Monkeys are Evil

Hey everyone.

Ok this email may be a little shorter then the last because I'm going to add a few pictures in it.
Well last week there were a lot of meetings. Last Friday was Zone Conference where President Smith talked about how we can get the members to have the spirit of missionary work without crossing our authority. Mainly his plan is this, Because the Mission presidents are over all the branches that are not in the one stake in Bangkok, he is going to start training the branches on ward action plans, this is where we have no authority. For a short breakdown, I think Dad can fill you in the rest. The members come up with less active and people they want the missionaries to go see. Then at Correlation meetings the branch mission leaders will tell missionaries who to go visit. Hopefully through this plan we can get Thailand's baptisms up because the General Authorities are beginning to cut the missionary numbers down in Thailand. In the next 3 months we go from 150 missionaries to 110 or 100 missionaries.
Saturday and Sunday were conference. That was a very interesting experience. It was in Thai so I really didn't understand much. I had a really nice nap though. :P
It was nice when the translator had to stop for a few minutes in order to let the speaker catchup, because it would switch into English for a few seconds.
From the Expression of the speakers it sounded like it was a really good conference. :P

The rest of the week was spent trying to find new investigators and make sure all of the progressing investigators had a baptismal date. At the moment we now have 11 investigators that have baptismal dates.

One of the interesting investigators that we are teaching, is named อ๊อฟor Off in English. We found him as we were putting up signs for our English class that we teach every Wednesday night. He started talking English after we talked to him a little bit about the class. To our surprise he had been in America for several years and knew about the church through Dancing with the stars and American Idol, Good old Marie Osmond and David Archaleta. They really did help a lot. Anyways we taught him after English last week and he has been progressing really well. He told me about a program called Couch serfing.com. Its a way to get back to Thailand. anyways.

So you may be wondering why Thais have strange names like "off" or "fight". Well most people in Thailand have two names. First is their nick name like "off" or even "A" for brother Sakhaa. This is the name that every one knows them by. Even in the church you call them by their nick name Like Brother Aladin. Aladin is his nick name. then they have their real name that is not normally given out at first meeting. this is for all official business. Any ways I thought it was a cool thought.

Well my bike is doing well. I have had a few flats already but I just take it to a repair shop that's on most corners and pay a few baht to get it fixed.

OK for a quick description of the pictures. Most of them are of monkeys hanging around town, no pun intended. And if we are in them and look nervous, its probably because we are. Monkeys are Evil. They tried to still my camera.
oh and another is of my desk I think one is on a good clean day and the other is after a hard day of study but cleaned a little for the picture.

OK I need to go now.
I hope everyone is doing well.

Love you all.

Elder Brandon John Holt