Brown & Murky Miracles

astaga lah bah

     wow i love you guys.  your letters really crack me up.  i've been keeping the elders here up to date on my school options and concerns so i read them dad's email.  ha ha they got a crack out of it.  thanks for all the advice.  mollie!! that's my girl getting the Hobbit question right.  it's a bummer you lost.  oh well.  are you in 7th grade?  there's always next year. _she's in 8th :)_    HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!! 24 years eh? that's a long time.  congratulations. basically the missionaries run the show here in east malaysia.  kk isn't so much like that but in most other branches the leadership is so new and they totally lean on the elders for help which is understandable.  

Anime Convention at the mall :)

despite your law of sibling game contention, i still miss playing games with you guys.  sometimes at the end of the day if we have extra time we squeeze in a quick game.  especially if the next day is pday.  last night we got a good quick game of Ucher in.  it is a card game played with five cards each.  you sit across from your teammate and you have to take tricks together but you don't know their cards.  well we were two points from winning and it was almost time for bed.  it was a great finish.  those guys took two tricks and we took two tricks.  if we won the last trick then we got two points and won the game.  after elder bradley led out i knew i had the winning card.  laycock and i both threw our cards down at the same time.  he also had a potential winning card.  we won the game.  we started to cheer and rub it in and give two handed high fives.  ha ha ha it was fun.  no contention really. 

     

welllll well well this week was awesome!  seriously good week.  actually there's basically just one main highlight that i want to report on.  Lawrence was baptized!!!  it was sweet.  it wasn't pretty but it happened.  alright here's the story.  basically lawrence is unpredictably predictable.  he doesn't have a good handphone so it is hard to stay in touch with him.  on saturday the baptism was scheduled to start at 5:00 sharp.  he told us he would be early to get ready and everything.  we were like ok perfect.  we got there around 3:20 to fill the font which takes about 1 hour++.  so we got it started.  at 3:30ish lawrence walked in.  haha plenty early.  well at least we knew for sure he would be there.  i was chosen to baptize him so we knew the two important players were there, it would for sure happen.  well then tragedy struck.  at about  4:00 some kids at the church ran up to us and told us that the water was dirty.  we were a little surprised so we checked it out and sure enough it was kind of yellow.  i thought well that's not too abnormal for malaysia so we let it keep going to see if it would get better.  it only got worse.  the water just started to get brown and really murky.  the thing is that they used the font just last week and it was fine.  so we stopped the water.  we weren't sure if the water was dirty or if the font was dirty.  the next problem was that we didn't have the key to drain the font.  so we couldn't even drain it to clean it and put in clean water.  we were in a predicament.  the members told us to either do it at the Larson's condo pool or at the ocean.  we thought the pool would be a better option and not require permission from president clark.  we called the larson's and they said the pool was not at all private so they recommended the ocean.  we told lawrence this and he was like kind of scared at the thought of going to the ocean.  ha ha.  well, in the end miraculously we found the keys to drain the font in the clerk's office.  we realized that it was in fact the water that was dirty not the font.  so we would still have a problem of filling it back up with dirty water.  the district president was there and he went out to the big filter outside the building and was checking it out.  he switched it to backwash and let the water run backwards through the filter for a while.  he said that it was long overdue to do that.  we let it run until it finally ran clean.  by now it was about 5:05 or so.  everyone that was coming was there.  we ran inside and rinsed the residue dirty water out of the font and started filling it again.  but it would take at least an hour to get to a reasonable height.  i switched to my white clothes and we took pictures and then sang a lot of songs to wait the font out.  the district president was kind of impatient and so we just got started anyways.  by now it was about 5:30 or so.  well it all went pretty well.  

Lawrence

when it came time for the baptism the two of us went down into the water and it only came to right below his knee and to my shin.  hmmm.  pretty low.  so i had him sit down and i kneeled down to do it.  well it went fine and was still a good experience.  we changed clothes and finished the program.  no harm no foul i guess.  in the end we actually realized how all of these things worked out for the better.  a young man in the branch that is about to go on his mission to texas really wanted to bring his friend to the baptism.  he knew he would be late.  because we started so late it turned out that he came just on time.  she was able to see the whole service and sing hymns with us.  we met her afterwards and she is really really nice.  the other elders were planning on meeting an investigator at the baptism but he was late.  because we started so late he was able to catch some of the service.  he was able to meet with the elders after and they had a great lesson where they talked about baptism and put him on date.  now he has already come to church two times.  so what started out as a bad thing that delayed our baptism actually turned out to be really really good.  who would have known that.  truly miraculous.  we just have to remember 2 nefi 2:24.

     that was a long story i know but it was cool.  this week we are planning on two more baptisms.  i'll report next week.  elder laycock and I are working really hard.  we've had some rough couple of days but yesterday we finally got some payoff.  it started with awesome taco salads from the larson's after district meeting.  then we went contacting and found a really really nice family.  i was about to share about the restoration but laycock said no share about the plan of salvation. so we did.  and they really liked it.  they have like 13 people that live in the one house but it is mostly kids.  awesome.  also we were able to visit elly and co. he is the one on date for saturday.  also on the buses we talked to more christians than usual and had a lot of good discussions.  we ended off the night at the church talking with our branch presidency about a mission plan and about how we can help them out and then i did a baptism interview for the other elder's investigator.  he was awesome.  it is a privilege to meet with people that are about to get baptized.  they seem to open up the the interviewer.  it's cool.  so yesterday was awesome.  i wish we had a lot more days like that.

Here's the actual Location of Zion.  Who knew?  It's in KK

   

 well the church is true.  i love you guys so much.  i'm definitely going to skype you guys. ok? i'm planning on monday the 26th around 9 am.  it will be christmas night at 7 pm there.  is that ok?  i'll probably just have to make a new acount and add you again.  alright you guys are awesome. 

Stanley, 14 Way funny, cool kid, Branch Pres - son

 i talked with president about my release date.  the we were talking to the aps last night and they said pres might send me an email today talking about it but he didn't.  so i still don't know.  frankly i don't care.  i would prefer not february.  anyways don't worry about it.  i get there when i get there.  say hi to grandma and grandpa.  i'm glad you got that email from our bml.  i hope i get the package soon.  ha ha thanks so much.  i love you.

elder petersen