October 20, 2013 – Working with Less Active Families - Week 18 in Kuching

This week was good. Met with a lot of less active families and members. Mostly same ole same ole except for a few things.

On Friday we had New Missionary Training (NMT).  Basically all the trainers and trainees in east Malaysia came to Kuching  where President and Sister Mains provided training.  Then the APs also provided training. It was good, powered me up.

We also had a really good meeting with Brother Dunggat and Sister Dina. They are the ones Elder Berger and I went with to the Palm Oil Ladang. Basically you have to gain a members trust before they will give you referrals. They also have to like you. So basically, when we meet members and teach them we take it just as seriously as we would if it was an investigator. We also try to keep a good conversation going and have fun with them when we’re not teaching. Anyway, it was pretty interesting explaining how people can still go outside if there is snow, how houses don’t collapse and also about skiing. But yeah, fun day.

Other than that this week was pretty normal.

Bro Jini: We were teaching him to read and it was going well however he had to move back to Kampung. You see that is a huge problem here. A lot of people move here to work and then move back. However his testimony is super strong. The last Sunday before he left he bore his testimony about the gospel and I’m positive that when he comes back he will come to Church again.

But yeah, most of the population of Sarawak lives in the interior. They all live in Kampungs, basically longhouses all of 1-5ish families (extended huge families). They mostly either work in the family rice paddy or on the local palm oil plantation. Somtimes the Kampungs will be close to the road and a village will spring up, like Serian or Sri Aman or a larger Kampung like those.

Bro Jitun: He has been hard to get a hold of but he wants to learn and we are going to start teaching him this week.

We also have a new plan for all the less actives we have been working with. We will start teaching them the lessons like they are investigators. The goal is to basically get them converted to the lord and to truly understand the doctrine of repentance. In a lot of cases people don’t understand why they need to keep taking the sacrament and they were never truly converted. But yeah, it will also give us both (Elder Ferguson and I) a chance to teach the lessons since investigators are hard to find here.

The package. So yeah, more chocolate, more bicycle tire patches, plus whatever I said last week.

Also email me some pictures. The people here love it when you show them pictures of your family, extended family and where you live.  Activities you liked to do, chores and work you did, etc. Basically, pictures that showed my life before my mission. But yeah, email them to me and I can get them printed here for super cheap.

Hey, could you send me some recipes? Namely Delizza.  We have a microwave, double burner propane stove and a toaster oven similar to ours.

Pictures below. 

Love you all, Elder Halpin

Cyrill, our Branch President's son,

 coming with us along with and one of our Zone Leaders

 

Kampung Kudei