Apa khabar?
This week was pretty
good.
Mom, maybe I shouldn’t
email, I guess you can catch virus' through the internet...
The fires are mostly
on purpose but then get out of control, it’s very common. Borneo gets drier the
further north east you go, towards the Philippines. Thus Kuching and Sibu are
the rainiest cities in Malaysian Borneo and all of Sabah is much drier. It’s still
a rain-forest I guess but it has only really rained once since I’ve been here. It’s
also the dry season. The grass is actually drying out and dying like it does in
America. It’s really sad what’s happened to Borneo in the last 40-50 years. In
Sarawak, for example, 90% of the original growth forest has been logged.
We were finally able
to meet with Justiff’s family again! This time Gabriel, the father sat in on
the lesson also, so that was way good. They have started to pray and read. We
are really trying to get them to church.
Cherilyn and Tan are
doing good. The problem is that they really don't have testimonies, they’re
basically just going to church because it’s fun. We met with them on Thursday
or something and originally planned to teach priesthood and auxiliaries but as
we asked some questions and started figuring things out we changed the lesson
and decided to focus on why and how we should gain a testimony. The lesson went
alright, they are hopefully working on praying and reading consistently now. They
had a school field trip so couldn't come to church this week.
Mothis’ family
decided to go to Kampung on Friday until this week so we couldn't meet him and
he couldn't come to church.
We were able to meet
with Sally this week. She is a sort of a referral contact. Her family lives in
Matang, next door to the Taman Sri Perkasa house, the one the other Elders
lived in. Elder Yang lived in that house and had talked to her before but not
about the church at the time. Kelvin Alexious knew her sort of and told us that
she was going to school at UMS next door to us. So we got her number and set up
an anointment. She is 27, WAY smart, working on her Masters degree in city
planning and something else. Speaks very good English. We were talking about
religion and she was saying that she had tried going to various churches around
Kota Kinabalu but didn’t like them because the pastors didn’t teach anything
they just praised themselves. So we continued talking and she was saying that
she thought a lot of churches just said what the people wanted to hear not what
Christ taught. She was going to come to church but then slept in, so next week.
On Monday evening we
visited Brother Peredick. Elder Yang gave him a haircut and then he told us to
follow him. So we followed him through the sketchy part of Kota Kinabalu to
what turned out to be his cousin’s house. His name is Hipotomus, “Heap” for
short. Brother Peredick immediately starts off by talking about how the Book of
Mormon teaches us that Jesus was born on 6 April not Christmas. I'm just
thinking, actually it doesn't and this isn't relevant at all. So we seized the
conversation and started asking questions to try and ascertain his religious
background, knowledge, etc. Suddenly Brother P (Peredick) goes off on a tangent
about the temple... So after we recover from that we start teaching the
restoration in brief. As we get to the part about praying to know for yourself I
started to sense another tangent coming so I asked Brother P if he had ever
prayed and gotten an answer. He responds "yes, but I think fasting is
better...” so then came a fasting tangent.
Anyway Heap said we could come back. Next time we meet Brother Peredick
we will teach him how to teach, he has a lot of missionary spirit, we found out
later that earlier in the day he had taken the sisters to a different friend of
his. So we've just got to coach him up a bit and it should be way good. But yeah,
this story illustrates why coordination with members before a lesson is
important.
We went on splits
this week to show the other Elders more of the area and also to explore. I took
Elder Ferguson to Inanama and Elder Yang took Elder Coloma to Kingfisher. We
started off by getting into a van that went somewhere I had never been before. It
went up a valley in the mountains past Dambai where Justiff lives and continued
up until the end. At the end there was this way beautiful series of waterfalls
and pools. A bunch of kids were there jumping off the cliffs into the pools. We
stopped and took a few pictures then headed back down. At Inanam we found a
massive open air market. It was huge but it was low. I had to duck to go
through the whole thing, it was probably 5 feet tall on average. They had
everything from chickens wrapped in newspaper to fruit and vegetables to
clothes to flashlights. Anyway as we are walking we come up on this old guy
sitting on the ground with a board in front of him. On the board was three coke
bottle caps. I’m thinking "ok well this is interesting I’ve never seen
this in real life". As we are standing a man comes up and excitedly puts
down a 50 and the man puts a watermelon seed under one of the caps and mixes
them up. The man easily picked the one with the seed and the old guy let out a
half hearted moan and gave the other guy his 50 plus another. I’m thinking
"well that's interesting, these guys suck at acting, this is one of those
classic youth takes his inheritance to the city to make his fortune and loses
it all to hustlers scam." Suddenly two other guys come up and drop 100. The
same thing happens as before, the betters howling in excitement, the man with
the cups not nearly as disappointed as he should be. I turned and we begin to
walk away. Just then Ferguson grabs my shoulder and says in a very excited
voice "we could make a fortune, we should go do it!” I then proceeded to explain the situation to
him, he was utterly shocked, he had been completely taken in. I laughed at him
the rest of the day. Not sure what the gig was, if the guy was going drop the
seed out by slight of hand or if they were going to try and rob us once our
money was out, there was about 6 of them by the time we left. So yeah, just
interesting experience.
Love you guys. My
life is way bitter sweet right now. I just about cry when I think about leaving
Malaysia and all of the people here and not being a missionary anymore. On the
other hand coming home will be nice. So mostly I try not to think about it very
much.
Sincerely,
Elder Halpin
The uppermost waterfall and pool.
The bay at sunset.
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