ironic that the first concert I've attended is to this random boy band that no one has heard of, here in Thailand, as a missionary. President and Sister Senior were there too. Not something I expected to do as a missionary. We sang this song called Bliss -Eric Whitaker, รักนิรันดร์, this other Thai song I can't spell, Come Thou Fount, and The King's Anthem. It was quite the random selection, but I dare say it was the best part of the concert. I take it back. Brother Egg was the best part of the concert. He is a member in the ดอนเมือง branch and has the best voice ever! He has a CD coming out at the end of this month and I'm really excited to have that in my life in a year. As for Beyond 5, it was just so weird. Sister Tilley was freaking out the entire time. Totally in here element. "This is probably the closest I'll get to Justin Bieber." He's actually coming to Thailand next month. The young women in the international branch keep us updated.

Saturday we met with two less actives and the recent convert family from Sri Lanka. I love them so much! We also prepared the program for เม's baptism!! เม got baptized on Sunday!!! It was the happiest most beautiful day! During the talks I just kept thinking about that scripture D&C 18:15 how great shall be your joy if you shall bring one soul unto me...I am so grateful that I got to be apart of เม coming to know who her Savior is and helping her develop a testimony for herself that God is our loving Heavenly Father and because He loves us, he's given us a way to return to live with Him again. She's on the right path! 

Sister Tilley and I sang the song when I am Baptized. It's my favorite! I am so grateful for repentance and the opportunity we have to be clean as earth right after rain every time we sincerely repent. I am grateful for the simple words of that primary song that help remind me that Heaven'y Father's Plan really is simple and as long as we repent we can be forgiven and improve each day. I loved hearing เม bear her testimony. I've never seen her speak with that much confidence before. She talked about how it's hard to change religions, but she did it because she loves God and Jesus Christ. I'm just so happy for her!!

The talks in church were wonderful too. Both speakers talked about invitations. Everyone's received some kind of invitation before. Usually we're excited to see who it's from and what it's for. Many times you'll hear the invitation "come here" from parents. The usual response, "WHY?" well you could say "because I said so" but in relation to the gospel invitation to "come here" the answer is because God loves us, and the reason we come is because we love Him. Each of us has the responsibility to extend that gospel invitation. I love being a missionary. I love sharing this joyous message with people of eternal families, repentance, and our Savior Jesus Christ. 

Have a wonderful week! I love you most!

Love,

ซิสเตอร์ ซาเฮกัน

Sister Sahagun

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