As she prepares to graduate, Fah Panasuto's friends say she has remained loving throughout her trials
For Nipawan “Fah” Panasuto, her journey to graduation at BYU-Hawaii has been a difficult one, said the senior from Thailand completing her interdisciplinary major with an emphasis in entrepreneurship and economics. According to her friends, going through difficulties and working hard made her a kind and generous person as she became a mother to her son and never backing down from her trials.
Growth
Kanda Kannasut, an alumna from Thailand who graduated in Spring 2023 with a degree in clinical psychology, said she has known Panasuto for three years. She first met her in the Thailand Club, she said. “I think she is a very confident woman. Confident and brave in the way she thinks without any limits. She’s smart, very active and hardworking,“ she said. Kannasut continued talking about the love Panasuto has for nature, adventure and extremely spicy food.
At the end of June 2023, Kannasut had to wait several days before her flight to Seattle to begin her internship, and since she graduated, she was not allowed to stay in the hales. Panasuto offered to let her stay in her apartment until it was time for her flight, for which Kannasut said she was incredibly grateful.
After she finished her mission, Panasuto recalled she went home and said her cousins and other family members saw her as a failure. “Because there’s no job, no degree, they complain because they have good jobs they feel serving a mission is useless,” she said. She explained they don’t know the spiritual rewards and blessings that come from being a missionary.
She added her life experiences have helped her understand the importance of her weaknesses. “Since I got married and had a baby, the gospel has shaped my life. I have so many weaknesses, but God shaped our lives every day. It’s not easy the way He changed me. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes I’m too tired. Sometimes I just need a lot of patience. But I know if I’m patient enough, if I stay in this way, I will be better. In God’s way, not in my way,” she said.
Jatuphon Phakdeerat, a sophomore from Thailand majoring in business management, said when he saw Panasuto at BYUH, he was amazed to see her growth, and he most admired her generosity. In general, Phakdeerat said Panasuto has made many sacrifices in her life for her husband and having a family as a student. “When I went to her house, even though she needed to manage everything, she always shared…And every time we have a service activity, Fah will be the one to volunteer to participate and help with the activities,” he said.
When Culture Night practices were being held, Panasuto said she was preparing for the birth of her son and could not participate. Nevertheless, she said she still encouraged the members of the Thailand Club as they prepared to perform.
Love for her child
In February 2023, Panasuto gave birth to her son, John “Maui” Saruul Ochirbat. After he was born, Panasuto said she gained a new perspective on life. While she still knew having enough money was important, she said, “I am happier [now that] I have him [Maui.] I feel closer to God with him. He’s a pure spirit.”
After she graduates, Panasuto said she and her husband are not sure if they will go to Thailand or Mongolia, but said she still has ambitions to start a business.
“Actually I think a lot about the future before I go to bed…but sometimes when I read the scriptures, God sometimes tells us if we stay on the right path, wherever we go, He will provide a way,” she said citing the example of Nephi from the scriptures.
In the future, Panasuto said she hopes Maui will stay strong in the gospel. “Maui’s first name is John. Maui is just his nickname.” She said his name was taken from John the Baptist because of how he prepared the way for the coming of Christ. “‘John’ means you help the work of God, prepare people, [he will] prepare himself for the Second Coming,” she said.
When he went to babysit Maui, Phakdeerat said Panasuto’s husband was sick, and she had to handle her assignments and take care of her son. Phakdeerat stated,“ Becoming a mother is kind of hard because you need to handle everything.”
He said whenever Panasuto is with her son, she always has a smile on her face and looks happy. He added seeing her handling everything by herself is the reason he recognizes Panasuto as a generous person with a big heart.
According to Kannasut, Panasuto is an energetic and outgoing person. “When it’s time to take care of her son, she can become another person who is calm and relaxed and makes sure Maui feels warm and feels calm.”
Finding Love
Panasuto and her husband, Saruul Ochirbat from Mongolia, met and dated, she said, for about three months before the COVID-19 pandemic began. She said when she had to go home to Thailand, the two of them broke up. She said it was a difficult time because, according to her, they were each other’s first loves.
When she came back to Laie, after eight months of working and taking online classes, Panasuto said she listened to a devotional. She recalled the speaker talked about how he and his wife wanted a child, and how he went to the temple every week to show his commitment to God willing to accept whatever [God] wanted for his life.
“So I did that. I said, ‘Okay, I will go to temple every week for a year to ask…’ And I did that every week for six months. At the end of the year, the last day of the year, I saw Saruul in the celestial room. He went to the temple also, but I was still hurt from him. And that time when we walked out, it rained and we had a chance to talk. We got back [together] that day,” said Panasuto.
Even after that, Panasuto said she continued going to the temple weekly until she reached her goal of weekly attendance for a whole year. She and Ochirbat were married in April of 2022.
According to Kannasut, “I think they are a very perfect match. It’s like they are opposites…Because Fah is like a fire, because she’s so active. But Saruul, he’s like water - calm, kind. So I feel like when they’re together, it’s a perfect combination.”
