taryn 11.25.09

Hey!>
a few days ago as we were biking past a market there was someone selling american music. hah one of the few american songs i have heard and it was john denver blasting, "take me home, to the place where i belong, "orem, utah" mountain momma take me home"... it has been playing in my head ever since, it is a lot of what i feel right now as this holiday season is approaching. my comps have been listening to christmas songs lately, it just brings back so many memories. its hard being here where there is no christmas spirit at all. as i was sitting in church the other day, i realized this week was thanksgving and i started to get sad. i tried to change my thoughts. this is going to be my first and only christmas without family, friends, anything christmas-y, and snow, but it will be a christmas where i wont have any of the commercialization. i will be able to focus more on the savior and the true purpose of christmas as i am serving Him. it is going to be a hard time, but i hope that i can learn, grow, and gain much more faith and stronger testimony in the Lord. it will be a neat time. >
I read a talk a few days ago that was given to us in our moves meeting a few weeks ago. it is such good advice! it is called "Opening the Heavens" by elder yoshihiko kikuchi. it is awesome. i hope that you all will read it and do it as well!! >
Our investigator Gift got interviewed yesterday, she is getting baptized in a week! this is my first investigator that i found and have been teaching from the beginning! man i have been so so blessed. the average baptisms for missionaries in thailand per year is 2.3 baptisms, i already have 3 and ive been here for 3 1/2 months. gift is amazing, she has such a strong testimony. i think if i remember right, i wrote about her last week. im sorry, i never remember what i write, i just sit at the comp and pour out my brain and then wonder what i wrote about once it has been sent off. hah maybe i should start proof reading.. git was an exchange student in america 10 years ago and lived with a member family. she came back and has slept with the bom under her pillow ever since. she kept seeing churches, but felt like she wasnt ready, and the churches were too far. then a few months ago she saw the one right by her house, our church. one that has been there for years but she never noticed it! i know that heavenly father was preserving her so that i could meet her! she decided it was time to stop procratinating and called us. she has been so easy, a baptism pretty much just handed on a platter! hah she reads martha stewart and makes the cutest things for us. she told me yesterday that she wants to come visit me next year maybe during christmas time. that would be SO FUN! she is going to be such a blessing to this church. it is a real testimony of sowing seeds that may be reaped later, like abinadi who didnt have any idea the impact he had because of alma. i wish i could thank those missionaries in wyoming for planting the seed 10 years ago. > >
Elder Wimmer, you are awesome!!! i am so excited to have another one of us out! how cool that we went from 0 to three now!!!! ill write ya soon:) >
oh i wish i had more time.>
i am so grateful for family. that is my thanksgiving gratitude. i really am. you are so so so so so amazing, i couldnt ever ask for a better one. you are perfect. like it says in moroni 8 "i am mindful of you always in my prayers" i love you so much and miss you more than i ever thought possible. please be safe and happy and keep studying and praying. > love, sister young> >

ps.. yesterday on the way to an appt, i stopped to invite a few people on the side of the road. hah it wasnt until i had begun talking to them that i realized they were smoking marijuana. oh the adventure of being a missionary! hah all they were interested in was the "farang" talking to them that they wanted to marry. hah i have been proposed to several times now. another time was last week in english class week "brad pit" (they got to chose american names and that is what he named himself.. he actually is a pretty handsome thai man though, which is rare!) asked me to marry him, i didnt know what to say and then he asked me out. so so awkard, especially in front of a class of other people! they are so forward here