salem melikom dan satu malaysia! (greetings and one malaysia, thats what they say on the radio all the time)
This week was just about awesome!!! actually, i can't think of anything that happened. ha i forgot to write down ideas for stuff to write you. sorry this letter is late. we are sitting in the big KL right now. we flew into KL on monday and have been having a week long training. its a continuation of the training in singapore in august. it is only the west malaysia and sabah and singapore missionaries. its been really good. its fun to see everybody. ha ha needless to say, we've been having some really good times. i'm learning a ton. this email will be kind of short because we are just stopping for a second. we do not get a p-day here but we do get to go out in the evenings.
a few things first, whats the slack's address, and i'm sending a letter to our house but its for james i just don't know his address. oh i got your package ha ha there was a ton of chips. thank you, they are very good. i read that article about truth will prevail. it was good. i never told you but we made a t-shirt. maybe next week i'll take a picture and send it to you. it has a cool sandakan branch logo thing on the back and the front says truth will prevail in malay
so this weekend was general conference. dang it was so good. i was talking with the wielands the other day and i asked them if its always been this good and i just never knew or if this was like a really good session. ha ha they said no its always like this. anyways i'm glad i got to sit down and watch all five sessions. i love conference. i really felt the spirit strong during a few of those talks. the church is so true. so here's how it all went down. in the past they've sent 10 disks to us, the five sessions in english and the five sessions in indo. this time they only sent 5 disks. each disk had like 10 languages like mandarin, urdu, english, tamil, tagalog, and for the first time malay. so we wanted to show english upstairs in the church and malay downstairs like in the past. but there was only one disk for each session. so we played it in order in malay downstairs and the english out of order upstairs. i don't know if you understand all that. for the priesthood session we had people that didn't know enlish so we only could play it in malay. so i watched 2 hours of priesthood session in malay. i was really surprised at how much i understood, i understood the bulk of every talk. it was good but not the same as english. its hard to get way into it without the inflection of those apostles. instead it was a monotone return missionary. oh well still way good. on sunday we played it starting at 10 am. we had 14 investigators come and watch it, and more members than in a long time. some of our investigators told us that they really liked it. one man even told us several different talks and what he liked about each one. its amazing. i mean that was the words of inspired men. even through the monotone translation people can still recognize the spirit and truthfullness of the message. it was so awesome. i love conference. i didn't watch it at the same time as a majority of the world, but i still felt that unity, that this church is bigger than sandakan, bigger than malaysia. i hope the people of sandakan also realized that. after watching general conference, i know that the lord has called these inspired men to lead his church. like you said, they are prophets of god and so there will be opposition to their messages. it just strengthens it all the more. President Monson is so good. i don't remember all the talks, i'm going to watch them all again, but the speakers that i remember being good were monson eyring uchtdorf holland bednar perry gong and many others. there were no baptisms this week but don't worry, more are on the way. i have a feeling i will be transferred soon. i've been in sandakan a while now and it would be nice to move but to tell you the truth no where else seems better. me and elder garrett are hitting a solid stride. we're doing good and having success and having a lot of fun. i want to see these investigators get baptized before i get transferred. rock on sandakan.
i have one quick experience. i don't know if i have time to do it justice. last week we were teaching Jessica's family. they live out in a wooden shack on a water kampung which is basically a huge community of houses on stilts above a filthy ocean. her house is very small and very run down. she has six awesome little kids and a buddhist husband who is slowly coming around. we were talking with them about why they weren't coming to church. they said they don't have any money for the bus fare. that is a pretty solid excuse. we were trying to talk with them about saving a little at a time throughout the week. we read this scripture in the book of mosiah. it promises that if we obey all the commandments we will be prosperous. we told them that if they kept the commandments then they would have money to go to church. looking back later i realized how bold that was. whoever thought that i would be in malaysia sitting on the floor of a wooden house over the garbage filled ocean teaching a large poor family that if they keep the commandments they will not only get through the week, but they will actually become prosperous. 
it was one of those wow kind of moments. this is why i'm here. this gospel changes lives and could be the only chance these people have. i felt very humbled. we're so blessed. i'm thankful for the oppurtunity to teach these kind of families the everlasting gospel.
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| This is the kampung - some places there is water, but most places is a muddy swamp. Multiple families live in each "shack", with no running water, electricity, or sewage lines -- so you can see what fills up around the houses...
things sound great at home. GO UTES!!!!! its unfourtunate that byu won. were they bragging this time. oh i was talking with elder parrish for a while. he's really cool. he is signed to play football at utah state and he was really glad that utah state won last week. oh so how'd my video work, i never heard. it was short but i could send many! ha ha we'll see. i can't think of anything i want for christmas. anything i need really i can buy. there are pretty modern cities over here. whatever can. all can. also can. well, things are going great here. don't fret. i'll be home before you know it. the church is true. Kebenaran akan mengatasi!
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elder petersen
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