Apa Khabar

Apa khabar!  7-7-2010

oh man i love your letters.  so entertaining. so interesting. so uplifiting.  it seems so strange how time is flying by.  when i left to the mtc it was the beginning of march and school was in full swing. now all of a sudden it is july and the summer is half way over and flying by.  it sounds like you are very very busy. thats good.  

ha ha.  so daddio.  when it comes to email i have a new idea.  I asked the zone leaders about this and they said it was fine.  our mission rules is that you can only write emails once a week.  but if you get letters in the mail you can read them anytime.  this should be the same with email.  you can read them anytime.  so the weilands have a mac at their home and they have the internet.  my plan is to read your email on sunday or monday because they usually feed us then.  then by wednesday i can write something.  i asked sister weiland and she said she would even print it for me.  so this means you would have to send an email by saturday evening around 5 oclock your time.  i don't know if you could do that but if you could that would be good.  but this will only work as long as i have the weilands so only as long as i'm in sandakan.

This week was truly awesome.  we reached every key indicator but one.  actually we blew most of our goals out of the water.  it all started with that family of eight i told you about.  they are so good.  the mother and father and one kid are illiterate but they are so good that they read the book of mormon together as a family.  last week on friday i believe, we committed them all to baptism.  they only hesitated for a second to talk it over and then they all agreed.  so now we have 11 people on date.  i expect them to make it all the way.  the only problem is that every one else we have put on date before gets many problems or falls away from us before they can make it to the waters of baptism.  hopefully they are different. 

now the fourth of july.  very interesting.  ha ha obviously no body celebrates it or aknowledges it here.  but we did.  it was fast sunday so after church we went and had "hot dogs" and "potato salad" and "jello" and "brownies".  i put those all in quotes because basically they were malaysian style ha ha so it wasn't exactly an american meal but it was close.  like they don't have buns or good jello or good ketchup.  but we got by.  it was fun. 

church was really really good.  we had 77 people come!!  Jason has been home from his mission for two years and he said this is the best he has seen the branch in that time.  the chapel was packed.  it was busting at the seams.  and 9 of those people were investigators.  testimony meeting was really good.  we have been told that the missionaries should bear their testimonies every month so i got up.  my malay is getting better.  i talked about how before i did not even know where sandakan was but now that i have lived here for two months i have come to love it.  i said that sometimes i miss my family but its ok because the people here are now my family.  the members here really are like family.  they are so good to us.  there were several other people who got up.  all in all it was a really good meeting and our investigators all really enjoyed it.

so this week elder carter keeps saying that he thinks he will be transferred soon.  there is really no way to tell but he's sure of it.  ha ha if this is the case then i will have to teach a new elder all about this city.  i think i could do it but it is a big task.  it is more likely that i will leave because i'm a trainee but he has already been here for 6 months.  only time will tell.  we'll probably know the first week of august because we have to make a visa run then.  it is interesting.

well thats about all i've got this week.  it was an outstanding week. ha hopefully i'll remember all of my stories for when i get home because i don't have enough time to tell you everything that happens here.  I'm really starting to love this place.  the people are awesome.  the language is fun.  its fun to be the tall white guy amidst so many short asians.  the food here is awesome. pretty much right now things are going really good. i love you!

Elder Petersen