Week 30

Highlights from this week

• We had a baptism on Saturday, February 22, 2013 for Evelyn. She is a very strong investigator we have been teaching for the last couple months.
• The game is too easy. We have been receiving referrals nonstop for the last week, and so we have been calling missionary work "the game" for now. 
• We received transfers on the 22nd as well. Staying here for now! This will make 4 1/2 months for me, and 7+ months for Ormsby at the end of this transfer. 
• I blessed a car!

Hey guys. This week was awesome and crazy!

We basically went on a rampage to see all the members because Elder Ormsby was sure that he was moving this week, but we found out he is still staying here. That was fun. We made cookies for the members and now they are dying for the recipe so they can cook them themselves. 

We made a "contract" with one of the members that if they could read all of Ether and Moroni by the end of the transfer, we would make cookies for them. They won, so they got like 20 cookies, and now they are spoiled out of their minds! always want more more more, haha. :D just kidding I love that family. (martha) 

So like I said, Evelyn got baptized this week. She came back on Wednesday and asked if she could still be baptized this week, and so we asked our district leader, Elder Stewart, and he said it was OK. So we got everything ready, had her interviewed, and she got baptized by Elder Ormsby and I confirmed her on Sunday. It was pretty great! She now wants to learn English so she can understand us better. She still has a strong desire to learn.

Okay, I said "The game is too easy". Let me explain. The game is "missionary work" and right now, it is just way too easy. The way you win the "game" is to figure out how to work with the members to get referrals from them. These are some of the reasons why the game is too easy right now:

1. Received an investigator from a less active family that we met with last week, Felicia.

2. Received an investigator from a member that just became active that had not had her child baptized, but is older than 8 so we need to teach her.

3. After the baptism, we found out that Evelyn's daughter wasn't baptized and she wants to learn.

4. Two people came to church that we didn't ever expect to come to church. One was from an area that has been less active for a very long time, and now wants her child to be baptized. The other was a former investigator that was just begging us to have us baptize her.

5. This all happened within about 2-3 days. We were just so blown out of our minds that so many people want us to come over. Every single time that somebody came to us to ask us if we could teach so-and-so, Elder Ormsby and I would just look at each other and say "the game is too easy" so that has been our phrase of the week. 

But obviously the Lord has been preparing these people for a while now, and so we definitely can't take the credit for everything. I am being blessed now, but we will see what the Lord has in store for me later on :)

One last thing is Bujang, the father-in-law of my recent convert, Preston, invited us over for dinner on Friday. So when we got there, there was a ton of food! and so we asked what the reason for the dinner was. He told us in English "I want you to bless my new car. How do we bless it?"

And we are like...uhhh... pray for it? and he says "ou, ok. Vincent, I want you to pray for it, okay?" so...I blessed his new car! Haha. :D :D It was the best. 

and that was my week! Yup. How are all of you doing? :) 

Love,

Elder Vincent

 

 

Week 29

Hello guys. So time to let you in on some of the things that happened this week!

An interesting thing that happened was poop shower! so I was in my room while Elder Ormsby was showering, and he shouts out something like "gross!" he stops the shower and shows me what happened.  Brown liquid was coming out of the shower! He was rinsing his hair so his eyes were closed, but when he opened his eyes, he thought it was blood. We checked every pipe in the house and this brown liquid came out of every single place. The hose, the sink, the toilet, everything had this brown liquid. We took a cup of it and smelled it...Poop! He literally showered in poop! Disgusting right? So we tell the members about it and they are just like "ou thats no big deal that happens all the time" and I'm like whaaaaaaat.....but anyway I'm glad that didn't happen to me. It destroyed our shower.

Anyway, onto missionary work, right? :)

So this week our investigator Evelyn "balik kampung" (went back to hometown) to see her sick kid, so she won't be back until the 20th, meaning her baptismal date will be rescheduled...But that will be okay. She seems to be very very faithful and she is still reading the book of mormon while she is with her kid.

But a good thing happened this week with our branch. Elder Toney, the Assistant to the President, came to our area to follow us around to our appointments. He is an old elder in my branch, so he knows all the people already. The people here LOVE and ADORE old missionaries that come back, so he was able to talk to 3 people that are always virtually impossible to meet, and he set up appointments for us later in the week. (this was Wednesday that he came) We all met them and I think that was really good for our branch. It opened some doors for us. :)

Elder Toney brought 2 packages for me! :D which was sad for Ormsby and Shorts because he didn't bring theirs (they didn't have enough room for everybody's packages but Ormsby got his package today from the zone leaders) really nice stuff in there, thank you Mom! I have already made 3 bracelets for members but I'll give them out when I am leaving this area, probably. 

We made cookies for some of the members too. It was kind of a disaster in the kitchen because we were forgetting something in the cookies but we didn't know what. They just weren't cooking very well. They would bubble really bad and just flatten out really easily, but eventually we got them to cook okay... the members loved them though! They were dying for the recipe. :P So I am going to have to translate the recipe and some people even want us to come over to teach them how to make them. That was a pretty fun experience.

So I am sick again...Yay...Elder Stewart got sick and then shortly after I got sick. This morning I woke up with the runs, and a few days ago I puked a few times. Ormsby also has been puking a lot...I think there is something up with the air, water, and food in Bintulu. Grr...so it's been a little tough. but I will live!

I found out that transfers are going to be next Tuesday, meaning that if I am moving, I will leave on Tuesday. This means that I will still be on next Monday like normal, but we might be going to the beach again for our last get-together (honestly I am not really up to going to the beach cuz it takes too much time).

