Archive for June, 2007
My First Week with Elder Tan
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007Well, I am still in Bintulu. I am with Elder Tan and we are getting along fine. He is a very hard worker, and we are getting a lot of work done in the flats. When he first came to the house, it was a really big mess. But he went right to work and started cleaning, and now it actually is really nice. Elder Tan used to be here before, for 6 weeks, so he still knows a lot of people. Elder Tai is also here. He’s my bud from KL. I used to go on exchanges with him before he was a missionary, and now he’s here with me. It is really cool. We have a lot to reminisce about, and can often just talk and talk and talk. Haha. He also just came in from Colombo, so we talk about that a lot too. I miss Colombo, and all the good people there. Elder King is his companion. He is cool too, but I still need to get to know him better.
This last week, Nguti was baptized. She is sooo cool. She is really smart and also a really good person. She wants to go to the temple and also to be a missionary someday. She is amazing. Well, my buds wanna go to the Pasar, so I got to go now. I’ll try to put up some more videos next week. I love you all!
Here’s the pics from this week:
Some Family Pics from Home
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007Old Elders Go, New Elders Come
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007Well, another transfer, and I am still in Bintulu, hehe. Here is a part of my letter to my mom:
“I remember the feeling of being at the start of Summer Vacation, and how carefree and happy I felt, haha. It always seemed as though the Summer would never end. but it would end eventually, of course. Fortunately, when the time came for school to start again, we were usually ready for it. I guess that’s how things go. Sometimes we just want to move on and to change a little. It’s kind of like a mission, too. When you first start an area, it feels like you will be there forever, but then when the time comes for you to transfer, you are kind of ready for a change. You are sad of course, because you have to leave all the people you love. But you are also happy because you get to meet lots of new people, and make new friends. If you are a good missionary, you never have any regrets when getting transferred. Speaking of transfers, we just had 3 elders get transferred from my district on the same day, so I am the only one left from the house. I spent most of Monday cleaning it. Elder Rowley went home, and Elder Godfrey and Fry were transferred. Now there is Elder Tan, who is my companion, and Elder King and Elder Tai (I knew him from KL). Elder Tan is cool. He’s already been in this area before, but only for 1.5 months. Still, many of the members remember him. He is from Johor Bahru, West Malaysia, is Chinese, and about 28-30 years old, not sure exactly. He is fluent in Malay and Chinese, so he is a big help. Elder King just came in from Singapore, and Elder Tai just came from Colombo, Sri Lanka. So now the house is full again. I’m the District Leader again, so I have to keep on giving trainings and such things, reporting and being responsible. Boring… haha. We had two baptisms last week, Alex and Dony. They are both really good young men. Dony is 21, and Alex is 15. They are both really strong in the faith now, and ready to become future missionaries some day. Monday, Alex came to help us teach, and he is such a good teacher already, even though he had just been confirmed the day before.”
We are also having another baptism this weekend, so I am excited about that. I have about 10 weeks left on my mission now, so I am going to make the most of it and work my hardest these last weeks. I hope that I will be able to help lots of people with the remaining time I have. Anyways, I guess I’ll go now. Here’s some pics from the last week:
Write me letters if u love me^^ Hehe
Elder Rowley’s Last Week
Tuesday, June 12th, 2007We went to the waterfall today, cause it is Elder Rowley’s last week of his mission. There is a big transfer coming up too. I hope that I will be able to stay here also. I wanna stay here til the end of my mission, cause I love Bintulu. We will be having some baptisms this Saturday, and we will be having a few more this month also, so we are excited about that. Elder Rowley is pretty trunky, haha. I have a couple other projects I’m working on, but they are still rahsia sahaja, jadi jangan rasa cemburu, hehe. Hmmm, mungkin saya boleh guna Bahasa Melayu sahaja supaya hanya orang dari malaysia boleh faham apa saya taip, hehe.
Well, I’ll let you know more next week, ok?
This is quoted from my email to my mom that I wrote, I was too tired to write it again:
“I know that my mission is awesome, I actually firmly believe it is the best mission in the world. I feel like I’ve gotten to meet so many awesome people, experience so many different cultures and lands, and learn different languages too. The work is going really well also. The ‘field is white, already to harvest’ (D&C 4) in this part of the Lord’s vineyard. We have lots of amazing investigators right now. One of them, Nguti, is the 21 y/o daughter of Maja, a less active member who lives in the block farthest from the church (but still only a 5-minute walk away). Every time I went to see him, his daughter answered the door, told us that he wasn’t there, but invited us in. We couldn’t go in without a man in the house too, so we would just set a return appointment and come back the next week, when the same thing would happen again. But every time I spoke to hear, I always got the impression that she was prepared by the Lord.
One day, we were going by her house, when I got the impression to stop by and say hi. Maja was gone, she told us. On a whim, I invited her to come to church the next day with us. She seemed a little shy, but I smiled and said not to worry, we would be with her to introduce her and explain things go her. To my surprise, she agreed, and smiled for the first time. We agreed to come get her in the morning.
The next morning, we went to get her. She was asleep. Great, another failed attempt, I thought. But to my surprise, she jumped up, said ’sekejap’ then ran to get ready. We waited til she was ready. She asked if she could bring her mother’s Kitab Mormon to church, to which I whole-heartedly agreed. She was so excited to be going to church!
At church, I was prompted to sit her with Lembong’s wife, Sister Pantai, instead of sitting with her as I had originally intended. (There are no 21 y/o women in the church to fellowship her). After Sacrament meeting, I found out that Lembong’s family were good friends with Maja’s family, and Sister Pantai was the perfect fellowshipper! Wow, that was cool. Nguti looooved church. She made lots of friends and learned a lot. I set up a time to meet her that Thursday.
When I went to see her, I was on exchanges with one of the young men in the Branch. I taught the first lesson about the Restoration. It was going really well, and the spirit was really strong. She is incredibly smart, and asked some good questions. She understood everything. At the end, I felt impressed to invite her to be baptized. I asked her if she believed what I had taught her. She said she felt it was true. I said a silent prayer and then extended the invitation, asking her if she wanted to follow Christ and be baptized in His church. To my surprise, she immediately said ‘Yes!’ and was so happy! We set a date, and she was way excited! Ever since then, she has been a golden investigator.
Here are some pics from this week:
Pergi ke Sebauh
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007Well, this week we went to Sebauh for Gawai. It was a ton of fun. We went to Tok and Nani’s Longhouse, some of our recent converts. They are a really cool family, and we got to spend the day with them. We ate their Iban traditional foods and watched them sing and dance and get drunk (alcohol is a big part of this Iban holiday. In fact, everywhere we went, we were almost forced to drink, because it is a part of their culture. But we of course turned it down and sweet talked our way out of it. It’s kind of scary when they are holding a sword and are drunk and the whole long house is watching too.). So anyways, it was a real experience. We also got the chance to go out on the songket and paddle around on the sungai. It was a ton of fun, but kind of scary, because the boat is really very shakey and we almost capsized numerous times. Haha. Elder Rowley has the worst balance in the world. One time we had to paddle upstream on the big river. It was so HARD! We went about 200 yards in 2 hours! One time we couldn’t stop laughing, so we drifted back about 25 feet because we couldn’t paddle. We paid for that one sorely, cause we got tons of blisters on our hands. Blisters where blisters had already torn off. We went to a Chinese Buddhist Temple on an island. The locals told us the legend. Translated, it goes something like this: There was a man who had a huge boat. In those days they used to boil cats until they turned to a rubbery paste, then eat them. Well, they were going down the stream in the boat, and they were boiling a cat. The cat started to jump around, and so all the people in the boat laughed. They laughed and they laughed. In Iban culture it is really bad luck to laugh very hard. They were laughing and laughin, except one, who admonished them to stop. They wouldn’t stop, so it started to rain. Really hard. And they kept on laughing. Then all of them turned to stone, except the one guy, and the ship sunk. The guy escaped, and later built the temple on the island created by the boat. That’s it. It is in the shape of a boat, but I don’t believe it.
Anyways, we also went to a Chinese Cemetery, which was pretty cool too. WE also got to see an Iban Wedding, but it was in a really rich longhouse. Most of the people there were graduates from college and could speak english, and they were really rich in comparison to other Ibans. The wedding was pretty cool. We had to go back up the street at night time, in the dark, and people were all saying there were lots of crocodiles there. So it was pretty scary. But we got home in one piece, but pretty sunburnt. IT was a lot of fun.
Most of our members are gone to gawai right now. Basically it is like their Christmas. It is the harvest festival, when everybody returns to their home for about 1 to 2 weeks, gets really drunk, dances and sings, tells stories, and gives gifts. It is a lot of fun for them. So most of our members are gone back to their kampungs, or original hometowns. Bintulu is practically empty now, and the flats, our area, is silent. There isn’t much to do, so we went home with them! Haha, but only the ones that were close by.
Well, that’s about it I guess. Church attendance was dismal, maybe 20 people came, including the white people (6).
Well, here’s some pictures for ya’ll. And I’ll try to post a video or two.
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| Sebauh, the Long-House |
And here’s the SlideShow: (this is a new experiment from me!)
Video of an iban dancing the traditional dance of Ngajat
On the way to the longhouse, where the wedding was:
Arriving at the longhouse:
Paddling in the River: