Mission
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Tuesday, July 10th, 2007Well, I didn’t go on my last Visa Run yet, that will be next week. I will fly there monday, come back tuesday, then take a bus to Miri on Wednesday for Zone Conference, and won’t get back til Thursday night. I am not so trunky yet, but I do see the date looming into view. But don’t worry, I haven’t slacked off my strength in working or anything like that. If anything, I have only increased my strength and diligence. I’m determined to stuff as much Missionary Work into these last few weeks as I possible can. I remembered hearing a story about Mike Wilson about how he played the guitar for someone and taught them a lesson. I had much the same experience this week. I bought a guitar about 2 months ago for my birthday and have been practicing about every chance I get. I love guitar, and I am not sure why I never tried to learn it earlier. I have already made a few songs, mostly soft and soothing acoustic ones. Anyways, last night I was at an appointment with a family, and we were teaching them the Plan of Salvation because their grandpa had just passed away. It was the first time they had heard it and so it as a little bit tense, but the lesson went well. We invited them for baptism and they were very unsure, so we kind of let it drop. I noticed that they had a guitar in the corner, so I asked if I could try, and they agreed. I played one of the songs I had been working on, which I didn’t have any words made for yet. I was inspired to sing my testimony in Malay to them (they aren’t Iban, they are Kayan). It turned out really nice, and it seemed to match the tempo and it even rhymed a little. “Saya tahu gereja ini betul, sebab Nabi Joseph Smith benar. Bapa di Syurga sayang semua kita, dan mahu kita menjadi gembira. Saya pun tahu Rancangan ini benar, dan Yesus mahu kita ikut dia. Terima Kasih, Yesus!” After wards, everyone was just quiet. It wasn’t a loud type of song, just a soft one. After awhile, we asked if we could say a prayer and then when we went to leave, they asked “Mana satu hari kamu boleh datang lagi? Kami mahu kamu datang! When can you come back? We want you to come back!” We told them we could come again on Thrusday, and they agreed, and said “Tapi kamu mesti main lagu itu lagi! And you have to play that song again!” It was so cool. Anyways, that was my highlight for this week, that and when Nguti asked if she could give a talk in church. She has only been baptized for two weeks! She is so good!
Not much else is new I guess. I went on exchanges with Elder Nixon and Elder King to train them a little. Time keeps on slipping by like a dream…
Here’s some pics for this week:
The 4th of July
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007Warga Bintulu, kita merayakan hari kemerdekaan kita, yang dibayar oleh darah, dan air mata para pendahulu kita!
There’s some Malay for ya. Well… I am still alive, haha. But I am feeling older and older now as time goes by. I have less weeks left than my companion has months being on his mission. My bag is just now starting to break down. Maybe I’ll have to get a new one, especially since they are so cheap here in Bintulu. You can go to the Pasar and buy one for maybe $4-10 USD. My tooth also is breaking. A big chunk of it fell out last year when I was in Kuala Lumpur, but it didn’t start hurting til just now. Maybe I’ll have to go see a dentist. I brush every morning and night, so don’t worry. I am going on a Visa Run on the 16th and 17th to Singapore, which will be my last one of my mission. I’ve only had 4 so far, so I’ll only have had 5 my whole mission. I’m excited to go back to Singapore, maybe I will get to see all of the people I knew there.
Me and Elder Tan are still keeping very busy. Every day I come home more and more tired, and more and more busted. I am keeping my morale up though. I love being here in Bintulu, and I love the people here. I’m glad that I can speak the language more easily now, and I’m learning more and more Iban every day.
Today was the 4th of July, and we had a celebration over at the Hintze’s house, one of the couples here. We had a barbecue and played volleyball and listened to the National Anthem and such. It was really touching and a lot of fun too. I am so grateful for the people who have sacrificed for us, so that we can have the freedom that we enjoy today. Especially when you think of all the places in the world now that don’t have the same freedom or rights that we can enjoy back home. I love the USA.
Well, that’s about all I have to write.
Oh yeah, I decided that I would write a spiritual highlight from each week, so here is the one this week:
“Nguti, the young lady who I baptized on the 23rd of June, was sustained last sunday (June 30) as the new Young Women’s President! I was so shocked when President Lembang announced it, and she accepted and everything! She has only been baptized a week! Haha. Her family is less active, but she is so strong and good! She had to totally change her life to be baptized and follow Christ, but now she is awesome. Me and her have a lot in common, actually, so it’s easy to relate. She is 21 and the oldest. So that’s cool. She has also read most of the Book of Mormon already, even though she’s only been reading for about a month.
Joe also was extended a calling to become the Branch Librarian. That was so cool to see! I baptized him too!”
Pics this Week:
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:
Zone Conference in Kuching
Wednesday, May 30th, 2007Well, I just got back from Zone Conference this morning, and so I am still pretty tired. It was in Kuching again. I have flown back and forth from there so often now, it is not even a new thing anymore. It was a really good one though, because I was able to see the Waterfront again, and I got to see all the Iban shops, haha. The Trainings were really good as well, and really got us pumped up for the work here. Elder Rowley, my companion, spent a lot of money on souvenirs cause it is his last one, he goes home in 3 weeks. I bought a T-Shirt, but I’m not too worried about souvenirs cause I am pretty sure I will be staying here til the end of my mission, haha. We went on exchanges with the 1st branch elders. It was good, it was in the same area I went last time. Here are some pics and here are some videos too:
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| Bintulu and Kuching Zone Conference |
Gawai Party
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007Well, another week has come and gone, and I am still in Bintulu haha. Well, it’s ok, I like it here.
I am doing well. We did find some new investigators, including one named Alex. He is a 15 year old kid, but he is way samrt and super golden. He dreamed about us before he met us, and he said when we contacted him, he felt something stirring within him telling him we had something important to tell him. He is awesome. We set a baptism date for him and he came to church and seminary, and already has lots of friends already. He is so cool. We also were able to set 5 other baptism dates this week, it was really cool to see all the ways the Lord has blessed us here. I know that this church is true.
We had a party yesterday for our Branch. We celebrated Hari Gawai Dayak. It was a really big party. It’s like Christmas for these people. There was tons of food, and singing, and dancing, and Ngajat, and lots of people came. A lot of fun altogether. I got to dance the Ngajat also. I uploaded a bunch of pics and I took a lot of videos, so I will try to upload those sometime. I have so many videos I need to upload, but it takes so long to upload them, I often don’t have time. Maybe today I’ll upload a few.
I will be going to Kuching this next Monday for Zone Conference. It will be a lot of fun, it always is. Anyways, I will try to finish the maps for Sri Lanka, Singapore and here, then I will post them with the pics. Here is the pics for this week:
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| Gawai Party |
The Trek to the Waterfall
Tuesday, May 15th, 2007Well, this week, we went to find the waterfall with some of the youth in the second branch. It was this morning actually. It was a lot of fun. It had rained just last night, and so there was lots of mud and water. It was a blast. It actually rained a little in the morning too, so our youth at first didn’t want to go. But we went and gathered up a large group of them, and lots of them came. We had most of our youth, actually, at least most of the active ones, and even a few investigators. It was good. I took a ton of pics and videos, it’s a good thing I just bought a new 2 gb card in Singapore. So I had plenty of space. It rained a little, so my camera got wet, then the youth splashed me a lot when i was taking videos, so it got soaking wet, but amazingly, it still works. I was really happy it does. The youth were all asking us why we couldn’t come and swim with them, and I was severely tempted to swim anyways, but of course I didn’t, haha. They were all jumping off of the waterfall and it looked so much fun, haha. Oh well. I hope all of you enjoyed the map I posted last week, I am planning to do the same thing for Sri Lanka and for Singapore later, along with a link to all of the pics for that area. Just give me some time…. Haha. Anyways, that’s about all we did this week, so now here’s the pics… I’ll post some videos too.
Pics:
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| Bintulu – Trek to Waterfall |
VIDEOS: