Sunday, September 29, 2013

July 21, 2013 – Whumdinger of a week - Week 5 in Kuching

So this week has been the best yet.

I got my bike so we don’t have to use the piece of junk one anymore... That being said I forgot to take a picture before we ripped off the rear tire… I’ll probably have to stage a picture now.

We taught a bunch of lessons to less actives this week and 1 actually came to church yesterday!!!

We also got 3-4 new investigators!

3 were from a referral. Adrary, a 20 something year old single guy, his mom Bali and his friend Ephul? We’re not actually sure of his name. Anyway we taught them yesterday, and have a return appointment. At first it was going well and Adrary was really interested, his mother less so. Then his friend finally showed up (he was late and we had a different appointment to get to). Apparently his friend had been taught before about a year ago but got hung up on the whole "the bible says there will be no more prophets after Jesus, and no more scripture either" before he showed, Adrary was answering questions and providing input and it was great. After ephul showed up though he just deferred all his questions to him. So our next lesson will focus on getting him over that.

The other almost investigator (I say almost because she won’t technically be an investigator until tomorrows lesson with her) is the daughter in law of the less active who came to church. She said that she wanted to learn so we will start teaching tomorrow.

Next thing that happened. So we’re at this mainly Malay kompung looking for Christians. No luck with the few we found and there was only one walkway left. So we start going and Elder Berger was a ways ahead of me, he got to the door of the first house and someone was in it so he started talking before I got there. I was about 10 meters behind him and then suddenly I heard this guy yell "hey buddy leave, I don’t want you here!" So I’m standing here looking at this guy stride towards us, the BIGGEST Malaysian I’ve seen yet (bigger than me). So I say ok, and he's like "leave now, I hate you" at that point I’m thinking apa hal?! that is to say "what thing"? Anyway he comes up to us and is like "i hate you people, get out of this kompung now", so we left.

The building houses service fell through, but we ended up going to a members house and cleaning up her yard, (huge mess of vegetation and metal to be sold).

But ya so it was fun. But overall best week so far. It was mostly due to superior planning, and time management. Lesson learned.

I learned something else this week. Apparently times have changed in the Singapore mission. When we were at the MTC our teachers told us that for one year the entire mission had about 1000 baptisms- 80 missionaries. So we all came out expecting investigators to fall into our laps because only about 1 in 14 investigators actually joins. This was 2 years ago. It is not like that anymore though. Basically in Malaysia people don’t move. So once all the areas have been explored and tracted they’ve been explored and tracted. Apparently if I had been in the exact same place i am now we could probably have 10-20 baptisms before we were transferred out (3 months). It kind of got me down. But then, when I was reading Jeremiah I read 16:16. It says: "Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.". The fishers have come and pulled in all they could with their nets. Now, we are the hunters and must hunt them out of the holes in the rocks. So ya that was very inspiring for me. 

Rosemitha: not sure what the best thing I’ve eaten here is, that being said I’ve found something that dethrones durian as the worst. Corn drink. Yes corn drink. I’ve been told that it can actually sometimes be good. This was the bad type I suppose. Imagine this, you’re in a kompung house and in every house you go in they serve you some sort of drink and some sort of crackers or fruit. You just get there after an hour bike ride and sweat is pouring out of you. It’s the middle of the day and is super-hot. You sit in this house that is hotter than the outside and your dying. They bring out these cake things and this pitcher. You start imagining cold orange or rose juice. The next thing you know, the juice is warm and it tastes like I don’t even know what. You have to choke it down because they gave it to you and then drink however much more they pour for you (in this case 3 cups). Worst thing ever. All i could think was the line from the Madagascar movie "smile and wave boys, just smile and wave"

Katherine: that sounds like a lot of fun you had at primary. In Sunday school we learned about the Pearl of Great Price and my companion could not believe where it came from. I won’t be home for quite a while still, but I’ll send you some pictures and a letter soon.

Dad: keep up the work, I love you, it sounds like your making progress and I’m praying for you every day. ya we haven’t given up on Simi yet, we will try to call her again this week.

Love you all

Elder Halpin

Pictures from this week:

 

A mosque with a sunset and mountain.
Someday I want to come back to
Malaysia and get this picture with a temple.
 


 2 Pictures of Kompung Kudei.


Piece of junk proton car we found while tracting

 
 

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