Dearest Family,

How are you? How is Nick? I have not heard from Elder Sahagun since Mother's Day and I just miss him! Will you please forward me his emails?

This last week was a bit of a struggle. We were not able to get in touch with of our investigator May all week! And we didn't see her last week either..AH! She has a date to be baptized this Saturday but she ha
sn't finished learning all the lessons and she's not really progressing like she was 3 weeks ago. We finally saw her yesterday after church, but she is so busy with school we can't see her til Thursday. I'm sad about that. 

There is a lot of work to be done in our little branch to strengthen the members. Yesterday the Young Women's President asked to be released from her calling because she can't get Sundays off. Mutual hasn't been the huge success that I had hoped for either. The hardest part is that the leaders are not able to come and don't really do much to help get the word out. The missionaries don't mind planning activities and contacting people, but everything we've tried hasn't been really effective. I think we just need to get the youth excited about living the gospel. Our focus this week is on lessons with recent converts and less actives. We're going to find all the lost people on our ward list! (Okay not really, that is not a realistic goal, but yes we are going on an intense adventure this week.)

Saturday we were able to help at the district primary program! The kids were so cute and had an amazing variety of talents of really cool traditional dances, hula hooping, singing, and just being cute. There was a group of four little girls that recited all 13 articles of faith! I was so impressed. Maybe that will be my next memorization goal for Thai.

Thanks for sharing your small victories mom, keep up the good work! It looks like you had a lot of fun with the Taiwanese students! Thanks for sharing pictures! I'm so happy you all got to go to the temple together! I miss the temple! I miss you! Have a wonderful week! 

Love, Love,

Sister Sahagun

Missionaries Arrive in Thailand

This video was just sent to us by Heather's Mission President. It's footage from the first day she arrived in Thailand. 

Warning: May cause some tears!

Dearest Family,

You are all so wonderful! Special Happy Father's Day shout out to one cool Daddio! I missed you a lot yesterday. Sister Carter and I spoke in the international branch and sang with some young women "I Come to Him" It was really pretty. Talking on Father's Day being away from your dad is hard! But I am so grateful to be here and I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father that is taking such good care of me and also my family. Something I shared in my talk was that I am so grateful for the letters I get from home, especially your returned missionary words of wisdom. Even more, I'm grateful for the letters from my heavenly home that I can read in the scriptures each day. I find so much strength and guidance as I read each day.

This week we had an amazing zone conference about desires and diligence. Our desires lead to action and our actions are what shape us into who we are. Just as important as what you do is who you are. I've thought a lot about the things I do as a missionary and the reasons or my attitude as I do it. I just want to do better and be better and gain the Lord's trust.

Friday we had the most amazing day! We were instructed not to schedule ANYTHING. It was hard to understand the purpose especially since we felt like there were a million people we needed to visit that day, but at the end of our zone conference they told us that we would be spending the entire day contacting and testifying of Christ. Nothing else, just bearing testimony and being a witness. It was so incredible! It was a long day, and we actually did visit one lady that is bed ridden, but as we were out and about I just felt so much joy in sharing my testimony. I know that God is our loving Heavenly Father and we are literally His children. I know that he has a plan for each of us. I know that Jesus Christ is our Savior. The best part was when I bore my testimony to three members that I didn't know were already members...it's all good. Everyone can be reminded right? 

Sunday we had 15 Melchizedek Priesthood Holders at church!!! THAT'S A BIG DEAL! Also, our less active Sister Bin who hasn't been to church in over 8 years came to church and the members were so welcoming! I was so happy to see them all talking to her and being chatty with everyone. There was so much more love and unity. 

Oh Mom, to answer your question yes I'm still in Pak Kret, still with Sister Carter, still a missionary. Transfers are in 3 weeks. That will be the end of my training. AH! Just a lil terrifying. There are 11 new sisters coming! I have no idea what will happen. I'll keep you posted. Random: Sister Cox met one of your Knudsen cousins in Louisiana! Also, I'm super curious about this ring that Nick sent you. Send me a picture?

I'm really trying to be myself and confident in my actions. It's harder than I thought it would be to be myself as a missionary. I have to be conscious of myself and my companion. Their physical and spiritual well being. I feel like I haven't been 100% myself. I'm working hard to change that. I know that the Lord will help me as I trust in Him. D&C 121:45 If you have any advice on this, please advise.

I love you most! Have a wonderful week! 

Sister Sahagun

Ness

The Sign says it all! "And now Behold my joy is full"

Dearest Family!!

I only have ten more minutes!!! AH! Sending those pictures kinda took way longer than I wanted. I got your package! Thank you soooooo (O's x a million) much! I hope you like the pictures and I am loving the Teddy Grahams. Definitely a happy American snack that I miss.

Where do I even begin? So much happens in one week! Emails don't do this experience justice. I don't think anything can really. I am learning so much about how to be a better communicator, how to be more confident in leading others, and being bold as I lead. I am such a go with the flow kind of person and I usually want to do anything and everything. So making plans is great, we can do whatever! But other people's personalities are not so let's do whatever and it's hard to make plans. Does that make sense? I'd rather have the people around me be happy than to have our plans be exactly my way or done. I need to get over this people pleaser-ness. This is the most random tangent and I'm running out of time.

Last night we taught New and Malee more about the Plan of Salvation and asked New about his Book of Mormon reading. He said that he had marked his favorite verse. 2 Nephi 31:20. 

 " Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life. 

Ya know just the chapter that all missionaries refer to and love and want their investigators to understand and be converted to. It was really cool. We invited him to be baptized and he said Yeah! How do I do it? So good.

I know this church is true. Heavenly Father is helping me change each day to become better.

Love you all,

Sister Sahagun

 May 5, 2013-Celebrating my 21st birthday in Thailand with a shaved Ice!

Eating healthy foods!

Heather at the orphanage :)

"Are you following me?" 

Dearest Family,

HEY! IT"S MOM"S BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR MOM! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!! :) May all your birthday wishes come true!!

Hello! Right now I am barefoot sitting in a smelly internet cafe. It really smells terrible and it's because people sleep here! I feel a lil bit gross, but it's all good. I'll just get out my sanitizer and say a prayer that I don't get some weird fungus disease in my feet.

It's raining!!!! Welcome to rainy season! It feels so nice outside. I love it. Maybe if they kept the door open in this place it would smell like rain instead of...whatever this is.

Yesterday I got to go to the International Branch Sacrament Meeting! ENGLISH! It was great. It felt like sacrament meeting at home. Sister Carter and I have been assigned to help in that branch in addition to the Pak Kret branch. They have one investigator named Josiah, he plays soccer, and is progressing pretty well. We haven't met him yet, but we will and we will get to teach him. They also have some less actives that we get to work with! I'm so excited!

I forget if I've told you this already...but anyway, last week we stopped at this house and asked if we could use their bathroom. The lady was so sweet and talked to us for a lil bit about religion. Her son is 24, and he loves studying all religions. We asked if we could come back on Sunday and teach them about Christ and they said yes! SO last Sunday we taught them how to pray and watched Finding Faith in Christ. It was amazing, New (the son) said the most amazing prayer (I feel like he prays better than me. Well, he does. He speaks Thai) but really he was so reverent. We went back on Tuesday, gave his Mom a picture of Christ, and then Yesterday had an awesome lesson with a member to introduce the Book of Mormon. We had a great Zone training about introducing the Book of Mormon with more sincerity and excitement. We talked about rather than just turning to the introduction page because that's what you do, we talked about being creative, sharing the stories in the Book and telling them about the people that they will be reading about. The introduction pages are powerful and should be read with investigators, but if you sit down with someone and say read the first paragraph and then the last two and then you can pray to know if it's true, they don't even know what is in the book or why they should read it. It opened my eyes to what these investigators are experiencing the first time they ever are introduced to the Book of Mormon. When we showed Malee (the mom) The Book of Mormon, we told her that the Book starts out telling about a story of a family that traveled on a boat as they were guided by the Lord. I told her about Nephi and the great faith that he had. I told her that this story and example of Nephi is one of my favorites because like Nephi, there are many times in my life where I don't know what I am supposed to do or how, but I know that through faith and trust in the Lord we can do all things. When we gave the book to New (the Son) he turned to the picture of Christ at the beginning and just kept saying how much he loved it. He told us that he would read the whole thing this week. We promised him that if he prayed as he read that he would have a greater understanding of the book. I am so excited to continue teaching this family.

The Book of Mormon is so powerful. I never want to go a day with out reading it. I love being a missionary. I love helping others become converted and change while I too get to experience a deeper conversion and change every day striving to become better. I know that this church is true.  I love you so much! Have a wonderful week!

Love, Love,

Sister Sahagun

Dearest Family,

Hello! You're all done with school! Let the summer fun begin! Now you all have tons of time to write me! 

Happiest update of this week: May has a baptismal date!! She is so wonderful, and so patient with my struggly Thai. She knows that I love her. That's really all I'm trying to say in our lessons. Heavenly Father loves you! Christ is our Savior,  He suffered for us because He loves us. I just want everyone to learn this and have joy.

