great emails. mom i loved the pictures. the chickens look good. there's a lot of chickens running around here but they're all undernourished ha ha. the picture of dad and brett cracked me up. those two old men think they're so hip. ha ha. jaynanne looked too excited for her vacation. and you guys all looked pretty dead after the run. but i do have to say mom and abbie looked good. keep it up. thanks for the advice with the "drama". here they write the date different so it was 11/7. ha ha besides that i don't think malaysia would ever give anything out for free. but that's sweet that oskar worked the system and got three free slurpees. ah i do remember that scene from the great escape. a lot of elders have never seen that classic movie. what an awesome movie.
alright i've got a few things to report about. first is that rally you heard about. it was pretty big. i'm actually not in KL. i'm in a suburb about 30 min away called Puchong. the rally was in KL. it was for electoral reform. apparently the same party has been in power for 50+ years and it is because they are unfair. they throw in a ton of marked ballots and they don't give the minority parties any tv time and they don't announce when the election is until last minute. ha ha that sucks. so this group called bersih 2.0 (bersih means clean and 2.0 because this is the second rally) planned to have a huge peaceful march to the government buildings or something. well the gov told them to not do it in the streets but to do it in the national stadium. then last minute they said they were illegal so they couldn't have the stadium. this made everyone mad. we met with one of our investigators, who is a huge advocate of this, a few days before the rally. he said it was going to be huge. he predicted atleast 100,000 people. d-day was on saturday. so thursday friday and saturday they didn't let any commercial busses into KL from other parts of malaysia. on saturday they had huge road blocks everywhere. nobody was let into the city. there was barbed wire and police lines across the roads. there were protesters that got in a few days in advance. there was estimated to be about 50,000. they marched around i guess. they got hit with tear gas and water cannons. ha ha but they made a point. the last rally was in 2007 and it made a big difference in the 2008 election so we'll see what happens. a funny thing is that on sunday during priesthood a member came into the church late. ha his eye was all swollen and he told us that they hit him and he got tear gassed. ha ha you should have seen him. he was like a wounded soldier wandering into church. but pretty much everyone we talked to is in support of the rally. every race is kind of stepped on except for the malays (muslim). the government preaches 1 malaysia but they have completely unfair treatment. crazy. but i'm safe. the worst that happened to us is that we got caught in a huge traffic jam.
every friday we go and visit our recent convert amy. she teaches a bunch of kids "tuition" which is extra classes. it is the same kids every friday evening so we know a bunch of them pretty well. they beg me for magic tricks now everytime we go there. last friday there were two girls one 8 and one 10 waiting for their ride. i thought i would be good and teach them how to play go fish. it turns out they already knew how to play. so we played a little but then amy fed us. the little girls borrowed the cards and then started playing with another kid. i looked over from the dinner table and the little girls were playing a game called tee. it is like scum but you lay down poker hands. ha ha so i was trying to be nice and teach these kids go fish and it turns out the little girls could whip me in poker. the chinese are so smart.
on sunday we had quite a few investigators at church. but we were expecting more. some had to go to work because they couldn't work on saturday because of the rally. so that's a legit excuse i guess. we have a couple investigators that are really nice and really enjoy church but are just kind of "off". the branch is really nice to them though and listens to their crazy comments in class. sunday after church we had branch council meeting. the first and most heated point they talked about was food. after church it seems like everyone is eating. since church is so far away a lot of times members bring food to eat after church. i don't really know the procedures. apparently our investigators don't either. the members were complaining that our 'gators' were eating all of their food. ha ha i know exactly who it was. they said that they actually took food out of the members' bags. ha ha again i can imagine exactly who it was. anyways the members were ticked. i thought, freak, maybe the members can be nice and share their food. they said that is not how it works. ha ha i had to defend our investigators. i mean after church everyone is just eating. of course they'll think the food is free for all. i did. someone just has to explain it to them. food is a touchy subject here.
alright that is all for now. the work is going good here. we have a lot of investigators but none are really progressing so well. but there a few. transfers are coming up and i'll definitely be affected. there are so many. it seems like president is talking a lot about obedience lately. i think he wants to root out all apostasy when this new group comes in. he will maybe do away with the approved movie list. oh well. it was nice while it lasted. sorry this letter wasn't all too spiritual this week. maybe next week it will be....maybe. ha ha i love you guys. if you ever hear from spencer let me know. i think i'll send him a letter. hey if you are thinking about ever sending me a package i need a new journal soon. i would like one like the last one but i don't think i'll fill it all. maybe you can send me the next size smaller. i'll send you a picture next week so you can see what it looks like. alright sweet have a good week.
oh yeah later today we're going to an arsenal vs malaysia soccer game. i'll report next week
elder petersen
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