Bintulu
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Tuesday, April 10th, 2007Well, this week was pretty good. It is my birthday tomorrow, so that is also cool. We went on a hike today just now to try to find a waterfall. It was deep in the jungle. It is the dry season now, so it wasn’t really going. But we had a nice hike in the jungle. It was fun at least. My companion might be getting transferred this week, we aren’t really sure. We will find out friday. If you notice, I shamelessly updated my blog description to include my current address, so anyone who wants to can write me haha. I promise to reply to each letter I get (fishing for letters I guess) haha. We had some cool stories this week. We were feeling kind of down because some of our members were going less active and not attending church as much as they should, and it was frustrating also cause none of the people we asked really wanted to help us. And we also needed some new investigators. So we decided one day just to bite the bullet and to go contacting and finding. We were following the spirit and we were led to Block M. Elder Mortensen said “Nothing good ever comes out of Block M” but I wanted to try so we did. We went up and when we got to floor 4, we saw a door that had our church’s picture of Jesus taped to the door. It was obviously old and faded, but it was there. There was also a sign that read “No Salesman Allowed! Only Saleswoman! (then in pen) Beautiful Women Only!” Haha. So well we decided what the heck, we would knock and see. So we knocked. no one came, and we knocked again. Then they opened the door. It was a man named Jinga and his newly wed wife. We introduced ourselfs and it was kind of awkward. We didn’t know what to do. We looked at eachother and then just asked “Boleh Masuk?” which means can we come in? They said “Boleh!” so we went inside and we taught them a lesson. They used to be taught a long time ago by some chinese ladies. So we set up a return appointment. They are really good, and truly an answer to our prayers.
Okay, that is the miracle for this week ( I have decided to start putting a miracle and a quote from the day for each day of my journal). Anyways, I better be going soon.
It feels wierd to be 21 already. I feel old. But I still feel young too. I know that no matter the age, we can be who we want to be. I am still me, the same old Elder Whiting, sedikit nakal, dan selalu seronok. Well, I love all and I am happy to be here still. Take care, everyone!
The hike, I have more but this is all I have time to upload
Fire in Bintulu!
Hiking more
Pictures from this week:
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| Bintulu on my Birthday |
Similajau Activity
Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007Hello everyone! Well, not much has happened this week. We did have a really cool Elders Quorum Activity. We went to the beach at the Similajau National Park and had lunch and fished a little. I got really sunburnt, I guess I wasn’t used to it. Well, not REALLy suburnt, just a little. It wasn’t red, just hurt. It was cool.
News from home: My Great Grandma Whiting has passed away. I am sad to hear it, because we will miss her wonderful spirit, but I am also very happy for her, because I know that she is in a much better place. She has run her race and she was a good lady, so I know I will be able to see her again, someday.
My brother Tyler is still in the MTC, he leaves in a week or two.
That’s about it… The video site is down today, but I have a lot of videos I want to upload. I am going to upload some from Sri Lanka, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore. It will probably take me a couple months, cause I have so many. I’ll try to go in order. Oh yeah, and in case anyone wants to write me, my address here is:
Leighton Whiting
Lot 737 Sungai Plan lots
Jalan Tanjung Kidurong
97000 Bintulu
Sarawak
See you next week!
Pics this week:
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| To the Beach… |
Back in Bintulu again, yay!
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007Well, I am still here in Bintulu. THings are pretty normal here, as far as normal here goes. We had some baptisms on the weekend after Zone COnference, and we were both feeling a little under the weather, and really tired, up until now we are still tired, so maybe we will just stay home this P-Day and relax.
There are always small neat stories with little miracles, and I write them all down in my journal, but right now I can’t think of any cause I am still tired haha. I’m sorry. So I uploaded the videos and pics, so you can see them.
Well, that’s it for today. I love all of you! Zone Conference was great!
Oh yeah, I bought an Iban Blow Gun and Bow n arrows from Kuching. They are awesome!
Some Videos:
Me Bowling in Kuching
Me at the Waterfront in Kuching with some elders…
Pics for this week and last:
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| Bintulu Not Dead |
From Kuching…
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007Hello All! Well, I am in Kuching right now, that’s why I couldn’t email yesterday, because of Zone Conference. I flew in this morning. It will be my 6th flight in 6 weeks. Kuching is pretty cool.
This week has been pretty normal, just average missionaring. We didn’t have a baptism last week, but we do have this and next, so it will be 5 out of 6 weeks with a baptism.
So we are excited. Listen… I don’t have much time today, so I’ll update more next week. And no pics this week, sorry… But I’ll stick up a few videos. Next week, I will try to post some videos from Sri Lanka. See ya guys!
