August 13, 2013 – "Stage Fright" Teaching In Malay - Week 8 in Kuching

So this week was pretty sick (literally).

First off, I taught Sunday school for the first time. So I stand up to teach and proceed to forget all my Malay. I struggled on, and was about halfway done expounding the Articles of Faith when suddenly I was informed I was out of time, I was told I had an hour and I was perfectly on track for that, what I didn’t realize was that sacrament let out 25 minutes late, ugh... Next week I will finish.

Anyway, since I only have 5 weeks of training left and I’m likely to be training in the next few months, (the mission will be receiving 75ish new missionaries by the end of November) we have stepped up the pace of things a lot. I carry the phone all the time now and I also lead on the bikes to all of our destinations.

Anyway, last week, so we finish emailing and ride back to Matang, we had to stop a ton of times because Elder Berger was sick. He was sick for like 3 days. He basically slept or moaned on the couch the whole time – poor guy.

After that, on Saturday, we went out but our appointments fell through. So we went to someone’s birthday and talked to a ton of members. Also got stuffed on Iban food.

Coolest:

Sunday after church we thought we had an appointment with one of our members and one of her friends who came to church with her but she didn't show, go figure, anyway we went and taught Bro Jini, one of our recent converts. He lives in Siol Kandis. He can’t read (were starting to teach him) and has no electricity (we teach by oil lamp). He works a dozen hours every day and then works 24 hours on Saturday so he can come to church on Sunday. He’s super awesome and we've been teaching him the recent convert lessons which are basically the lessons all over again but in great depth and also lesson 5 which is about the temple and other stuff like that. He’s already got all his family names ready for the temple (Manila or Hong Kong) and is also is preparing to receive the Melchizedek priesthood. Anyway he’s one of the coolest members in Matang.

For all the stuff that happened in the last 2 days I will wait to share until next week because I don’t have a way to share photos for that.

Micaela, that’s really cool.

Dad, keep working hard!

Reid, how did your mini mission go?

So anyway, that box. Send like 2 or 3 maple extract bottles. The maple syrup here is gross and expensive. I’ll make a final list of stuff i would like and send it next week.

Elder Halpin

Brother Jini wearing a Christmas hat.