This week we did a lot of biking. It's pretty normal to be biking for 3 hours straight just looking for addresses of less actives. Most of the time people have moved forever ago, but we just talk to their neighbors and see if they're interested in learning with us. Everyone here just says I'm Buddhist, every church teaches people to be good. Right now we're trying to get the members to be excited about missionary work so we can have more member lessons. Actually, first we are trying to help them be more unified as a branch. This district is SO CLOSE to becoming a Stake. It's really exciting to be able to serve here right now.

Dad, thanks so much for you letter last week, it was so perfectly what I needed to here. There are definitely some big stormy clouds hanging over some people here right now and it's been hard not knowing what I can do to help them see the sunshine. I've been trying to figure out how to be sensitive to others feelings, but not letting their attitude dull down my hope and happiness. I feel so grateful for the positive perspective and faith that gets me through each day. There are so many hard and potentially discouraging things about missionary work, but I have felt so much peace and happiness as I've put my trust in the Lord and focused on the things that are in my control. Life is so good. 

So there is this long haired motorcycle taxi man whose name I don't know that is kinda stalking me these days...Sister Carter were eating at our favorite market two weeks ago and he just rode up and said hi, we gave him an English flyer, and invited him to come. Yeah well then he called and was asking about church and baptism and remission of sins and he said he would come to church. At church, he came in sat next to us and during sacrament meeting he wrote me this note that said something like I have faith in Sister Sahagun...AH! NOT APPROPRIATE! He came again this week and the District leader tried to talk to him and explain that if he's really interested in the gospel that the Elders can teach him. He didn't really listen, Sister Carter and I just walked away. No worries though, we don't answer his calls, and we'll just have to find a new favorite market.

How about I leave you with a happier thought. Peace.

 Alma 7:27 The Peace of God. Philippians 4:7 I am seeking to have peace of God in my life each day. I know that true joy comes through seeking Christ and serving others. 

I love you so much! Have a wonderful week!

Love, Love,

Sister Sahagun

Dearest Family,

Missions are just the best! I wish I could explain every experience and tell you about all these wonderful people that are changing my life and that I'm trying to help come closer to Christ! Emailing does not do any of that justice!!

This week our investigator May read in the introduction of the Book of Mormon, prayed and gained a testimony of it's truthfulness. She knows for herself that Joseph Smith restored the church and Thomas S. Monson is our prophet today. She understands repentance. She wants to be baptized! I just love her so much! This week we met with her at the church and taught her how to use the index to find scriptures. We looked up a verse about service and wrote it down to give to one of the members of our branch that works at Big C (It's the Wal Mart of Thailand) After some serious Asian decorating done so beautifully by May, we delivered the card to Sister Nong. IT was so great! May was just so happy the whole night, I love that we were able to teach her about service, do some service, and just AH! She knows it, we're helping her live it and she loves it!! I don't even know if that makes sense, but I'm just happy and May is doing fantastic. We're working on helping her set a date to be baptized.

Right now I want to take a minute to thank Ryan Petersen for his postal service. Hello Stacy and Ryan! What is your address? So the post office has become kind of a second home for us. We go there at least 2 times a week. The last time we were there one of the workers said if we come every day, we'll know everything about Pak Kret. I think Sister Carter already thinks she does...but really we are learning a lot about all these sois and muu bans.

This week I made a vision for myself and the missionary that I want to become. I'm feeling great about that. There is this amazing talk called the fourth missionary that talks about being the best missionary you can be, but really it's about becoming a disciple of Christ. This weekend we had a special meeting with Elder Andersen and all the missionaries of Thailand. It was incredible! Something that he said was so simple but helped me remember why I am here. " There is no confusion about what you must teach - Testify and be a witness of the Savior." Not very many people here have even heard of Christ. It's so nice to have such a clear direct focus. We are starting from the basics. Be a witness of Christ. That was the theme of the weekend for me. On Sunday, he spoke at this gorgeous building with all the members from Bangkok, Bangbuatong, Pak Kret, I don't know just all over whoever came, it was amazing. He said there are many temples in Thailand, but not a house of the Lord. A house of the Lord is much more than a beautiful building. Thailand will have a temple. It is only a question of when. Thailand needs more faithful strong members that will be witnesses of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve here at this time. It's so exciting! I don't know when this temple will be announced, but I know that the things that I'm doing now will help determine the future of the church in Thailand. 

Every day isn't sticky rice and mangoes, but every day that I trust in the Lord and focus on doing his work is the best and most happiest day of my life. I love being a missionary. I hope you all have a fabulous week! 

Love, Love,

Sister Sahagun