They were making this stuff called Belacan in the flats, so I took a video of it. It is a shrimp paste, and it smells really bad.
This kid from the long house has so much energy, he is bursting. I thought it was funny.
Still in Bintulu, and Still Alive
Tuesday, March 13th, 2007Well, I am pretty sure that I am still alive. We had another good week here in Bintulu. We had a family get baptized this week, the third week in a row we’ve had baptisms. We probably won’t have any this week, but we have another one next week. We are running out of investigators though, so we will have to start finding new people to teach. Our goal is to baptize everyone in our area who is not Islam. So we’re working hard at it. But we are also trying to keep all the less active families active. It is a lot of work, and are always busy.
Things are going well though. I am still improving on my Malay, and I am also learning Iban. I got a dictionary last week, so I made some flash cards, but I never have time to quiz myself on them. But I’ve probably memorized about 200 words so far, so I can at least say a few things. Iban is actually a lot like Malay. If I had to explain it, I would probably liken it unto the relationship between Spanish and Italian. Similar, and some of the words are the same, but not all. If any of you want to try to read malay, I’ll give ya some:
Minggu ini sangat bagus! Saya masih sihat, dan sekarang saya lebih gemuk daripada minggu lepas, sebab saya selalu makan banyak makanan, dan segala anggota gereja selalu bagi kami banyak makanan dan Milo juga. Tapi saya bersenar setiap pagi, jadi saya juga sedang menjadi kuat sikit. Apa boleh buat? Ok, habis sekarang. Cuba membaca itu.
Yep. That’s a sample. Malay has a lot more syllables than English does. You should record yourselves reading it and then send it to my email so I can get a good laugh. Haha. Well, I got to go now. Next week is Zone Conference, so we are all flying to Kuching again. I am excited. Miss you all!
I took some pics for this week, so here they are:
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| Bintulu Still |
PS I added captions to the pics last week, so check them out again:
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| Niah Caves |
And here is a test video I’m uploading. I want to upload more in the future if it works:
Niah Caves Trip
Tuesday, March 6th, 2007Hello all, sorry that I don’t have very much time to update this today. We had a trip to Niah Caves, and we just got back and only have like 30 mins til our appointment, so I have to be way fast. It was a ton of FUN! I really loved it. We slept over at the other district’s house and then left early in the morning. It still took 2.5 hours to drive there. Then after we got there, we had to take a boat up the river a little and then we had to hike through the jungle to get to the caves. It was about a 1.5 hour jungle trek, because the road was under construction.
The caves were way awesome! I’ve always loved caves anyways, so I had a lot of fun. But one thing I forgot to bring was a flash light, so a lot of the time I had to go in pitch darkness or else use my camera as a light. It was also really dirty. It was covered in bat guano all over the floor and walls and everything. So when we had to climb or anything, our hands got filthy dirty. We had to eat at the end with way dirty hands. Haha, but it was way fun. The Miri elders were also there, so I got to catch up with some old friends. I am still covered in bat guano as I type, and it really actually stinks haha. That was basically it. The caves were awesome!
I got an Iban dictionary from my bud in Miri, Elder Christensen, so now I can start to study it more effectively. I am excited about that.
Earlier this week, we had 3 baptisms, Frankie, Sima and her daughter Sanggu. They are all way awesome, found after I came here to the area. So that was exciting. We have another family getting baptized this weekend. They are really awesome also!
Oh yeah, another important announcement, is that today is officially my 18 month mark of being on a mission. I entered the MTC on September 7,2005. Crazy how fast time flies.
Well, I am out of time. Bleh, I wish I could type more, but I will have to wait til next week. Oh well, at least I was able to upload my photos. I don’t have time this week to caption them, but I will try to do it by next week. I love you all!
This week in Bintulu: Zoo
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007Well, this week has been really cool. We went to the Zoo! it was a lot of fun. We got to see a few animals, and it wasn’t anything all that great, but it was still fun, especially since I love animals. It was hot too, really hot. Well, let’s see, what else happened? I baptized a boy named Chunky last Saturday, and it was the first time I’ve ever baptized anyone in Malay. It was a new experience. I am trying to learn more Iban, but it is way hard because there aren’t any Iban dictionaries here. I asked my bud, Elder Christensen to bring me one from Miri next week. So we’ll see how that goes. Currently I am just listening and imitating what I hear. I’ve probably learned about 50 words. My malay is getting better. I can say just about anything I need to, and I can understand everything. My chinese is slipping though. I tried to talk to someone in Mandarin the other day, and I forgot most of it. It’s ok though, because everyone here can speak Malay, so I always have that as a backup. Most of our investigators are Iban and they speak Malay as a second language, so we speak bad malay, and so do they, so we meet in the middle haha. The area is really cool, and we have a lot of investigators who are going to be baptized real soon. So we are really fired up.
Oh yeah, I had to take some nasty worm pills, that definately was NOT fun. But, I probably had worms cause I was in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Singapore, and now Borneo, so it is good to take them I guess. But I am healthy, so no worries.
There hasn’t been much else going on… I just uploaded all the pics from this week, so you can check them out here:
I love ya guys!
Still Alive here in Bintulu
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007Well… I am sorry, but I don’t have much time today to post… Dang, we only get one hour to do this every week, so it is hard to squeeze in all the things I need to do. So… what’s new this week? Well, we had Chinese New Year, on February 18th. It was a lot of craziness! All of our neighboors are chinese, so they started lighting off millions of fireworks at 12 midnight. It woke my companion up, but I was still awake. It was actually pretty hilarious because he was disoriented and thought that it was a war and he thought that it was coming from the bathroom. It seriously did sounds like a war. I thought they had to be in our yard, it was so loud. So we went outside and watched for a while as they lit off firework after firework. They asked us to light a few, which is against our rules…. but I did anyways, I couldn’t resist, plus I love to play with fire and explosives. Plus it only says ‘no lighting fireworks’, it doesn’t say anything about ‘main api atau bomba’. Haha. SO it’s ok. We went to church that morning and then after church (which was awesome, we had a lot of investigators come on their own will and we were really shocked because it was raining and a holiday, but we were happy that they came) we went back home and packed our bags and then left for the airport to fly to Kuching for the Mission Tour with Elder Garn, of the Second Quourum (sp?) of the seventy and the Asia Area President. So we flew in and stayed at the Kuching 2nd Branch Elders’ apartment and went on exchanges with them that night. Then on Monday morning, we had the Mission Tour meeting. Elder Garn, his wife, President and Sister Skelton, and the APs gave trainings, and we were really edified and learned a lot. I am really blessed to have been there. It was a lot of hassle, and we didn’t have any food due to poor planning, so we fasted, but it was really a good experience. Then we went out that night to go street contacting. I got a few cool pictures of Kuching and I also got my visa card detained by an ATM machine, so that stunk, but my mom patiently and kindly took care of it. Where would I be without her? Then in the morning on Tuesday, we flew back to Bintulu and went right back to work. We didn’t have many appointments, so we just followed the Spirit and were able to see a lot of good people and have some really awesome appointments. One of them was especially cool. We went to meet with an investigator, and asked him if he wanted to be baptized, and he said he had to ask his dad but his dad wouldn’t let him. Elder Mortensen had tried to teach him before but the parents were never really very interested. So the dad said that he had to ask his pastor. I was liek: “Oh no you don’t!” So I said a silent prayer and began to teach him the Restoration in Malay. It was hard cause I still am not very good at the language, but I was blest to be able to speak clearly and powerfully to him with the spirit and I taught him all of it he needed while Elder Mortensen was teaching the kid. I really was guided to the right words. After that, the father said: “Baik, membaptis dia esok, boleh?” Which means ok, bapyize hime tomorrow then, and I was like, well wait, we need to wait til Saturday because he still needs to be taught some things and he needs to be interviewed. So we set it all up and the father wants to be sure that it is at a time he can come and see. Wow, it was so cool!
Well, that’s about it for this week. I have decided to change the way that I post photos, so I am going to make weekly Albums with photos for that week, so that you can see the photos each week without getting confused. I’ll start doing it that way next week so for this week, I uploaded the photos to the Bintulu album here:
Love ya guys!
Here in Bintulu
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007Well, I’ve been here in Bintulu for over a week now, and I’m still alive. So that is a good thing I guess. I actually realllllllly love it. I comment to Elder Mortensen every day about how beautiful the sky is here. Singapore just didn’t have very good skies, and you could only see little parts of it through the skyscrapers. Here in Bintulu it is just the opposite. We are basically in the jungle here. Lots of trees all over, and stuff. The main populace consists of Ibans. That is why I am trying to learn Iban. My Malay has greatly improved in the past week, and I can teach all of the lessons now, just from the words I know, without practicing first. I remembered all of the stuff I learned in KL 8 months ago. I didn’t practice at all in Singapore. I am really excited to be teaching in a different language though. The other day we had an investigator who spoke english, and he wanted us to pray in English, and I almost forgot how (i’ve been praying in Malay for personal prayers). I also was tempted to write my journal in Malay, but I figured I better not so that someone in the future can read it. My area is pretty small though. We don’t really do a lot of traveling. It is about the size of a football field. We don’t have bikes or have to take any buses or anything. It is really nice. We also have the opportunity to teach a lot of Recent Converts, because over 90% of the members were only baptized 0-2 years ago. It is amazing the faith these people have. The major challenge is to get them to overcome the word of wisdom problems they have. Things here are really poor in comparison with Singapore.
