i'm 21 baby! sudah tua ku
well thanks for your awesome emails. dad you really crack me up. it was nice to see that happy birthday sign again. ya know i felt it, when i was here i could just sense that the sign was hung up. ha ha thanks. that is funny about brian. tell him happy birthday for me. oh sms is just text message. technically i think they are called sms's even in usa but for some reason they don't say text message here they just say sms. ha ha weirdos. yeah everyone calls them flats here. must be from the british. usually if i translate i just sit right next to them in sacrament meeting and kind of talk softly. there is enough crazy kids running around so my voice isn't noticeble but we do have a translation system that we just fixed. so next week i will just talk into a microphone that she can hear on a headset. i can't believe you guys got a car. ha ha i can't wait to actually get behind a wheel again. it's been a while. and i've been on the left side of the road. actually it might not be a good idea ha ha. let's see my plans when i get home? i kind of want to go to the single's ward. at least see first. we'll see if i can get thomas to go with me. i think it has potential to be fun. ha ha yeah i hope i can run 13 miles by may. we'll see. thanks for the email mom. yup your grammar was terrible. ha ha sweet though.
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| My BD cake made by Sis Josie, it was huge & so good! |
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| Elder Brodie, Flora, Peter Wong, Me |
there are two main highlights this week. first is flora's baptism!!!! it was great. she is so good. right before she went down into the font she just couldn't stop crying. ha ha makes me want to cry. the service was good.
our bml is a little bit irreverent which kind of ticks me off. but better than most malaysians. actually i got to tell you, dad would be pacing around the room scratching his head every day here in malaysia. let's just say i've learned a ton of patience. at the start of my mission i got angry so much at the ignorance and irreverence of the members. but now i'm just like whatev. ha ha i just sit back and watch the show. really i've chilled a lot but i'm still like dad in some ways. two of our investigators were able to come and they really really enjoyed it. they are a couple that, so we found, was never married but they have two kids. they are filipino and they are going to go back to the philipines next month to get married then after that get baptized. but during the service the dad said to his wife this is what our kids need. we've got to raise our kids in this church. boom. awesome. even though they are not going to get baptized immediately because of the marriage, they are solid. they get it. nice. also there were a lot of members at the baptism. flora is very friendly and well liked. she'll be a good strength to the branch, expecially if she can marry one of the members ha ha. some how the branch afforded to buy kfc for the branch social right after the baptism. ha ha so afterwards we had fried chicken. it was great.
the other highlights of the week center on one member family, johnny and his wife rivina. they are just incredible. they are pretty young and have one boy named vincent who is like 4. they were baptized about 4 years ago. well we just dropped by their house when brodie first got here and we asked them if they had any friends. they said kind of but not really. they didn't get very specific. so we told them we'd be back the next week. the next sunday we went by but they weren't home. their house is on the bottom floor of a flat. there was a bunch of kids playing around and they were like elder elder hi. what ha ha they were all non members but knew who we were. so they told us that johnny and rivina were at the next block over at the mom's house. so they took us over. it was kind of awkward but we just talked at the door. we apologized because we were going to be out of town the next day to sandakan when we were planning on meeting them. they were like oh darn ok.. ha ha but then the miracle occured. the previous week i noticed a really cool basket that they always carry to church. it is made of those plastic strips like the newspapers are wrapped in. i asked how i could get one. well while we were standing at that door rivina pointed across the way and said that a lady over there makes the baskets. she said do you want to go see now? of course. so the three of us headed over there and met jalina. we introduced ourselves but mostly just focused on the baskets. she was really nice and really talented. so i commissioned her to make me a big one. she said it would only take a few hours to make but we said we'd be back in the neighborhood next sunday so we'd come by then. after we found out they were christian we asked her if we could also meet the husband and share a short message about Jesus Christ. she agreed. so fast forward to this past sunday. we first swung by johnny's and grabbed the fam. then the five of us headed over to jalina's.
we didn't really know what to expect because we hadn't seen them in a week. and we were mostly coming on the basis of the basket. so we showed up. it was kind of awkward at the door. but we got in. we just tried to get some small talk going. we told them about us, about our families, and why we were in malaysia. also they told us about their family. the next miracle was that the dad was really nice. this can be a dealbreaker. so whew he was cool. then after we didn't have much more small talk to say we asked if we could share a short message. they are pretty religious and they said can no problem. so one of us said an opening prayer. after that things went great. we just just talked about the apostacy and joseph smith. we didn't teach a full on lesson. but we really bore our testimonies and promised them that this can help their families. i told the dad maklis that it has helped my family. that my dad is a good dad because of this gospel and that's he's nice to us and to my mom. he seemed to like that. he told us that this seems good and that this could be very good for his family. he and his wife committed to read the pamphlet and to pray about it. they actually seemed really committed. so wow just because i wanted a cool plastic basket we found a cool family of five. huge blessing.
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| Jalina makes these baskets |
it doesn't stop there. sister rivina is still wonder woman. she told us to come to her house the next day for family home evening because there were a bunch of neighborhood kids that wanted to learn with us. also can! so monday we went to the house. we had a good group of 8 kids that were all like 11. they were all cool but surprisingly well behaved. we didn't know what to teach a bunch of kids. we first played a fun game and got on their good side. then we taught the gospel of Jesus Christ which is faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost and endure to the end. we drew it out as a stair case to heaven and had them each draw it out on their own paper. they were good and smart at answering our questions. we committed them all to show the drawing to their moms and we also gave them a pass along card with a picture of Christ on it to show to their moms. i think they really will. we told them same time next week and to bring their parents to watch a dvd. also we got all of their names and ages and addresses and number of siblings written down so if nothing else we will go knock their house in a few weeks. sister rivina is just the bomb. she told us about a bunch of other gospel conversations she had with some neighbors. her answers are great. she is always looking for oppurtunities to share the gospel. i'm glad we went over and visited them that first week. i was talking with elder brodie about those kids. there's not a high chance that they'll all be baptized right now because who's to say their parents will listen to them. but they'll always remember the time when they were little and they met with the two white guys and how they felt. maybe in 20 years+ they will meet the missionaries and big things will happen. you just don't know. a good seed has definitely been planted.
you'd think that was all but it's not. for the third day in a row we met rivina again. she told us that her non member aunty needed a blessing. so us and her husband gave her a blessing and shared a lesson. she's pretty old and going back to the village so it won't really go anywhere but it shows that sister rivina and bro johnny really do like us and trust us. that is huge.
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| A Rotan bag I bought in Kuching, Sarawak |
elder petersen
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