So this week was ok.
Mom: Are the chickens alive?
Elder Halpin: The
chickens are all alive. You can take them home and let them free if you want.
Mom: What did the
Sisters do with the Jellyfish?
Elder Halpin: They
ate the jellyfish, unless they sold it to someone else to eat. I’ve had it,
they make a soup, it’s pretty flavorless, kind of like eating solid water.
Mom: The inside of
the longhouse is mostly empty except for some mats…and there are doors on the
other wall. Is that long room an inside
common area/porch and are there living areas through the doors??? I had no idea a long house was so very long. Are all the people living there related?
Elder Halpin: The
longhouse. So basically the hall is the common area or lounge if you will. The
doors on the left go into people’s individual houses and the doors on the right
go outside to a walkway and steps. A lot of the people are related but not all.
Back in olden days when someone got married they would usually build a room
onto the end of the husband’s longhouse.
So first off Sigai
went to Kapit on Wednesday. But he took pamphlets and his Book of Mormon. We
have no way to contact him until he comes back, so we just have to hope
everything goes well.
The sisters all are
doing good, all praying and such. Only Ida came to church but the other 2 were
sick. We went over the Word of Wisdom with them yesterday, no problems,
occasional buah pinang but they promised to not chew it anymore. It is Beetle
Nut, a thing they chew here sometimes that is really red. It makes them look
like their mouth is bleeding, and gives you a buzz/small high. Also, because
they are making such good progress and because they wanted it they have moved
their baptism date from the 15th of November to the 11th of October.
The winds of
change....
At the beginning of
last transfer I felt like I needed to work on my faith and also that I needed
to be more bold, both when teaching and finding. I have been working on that and
I felt because of that I have improved a lot.
So basically there
is this thing called MLC, it stands for Mission Leadership Council (or The Jedi
Council as it is popularly known). Basically all the zone leaders from the
whole mission go to Singapore Once a month for this meeting. At this particular
one last week Elder Allen (the head of the Missionary department for the last
20 years) from church headquarters came. Basically he strongly told everyone
that as a mission we need to make some improvements in our teaching skills and
such, not exactly sure, wasn’t there. Anyway he gave a whole list of changes in
the way we will do things from now on, not sure what’s on the list, tomorrow,
at zone meeting, we will find out. The zone leaders hinted the it was very
major???? We will see.
One thing he did do
though was talk about faith. Before he came here he was in England. He said
that one of the Elders there asked why they weren’t baptizing 1000's like Wilford
Woodruff did. He answered that it was because they lacked faith and desire. He
then promised everyone there, in the name of Jesus Christ, that they could all
find somebody, maybe a former investigator maybe a part member family maybe
someone new, that would have the desire and be ready to be baptized by the next
week. Apparently it worked because there was a heap of baptisms there in the
next few weeks after that. So although he didn’t make that promise to our
mission in particular I took it upon myself to find that person. After exhaustively
looking through our area book and thinking about all of our potentials and part
member families we found a bunch to push for, and will be working on that this
week, tell you how it goes next week. One in particular was an old investigator
named Gilbert who was taught around the end of 2013. He is a 15 year old Iban
kid, I met him once at his door. Basically he wanted and was ready to be baptized
but then his mother decided he couldn’t be baptized until the 27th of December... Anyway, as time went on he lost his desire
and stopped coming to church and wouldn’t meet with the Elders. Anyway as I
looked at his teaching record I felt that we should try him again. That night
in my prayers I prayed that he would have the desire to come to church again. This
was Saturday night.
The next day he came
to church and met with us afterwards. We asked why he came and he said that he
just woke up that morning and felt like he should come to church. He is too
busy to meet during the week but will meet us again after church next week. Miracle!
Anyway, love you
guys. Good luck with the fleas...
Elder Halpin
Pictures:
Last week, the photographer was a 9 year old child,
so you can’t tell,
but I’m about 10 feet off the ground in jungle trees that are running over themselves like in Tarzan.
Each block in the flats has its own character and things unique to it.
Block F for instance, has a swamp at one end which it shares with Block E,
Block D has a badminton court in the courtyard,
Block C is the ghetto and most of it is empty,
the Block J courtyard is always full of mottos,
Block K is the party block, almost every single time I go there somebody is blasting rave/techno music across the whole block.
Block L likes karaoke more than most and most lessons are disturbed by this,
Block A is the Muslim block.
Anyway this is part of the Block F/E swamp.
A beaded tie that Sister Kat made.
Ibans are kind of famous for all the bead work they do.
I bought this one with some of my birthday money.
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