In other news, my brother, Tyler, is reporting to the MTC today! On Valentines Day! He is going to Paris, France. I heard that the farewell talk he gave was a real knock-out. It was awesome, and I wish I had been there to hear it. My brother is gonna be the best thing Paris has ever seen, he is so amazing and spiritual, and he is smart, hardworking, and friendly too. I won’t get to see him all in all for almost 4 years, and I miss him. But, I know that he is doing the right thing. Nothing in life can replace going on a mission. He will do awesome!
If anyone is wondering, here is my new address:
Leighton Whiting
Blk 737 Sungai Plan Lot
Jalan Tanjung Kidurong
97000 Bintulu, Sarawak
East Malaysia
Well, I can’t write much today, but I will write more next week, and I will post more pictures. I posted the rest of my singapore pictures, so check them out:
Transfered… Continued
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007Elder Einfeldt was a good Elder, and I will definitely miss him. He was always really patient and humble too. And a hard-worker. Now I am with Elder Mortensen (yes, the same one who I was companions with in the MTC).
I flew into Kuching Monday with Elder Stevenson. We caught a taxi to the Kuching Elders’ apartment, dropped off our stuff, and then we went out on exchanges with Elders Andrews and Wong. I went with Elder Wong and with the bikes. It was only the second time I’d been on a bike in my whole mission, the first time being over a year ago in Negombo, Sri Lanka. It was really a scary experience at first, with cars flying by at high speeds only a few inches away. But then after I got the hang of it again, I loved it. I really do like bike riding, but I HATE helmets. They always give me a headache. But not this time, I was lucky I guess. We went to see some of their investigators, mostly Iban, in the Kampungs and small neighborhoods. It was pretty cool. They are really humble people. I got to practice my Malay, and even though it was really broken, I still was able to help a little and also was able to pray. All of the appointments asked me to say the opening prayer (cause I was the new guy) so I didn’t know if I could but I just went for it and it turned out pretty well. It was a long day, but it was also a lot of fun. Whenever I couldn’t understand anything, I knew that they were speaking Iban. By the end of the day, I had learned a lot of new words, and a few Iban phrases, and my butt was reallllllllly sore. The ride back home was kinda scary, cause it was night, Elder Wong ditched me (he was like 200 yards ahead) and there were dogs chasing us. Hahaha, but I lived. We went to sleep after showering. We had to wake up at 4:30 to go to the airport the next day. It was a cool trip, and the views from the plane coming into Bintulu were pretty awesome. I got to the house, unpacked, and then we went to DDM. Elder Mortensen and I then went out and met some of our people. Our area is the smallest one in the Mission, consisting of only a section of ‘flats’ (apartments) with 5 floors, 8 rooms on a floor, each. And the blocks go ABC all the way to R. So it’s a lot of people. Most of them know who we are already. I am pretty happy that we don’t have to ride bikes. I lied though about the area size, we actually technically have all of Sarawak from Bintulu up to Miri, but we don’t ever go there. We have a couple Kampungs, and a few long houses also. We teach English at a longhouse for free (after getting the chief’s permission). I met a lot of people, and I don’t know how but my Malay was actually decent enough to understand most of what all the people said, and to teach the Restoration and help out on the other lessons. That’s good, cause I was worried it would be gone after not studying it at all the past 7 months, and I didn’t really get to practice it at all during my 4 months in KL where I studied it. So I still have a long way to go, but I am excited to learn and I hope that I will be able to learn fast. Most Elders come here without knowing any Malay, so hopefully I can get a head start. I also have decided that after I cement my Malay, I am going to learn Iban. Well, that was basically my first day. No pictures yet, but I will try to take some this week and post them on the blog next week.
The house (the first house I’ve lived in on my mission so far) was really dumpy, and it was a big mess. I took a broom to it this morning (no vacuum cleaner) and I filled a grocery bag with the dust and dirt and cobwebs I gathered. It was ridiculous. The brooms had cobwebs (indicating their infrequent use). And the kitchen is really dirty too. This house will be a project, but I’m gonna make sure that it doesn’t stay too dirty. The first night I discovered that my blanket (which was too small) was made of some wierd fur material that I am alergic too, so I started sneazing a lot. I eventually just kicked it off and then I froze the rest of the night,. Kind of a rough night. I’m gonna have to buy a new one, and a ton of other stuff. I made a list. I also need to get my hair cut this week. Well, I’ll write more next week I guess. Love ya guys!