January 26, 2014 – Busy in Samarahan - Week 2 in Kuching

This week was pretty good. So first off just sort of a rundown of the area.

Kota Samarahan is basically the equivalent of Cheney - lot of college students because of UNIMAS and UITM but also a lot of normal people. Similar size too I’d say as well. test

The branch meets in a shop lot chapel like the one in Matang. The Branch President, (president David) is pretty cool, he runs a car rental company. His brother Brother Jeffrey helps with missionary work a lot.

Elder Poppleton is from Utah, like I said before he’s been out 3 months. He is pretty funny.

The work here is going pretty good. We have 3 investigators right now.

Andrew and his sister Rini are both about 23-25. They live with the rest of their family which is a one minute walk from our door - makes visiting them really easy. We have met them about 4 times. Andrew is making really good progress!!!!!!!! He has almost completed 1st Nephi AND is praying regularly. Next lesson we are going over the Word of Wisdom. We already know that he smokes. He smokes one after every lesson so it’ll be pretty interesting. This is the 2nd time I have taught the Word of Wisdom.

Charlie is our other investigator. He is an old man that lives in a house in the middle of a big field in the middle of the jungle. He is pretty slow to learn but enjoys it. He is also learning from the Jehovah Witness’ right now so we will see how that goes... He is good though and he should be coming to church next week.

We also are teaching a couple recent converts, Brother Kelvin and Sister Karen and Brother Niga. Both were baptized last year and both are doing well.

We have a lot of less active members we are working with too. The Beliang family is one such. There are about 7 of them plus Ma and Pa. Every time you go over you meet different ones. One of Brother Beliang’s sons Raymond (he’s 20) is the only active one in the family. Yesterday when we were in Brother Jeff’s car with him, he informed us that he was going to start his mission paperwork!!!! Super excited for him!!! Anyway, the whole family is starting to make progress. Brother Beliang came to church yesterday for ALL 3 HOURS for the first time in years!!!!!! There have been a lot of things lining up to bring them back, and it’s really cool to see the Lord’s hand in it.

Some pictures I think:

President David and Brother Jeff

(Brother Jeff is Driving).

Elder Poppleton, Raymond and Dylan,

the Branch President’s son.

I’m sitting in the only corner you don’t see.

Sorry for the lack of quality pictures I’ll work on getting some this week.

Love,

Elder Halpin

Love you guys so much!