Kannasut explained how great of a friend Panasuto is. She said, “She loves God. And here for example, she married Saruul. The reason she decided to marry him was he’s a good guy. And Fah was always looking for a man who serves the Lord.”
A rough start
During her childhood, Panasuto said she was completely focused on studying. She said, “I liked to study…My family had problems. My dad was an alcoholic, and my mom worked so hard for us.” Panasuto said she wanted to be a support to her mother, to make her proud and let her mom know she was grateful.
“The only thing I can do is study, right? So I do everything. Study too much,” she said with a laugh.
“So when I [was] young, [I thought] I needed to be the first one in the class,” she said, adding how she would wake up at 4 a.m. each day.
She explained, “I kept [waking up at 4 a.m.] until almost high school. I stressed a lot. But I think my mom was the stressed one. If I relaxed, I felt bad because my mom was the only one stressed. So I thought I needed to do something to work hard like her, but I couldn’t work at that time.”
Panasuto’s mother, who ran her own business to help support the family, died of a heart attack at the age of 42. At the time of her mother’s death, Panasuto was 18 years old and her sister was 15.
Her father’s alcoholism continued, so her aunt and uncle stepped in to support them, she said.
Panasuto said she earned very high test scores compared with not only the students in her school, but also all of Thailand. She said this made her feel stressed and sick because of all the rigorous work she was putting herself through.
For high school, Panasuto said she wanted to move away to a boarding school to be away from her father. During her time at boarding school, she said she saw a difference from living with her dad. She said, “I learned how to be better balanced [in] my life.”
Throughout high school, Panasuto said she felt a lot of expectations from people to become a doctor because of her high GPA. Later on, she said she decided becoming a doctor was not for her and opted to follow in her mother’s footsteps and pursue business. Panasuto said she wanted to be like her mother but not go through all the stress she had gone through.
Mission
Six months before her mother died, Panasuto met the missionaries and got baptized. She said, “I found the gospel. The gospel changed me…After I got baptized, I realized the way I lived my life was wrong.”
At the time, she was in college in Thailand, but she was given a scholarship to study in Japan for about a month. After coming back from Japan, she received an offer for future employment there.
She said again, she felt like it was not for her, despite the promise of a future job with a good salary. She added, “I prayed at that time [about] what I should do. I didn’t like the feeling I got [about the school]. And so, I stopped studying there and served a mission instead.”
Panasuto served her mission in the Thai countryside and she said it helped her to consider what she wanted from her life when it came to marriage and education.
On her mission, she said she was very focused on working hard and being obedient. “I worked too hard,” she exclaimed with a laugh. “I get used to it being strict and feel bad for some of my companions.”
Phakdeerat said he met Panasuto when she was serving in his ward as a full-time missionary. "At that time, I was a less-active member because I had a hard time understanding the gospel. I felt like it was hard for me to go to church and feel the Spirit because I felt alone.”
Phakdeerat had been baptized earlier in the year he met Panasuto, but said he felt after his conversion, the other missionaries and members did not pay much notice to him. “These five or four missionaries came to my home, but it didn’t make me come back. I felt like they just came to teach the gospel without understanding what I was facing or my challenges. Fah tried to understand. And when she understood, she knew how to help me,” he said.
During her mission, Phakdeerat said Panasuto would be the one to encourage the missionaries to be obedient and be a good example to others. He said, "I saw Fah as a good leader and a strong-minded person."
For months, Phakdeerat said missionaries would visit him, but it was not until he met Panasuto that he felt needed and cared for and understood the Savior’s love and need for him. He explained, “She came to my home one time. She did not come to preach the gospel [at me]. She just came to get to know me. She made me feel like I have friends. And when she visited me the second time, the third time, she tried to understand me. She didn’t [just] teach the gospel. She didn’t come and then open the Book of Mormon to share the scripture. Instead, she came to understand and then she showed me her love. And I felt a lot of love from her.”
Because Phakdeerat lived far from his church building, he said he did not feel connected with the members and sat alone at the back of the chapel. He said Panasuto was the one who introduced him to the church members, comforting him and inviting him to participate in the missionary lessons for his younger sister.
He explained, “[Fah doing all that] helped me to understand my role at the Church.” A month after meeting Panasuto, Phakdeerat said his younger sister was baptized, which he owed to Panasuto’s commitment and love shown to him and his family.
After serving a mission of his own, Phakdeerat came to BYUH and was reunited with Panasuto.
“She is amazing. She is still very humble and has a lot of love, pure love of Christ.”
Phakdeerat said if he did not meet Panasuto, his life would still have gone alright, but he would not have had the gospel in his life.
He said, “From meeting Fah, it kind of changed my way back to the right path.”
After graduation
Panasuto graduates in December 2023 and plans to move with her family to Utah a week later to do accountancy training at a Thai restaurant. Her husband graduated in Spring 2022 majoring in psychology.