Sister Monica Painter: Week 6 - Itching to get in the Sun of Thailand!!

Written Tuesday, MARCH 19, 2013

Sawadiii family!

So I found out this week that Jared's grandparents are moving to St. George! No more Logan apparently. So who knows, maybe they'll be close to Papa Jim & Grandma Zoma. That'd be awesome.

This week I've been on a pursuit to be a better Sister Painter. A mission has a way of magnifying your weaknesses by 326 times. So I've been trying to work on Christ-like attributes-- it's a slow road. The week was filled with up's and down's. My language has hit a perpetual wall of sorts, and my study habits are lacking in the awesome. I'm trying my hardest, but at week 7 (starting tomorrow) you start itching to get out to Thailand. It's rough business. Being cast down to your lowest of lows is the only way to develop progress, apparently.

Although, despite that, I was complimented twice last week. Bro. Burgess had me in an interview and he told me how amazed he was by my memory. He asked if it was photographic-- to which I kind of just shrugged sheepishly like, "I don't really know. Sometimes." If there's one strength I know I do have, it's remembering and memorizing. It can be a gift and a curse. But anyway, now that they only write out vocab and grammar in Thai, my gift of remembering how words looked on paper has since been taken away. So now I am literally on full reliance to the spirit to remember things. That's been my biggest goal-- being able to discern the needs of the person we're talking to. Because Thai is tonal, it's hard to tell what the person is feeling or what they're thinking. Language barriers are rough on making connections. But I will say this-- the spirit speaks ALL languages. Language barriers aside.

Bro. Burgess told me that my accent was really good-- which essentially means I must sound like a bird creature. I am officially Kevin from UP.

At the end of one of our lessons, Bro. B said: "If I could change anything about that lesson---- I wouldn't." He's so great to us. Bro. McConkie is a stiff one and he gave us a "sincere clap" later the day we taught him. So apparently we have the potential to get it right sometimes.

It got warmer here, so a lot of what we do for studying is down outside. Or we'll teach outside-- we'll be teaching on the ground in Thailand, on a river-side porch, or usually in a home with a special rug they use for talking. Very cool. I may or may not be bringing one home with me.

We leave April 8th-- 3 weeks! We get new Thai's here tomorrow. Crazy! We get 2 girls in our room, and 2 in the other. Then 2 Elders. It'll be weird to see them going through what we just did!

Not a lot to report-- most of my news was in Mom's email. Have her share it with you for the blog, any of the news. I'll write a handwritten one too soon.

If you could send me my farewell talk in a dearelder, that'd be awesome.

Funny fact: Thai's essentially don't have addresses. So they just say, "My house is OVER THERE!" and say: "Noon!!" and point. Good luck finding it. :)

Anyway. I love you all! I'm sure I'm forgetting lots of stuff. But anyway, there may or may not be an apostle/Thomas S. Monson or something today, because we're singing a never before sung song for choir that they had commissioned for tonight. Uhhhh... I'll be there, thank you.

LOVE YOU ALL!!

Sis. Painter