April 19, 2015 – Going to Miss the People I’ve Come to Love… - Week 12 in Sabah

So last email.

This week was good. Not a lot to report though.

Celynne’s not baptized yet, just on date.

We have an appointment with Sally later, should be good.

Cherilyn and Tan are doing well too.

Mothi is also doing well. We met on Saturday, taught a lesson and then went to his older brother’s birthday party, way fun.

I’m giving my bike to Adrian.

My last day of church was good, gave a talk, kind of did a preview of my returning talk. I gave at least 3 prayers in 2 classes, haha. Took a lot of pictures with members. Ate my last kampung food.

Anyway, it has been interesting, I think I always thought the end would feel different from the beginning, the last week would feel different then a middle one. Nope. It, for the most part, felt like any other week. Just kept on working like normal, just another week.

I’m in shock, I can’t really explain what I’m feeling. Indescribably sad to be leaving all the people I’ve come to love.

You gotta love the journey, not just the destination.

Love you guys, see you in a few days.

Elder Halpin,

Over n, out.

Andryano, Faralia, Me.

Elder Yang and I

April 12, 2015 – Conference… - Week 11 in Sabah

The last week of my mission.

Going hard!

This past week was good.

So yeah, we will all fly together to Seattle, and then will go our separate ways. I guess I never told you but Elder Paul from our group in the MTC went home for medical about a year out, he got a way nasty eye infection and was going to need surgery and such. So just 10 of us. Also a bunch of Sisters from another group, I know a couple of them, I guess one of them is from the Spokane East Stake or something.

Eeeesh, hip replacement just doesn’t sound fun. I hope my knees and back hold out.

General Conference was good, there were several talks that stood out to me, I liked the Saturday morning session. Also, those guys who stood up and were like "no". Interesting idea.

Anyway, Mothi, Cherilyn, Tan and Sally all came to conference.

Sally coming really was miracle. When she came to District conference we actually had not had a teaching appointment with her yet. So we had not taught her anything. Anyway District conference turned out to be probably the worst church meeting I have had on my mission, not exaggerating. I think when I emailed you guys about it before I said it was good, that was a lie, I was trying to be positive. Anyway after that we had no hope that we would ever meet her again much less get her to church. So we just kept texting back and forth, we brought up conference. Anyway, Saturday night she texted asking if she could come with us to church on Sunday!  She ended up staying for both Sunday sessions! She liked the talks and was way intrigued by the ones about temples, so in between sessions we talked about that with her. Way cool. First time on my mission that I’ve had an investigator come to church twice without ever having a real lesson with them. Cherilyn and Tan are doing good. They were both on school trips this week but came to Sunday conference.

Mothi is doing good, his younger brother was sick Monday night and asked us to give him a blessing on Tuesday. On the way there he texted telling us his brother was feeling fine now. All good.

I’ve been writing letters to members in all of my past branches, it’s taking a LONG time. I don’t understand how some Elders manage to write their girlfriends everyday... (I actually only know one who did and he stopped after about 9 months). I’m going to miss all of these people so much!!!! Really all of the fear/nervousness I felt about going home and the future has been replaced with sadness, I’m going to miss my mission terribly. 

Also, just found out, literally 30 seconds ago, that Celynne, Elder Wright and I's investigator from Singapore, is getting baptized! Way dope!!!

Sincerely,

Elder Halpin

Elder Ferguson...

 No 4's. 

The 4 symbolizes death 

in Chinese culture.

April 6, 2015 – Refocusing Our Investigators… - Week 10 in Sabah

This week has been really good!

That’s great news about Gladys and Bright!

We will be watching General Conference this upcoming week. But I did hear about the Temple in Haiti, that’s so wonderful! The church will also be building one in Bangkok, Thailand, which means that members here won’t have to go all the way to Manila or Hong Kong! Apparently it will cost about 1/8th what going to Manila would, members in West Malaysia and Singapore will be able to bus or take a train!

The Missionary work has been going good also!

We were able to meet with both Mothi and Cherilyn and Tan. We really felt like these lessons would be critical so we really tried to pray and figure out what they needed to hear.

We felt like Cherilyn and Tan needed to be refocused. They have been coming to church but not really reading or praying much, not really seeking out a testimony.  So we decided to just talk about our purpose. It really opened up the discussion and we were able to figure out where each of them were and also recommit them. The spirit was pretty strong and they felt it. Later that evening Cherilyn sent us a text thanking us and recommitting to build her faith. Way dope!

For Mothi we decided to really just focus on the gospel and especially on baptism. We met with him and also some of his siblings and his aunt. His aunt has learned before and when we read out of John how we need to be baptized she pointed to Mothi’s siblings and was like, "baptize these ones, they haven’t been baptized yet", way funny. He committed to be baptized on Oct 7th. Not sure why that day but that's what he wanted. We feel like he still feels like he’s not ready, we need to meet with him alone so that he’s not shy to talk about it in front of others.

Also were able to go meet with Adrian and Alana so that Yang could cut Adrian's hair, they are way dope!

Also met with Sakarius a less active member ye have met a couple times before. He’s from Indonesia. He also came to church! He’s way dope, it’s always fun to talk with Indonesians because they are very patriotic, they like to tell about their history and Indonesia.

My interview was good, but it’s not my departing one, that’ll be when I go to Singapore...

This morning we went to an island, way nice. That’s why we’re emailing late.

Sincerely,

Elder Halpin

March 29 2015 – Referral Machine, Wahoo… - Week 9 in Sabah

This week was good. I’m short on time, Celynne, one of Elder Wright and I's (? my grammer is dead, how do you say that?) investigators from Singapore emailed me asking a bunch of questions about the church and receiving answers to prayers so I had to answer those first.

So first off we were not able to meet with any of our normal investigators, or really any of our members, or really any of the less active members that we normally meet with. Basically everyone was just busy all week.

We still managed to get a lot of work done this week though.

Peredick is coming along good, we met him and talked to him about milk before meat etc. It was good a lesson, we taught him how to bear his testimony effectively and how to introduce the gospel in a non- threatening way. So after the lesson he took us back through the sketchy part of Kota Kinabalu (again) to a convenience store that was next to something else. He introduced us to the workers at the convenience store and we contacted them, one of them, Lydia, seemed to actually be interested, we will try and meet with her in the next couple days. We met with him again on Saturday and he introduced us to more of his friends, this time some people that worked in a Catholic bible store, and some that worked in a Protestant bible store. Basically he is a referral machine, our primary goal this week will be to get them going.

We went contacting in Inanam, the place is loaded with Christians. We knocked on one door that turned out to be somebody that the missionaries had contacted in English 10 years before. She was down to listen anyway, she wanted to know what we thought about how we are saved. we talked for long time about a variety of stuff, Baptism for the dead, prophets, prayer (as an apostate Catholic she said she thought God was mad at her for saying what she wanted in prayers and asking questions and stuff, we told her that was perfect!) and bunch of other stuff. We committed her to read the pamphlet and she said we could meet again.

We met and contacted a ton more new people this week.

The weekend was District conference. President and Sister Mains came, I got interviewed for the first time since April of last year. District conference was way good, all of the members and missionaries came from Tawau and Sandakan (the other 2 cities with the church in Sabah) on buses. It was way nice.

Also, Cherilyne, Tan, Mothi and Sally came! Sally had a good experience, I have never seen better fellowship on my mission then here, even in Singapore! Pobably 10 people came up and introduced themselves, and other YSA's invited her to sit with them, way dope!

The day were in Inanam just as we were going to go back we happened to meet a less active member that we had tried to meet before but had been unable to. Her name is Melin she is really cool, she showed us where she lived so we could meet her sometime in the future.

Anyway that’s about it

Sincerely,

Elder Halpin

Kota Kinabalu has been choked in smoke, 

it really needs to rain. 

It makes for pretty sunsets though.

Playing cards after a lesson with some members, 

Roy, Lem, Roy’s sibling and Mixter.