So Sabah is dope.
I flew in on Wednesday
through Kuala Lumpur. Because my old suitcase was falling apart I picked up a
30 Sing (Sing: what missionaries call the Singaporean dollar) suitcase from a
market in Singapore. I now know why it was only 30 sing. On the way to the
airport the top handle exploded off. When I got it off the conveyor belt in Kota
Kinabalu the entire wheel and extendable handle was gone, completely ripped
off. That’s ok. The next time I use that suitcase will be when I am going home.
My bicycle hopefully
comes today. It’s alright because Kota Kinabalu has a dope bus system. You can
pretty much get anywhere for 1 ringgit. A lot of driver’s customize their
busses with large speakers and paint and stickers and the like. We have been
trading off bussing and biking with the other Kota Kinabalu 2 Elders.
Anyway so I am in Kota
Kinabalu 2. There are 2 branches in Kota Kinabalu. It has been open for a long
time and there are a lot of really strong members. Sabah is different from
Sarawak. There are a lot of foreign peoples here, a LOT of Filipinos and
Indonesians. Some are Muslim some are Christian. Some are legal some are not. Altogether
Sabah is 90% Islam. There
are also several tribes that are native to Sabah that are mostly Christian, the
Kadazans/Dusuns, the Rungus and the Sungai are several of them. The Muslims
that are native to Sabah are Melayu and also a tribe called Bajau.
Anyway Kota Kinabalu
is on the ocean, it’s basically just BEAUTIFUL. There are Kampungs everywhere,
some in the jungle others on lakes and rivers or on the ocean. Kota Kinabalu 2
is the northern half of Kota Kinabalu. We live in or rather on top of, the
biggest shopping mall in Borneo. There are hills surrounding most of Kota
Kinabalu, they are way pretty. If the day is clear you can see Mount Kinabalu
poking over the hills from our apartment.
Church was way good.
About 45 people came. It’s been way good to speak Malay again. They use a
different slang and vocabulary here, so I’ve been learning that.
Elder Yang, my
companion, is from San Francisco California. His family emigrated from Thailand
when he was 2 ish. They are Hmong. He is
way dope, he cuts hair, worked in a high end barber shop before, cut a lot of
famous people’s hair. He has been out a year, but his Malay is WAY good. He
speaks basically 8 languages, English, Malay, Hmong, Bugis (a Muslim tribe
here), Tatar (a tribe from Indonesia), Iban, Tagalog and Thai. So yeah, he’s a
boss. I think it would be cool to speak a bunch of languages, maybe I will make
a life goal.
The work here has
historically been slow but were pretty confident we can get it going. Right now
we have 2 investigators, Mothi and his sister Karen. They are Dusun. Mothi is
18 and Karen is 16. They would already be baptized but there parents won’t
allow it right now. Hopefully when mothi gets his results from school in March
his parents will allow him to be baptized.
We have been
contacting and exploring and right now. In one massive water Kampung we found
about 7 potential families we’ve talked to, 2 or 3 of which are way solid. We
also discovered a HUGE Kampung in the jungle that, on first look Sunday night,
appears to be almost all Christian! So hopefully we can go tomorrow or Wednesday
and start contacting there. So yeah.
We have been able to
meet with a lot of the key members and a few less active families. The branch
president is President Sebastian. He is way cool. We have also met with his
younger brother Adrian and his wife Alana.
Adrian came back from his mission in Utah when I was in Kuching. He came
to visit a friend but met Alana and he proposed 1 week later. That’s the
fastest I think I ever heard of people meeting and then getting engaged. We
also met with the Chua family, way strong. Also a bunch of others.
Today was way good,
mostly. So a member, David, his parents own this sort of resort/diving place
something such. I don’t know how to
explain it. Anyway, there are lot of islands off of Kota Kinabalu and so we
went and hung out on one of them, way dope. Anyway, there were these huge
fishes in the water by the dive platform. I wanted to take a picture of them
and I realized that my camera was waterproof and I had never tested it..... Anyway,
it took the pictures just fine. Later though I pulled it out to take a picture
and it wouldn’t turn on :0........ Aduh... So it’s now in a bowl of rice. I
will pull it out and maybe try again tomorrow, but it might be the end....
But yeah, other than
that everything’s been good.
Sincerely,
Elder Halpin
P.S. The computer is
being janky and won’t let me upload pictures....
No comments:
Post a Comment