taryn 8.2.10

Hello!
Weve had a great week, lots of hard work, lots of finding and cycling through investigators. The past few months President Smith has made a lot of changes in trying to help Thailand get stronger and hopefully soon get a temple. We have new rules like if we are teaching only one person, they have to be pretty golden to keep teaching them, and if it is a group they have to go to church pretty soon off or we drop them. It makes for a lot of going through investigators, but I know that this is inspired, we are seeing a few of them really stick and seeing those that are truly prepared by the hand of the Lord.
Nin is doing awesome, though we are trying to get her mom more interested, I don’t like baptizing young teenage girls without much support. Her mom is pretty 50/50 right now, I can tell she knows it is true, but she is being stubborn! I know there has to be more concerns, but we cant quite get to them yet.
Pa pong and ma noi are really progressing, we went way far out to their house last week with a member in the pouring rain and taught under their patio in the middle of their jungle-like yard. They came to church yesterday for the whole time, even though they needed to get things ready to sell for the night market. Ma noi is showing a lot of faith and will hopefully be baptized soon, and pa pong will follow her. He needs to gain a true testimony first though.
Kham, our investigator from the hill tribes in Burma is also awesome. she keeps having problems with writing her thesis and defending it, so time keeps getting pushed back. She is wanting to get home, I don’t blame her, but I think the Lord is stalling her here so that she can learn with us and then be one of the pioneers in Burma.
A few of our other investigators have gotten direct awesome answers to their prayers this past week. It is neat to hear each of them. It is interesting, I can always tell the investigators who really prayed and really want to know. If someone says that their prayers didn’t get answered, every time as I talk with them the conclusion is always that they didn’t have the deep desire, or they actually didn’t even pray. Prayer is such a powerful thing. Think how cool and what a blessing it is that we have been able to talk with God our whole lives. Every week I teach atleast a few people who have never prayed before and get to hear their first prayers. Sometimes they feel funny and aren’t sincere, some are too scared to pray, and some I know that they are opening the heavens and truly trying to talk with their Heavenly Father for the first time.
Right now I am studying prayer a lot in my studies and trying to make my prayers more sincere and have conversations with God like it says in alma 37, not just telling him everything. I love in I think it is the bible dictionary where it says that prayer is aligning our will with God’s will. We see lots of little miracles everyday, especially now with a greenie. I know that Heavenly Father is helping me so much, there is no way I could be doing this with His help. Lots of time on my knees and lots of reading in Preach My Gospel. For example, just the other night I had written someones name for a backup plan and I didn’t know who it was. We had some extra time so we biked around and invited and ended up at a girls house that we have taught once but sister Josephson left and I didn’t have her number. We went upstairs to her appt and she was just about to leave! I got her number and scheduled another appt with her, her name is om!
Sorry to cut it short, its time to write my presidents email. I love you so much and am getting excited to see you soon!
Until next week,
Sister Young