There is a chance that I will be training somebody, so that means I will leave on Monday, and get back Tuesday night ,so I probably will email on Wednesday if I train. I will try to let you know what is happening. :)

Okay sorry for the long email, but yesterday we went to Niah Caves (or Gua Niah). We spent the night at the Bandar Jaya house on Sunday so that we wouldn't have a hard time getting there in the morning. They live right by McDonalds so we had that for breakfast! :D :D

In the morning we left around 9 to go to the caves, and it was about 2 and a half hours there...sooo long! when we got there, the Miri zone was there at the same time. So we got to hang out with some of them there. One of them that I knew was Sister Tai, who was in Kuching with me. Really fun! so the caves were fun. I got to squeeze myself through a very small hole and look through a crevice down into this huge pillar that goes down pretty far. Did I mention that I got covered in bat poop on the way?

And last but not least, I was pretty happy about my language skills. I got to speak in a mixed version of chinese and iban to this one lady during the trip to the Niah Caves, and THEN I got to speak Czech to these two ladies that were visiting. I had a full conversation with them and didn't have a hard time understanding them, even though it's been like...8 months since I've heard a word of czech. :P 

that was a goooood week. :)

love you guys! sending some pictures soon! :)

Elder Vincent

 Elder Dailey in Cave with me

 Czech Lady I was able to speak with in Czech

Week 28

Hello again

This week was pretty good. The work was slowed down a bit because we had to prepare for our mission president coming for our district conference, which is rather ironic because the theme of our district conference was, "Hastening the Work."

Before I talk about that though I want to talk about a couple people, including our investigator Evelyn!

So we have been teaching her for the last few weeks and we are finally starting to get her husband involved in it, trying to reactivate him too. He is just sooo busy with work. Evelyn has had a problem with drinking coffee, but she told us on Sunday that she already stopped for 2 days, which is sooo cool. She is just the best! She even came to district conference which is hard because it is a 30 minute ride there and she doesn't own a car, but we were able to get people on a van there. :)

Elizabeth, who is Wat's daughter, came back from school in Kuala Lumpur just for a week vacation. She is a really strong member but she is SOOOO Nakal (naughty) she is really funny but just loves to heckle us a ton. She went back on Saturday.

We saw Sheera again (hopefully I can get a picture of her to you soon, I feel like I am just telling you about people without faces to you, but just imagine a chocolate-skinned woman with 2 little kids running around haha) and we talked about faith with her. She definitely has strong faith and hopefully we can rekindle it enough to get her to be active again, because she is just so powerful she could help our branch out a lot.

We found out this week that we are having different transfers. Instead of moving on Thursday, the 26th or something, we will move on the 24th, the Monday, and we find out when we go on the 22nd, Saturday just through a phone call. Probably will still email on Monday that week but just don't know when. I am thinking Elder Ormsby will be leaving and I will have somebody else come, but I doubt I am training.

The reason I think that is because we had interviews with President Mains and he talked a lot about the new people coming in to Elder Ormsby, but not me, so I probably will just get another older missionary. We will see though! :)

District Conference was on Saturday night and Sunday morning. It was sooo awesome. It was the first time I actually understood everything they said, because the people spoke Malay so that everybody could understand (except the mission president and his wife).

Our member, Bujang gave a talk on enduring to the end, and it was just really cool to see him be so excited about his talk. He considered it a privilege to speak at district conference. (Which seems very backwards to how we see talking in stake conference, right?)

Overall a good week. :)

Love you all.!

Elder Vincent

Week 27 - Chinese New Year

Hello everyone!

This week was awesome, and it also made me just appreciate the area I am in more and more.

We are still having a rough time with illness! It's either me or my companion that gets sick and it's just a continuous cycle of us getting sick. It's getting a little ridiculous, but I think now we are both okay. :)

So this last Monday we had a pretty chill evening. We went to the top of the hill that you can see everything. It's a really cool sight and we watched the sun go down at 6:30 like it does every day of the year. Very beautiful sight! :) We brought some ice cream with us which was a bad idea, but delicious. The hill almost killed us because it is soooo steep. 

This week we went finding in an area that we thought would have some good potential. We found a really awesome family that is from the Kenya tribe here in Malaysia. It consists of a bunch of relatives, and we taught them on Sunday about the Restoration. We asked if they would come to church and then they were like "Yes, of course I want to come!" and then we later asked them if they would be baptized if they knew all of this was true and they were like "Sure! Let's do it!" So we now have 6 new investigators! Bam. I'll talk about them all more later when I get to know them better.

The downside is that we have a district conference in Park City so we can't necessarily bring them to church cuz they have no way of transportation.... Bah! :P

Evelyn is doing well. :) We are about half way done teaching her. Continually coming to church. She was sick this week so we gave her a blessing and she got better within a day or two. :)

Chinese new year was this week, which was actually not very fun...Everybody went back to their kampung where all of their family stays, gets drunk, etc etc. (not the members but everybody else) So it was virtually impossible to meet with anybody because everybody was gone. There were some ups to it though. The fireworks were super super awesome. We went to bed at 11 and then BAM fireworks all around the area. I have a video of it so I will show it later when I get home. :)

Then for the 31st, it was Elder Ormsby's and my 6 month mark, plus we couldn't make any appointments with anybody cuz everyone was gone, so we went to Similajau beach. It was supppper awesome. Very beautiful there. That's why I now appreciate my area better. It's not just a trash place, but it has gorgeous scenery too. :)

After the Chinese new year, we had some cleaning to do so we got rid of our garbage the way everybody else does it - BURN IT!!! in our front yard. It was pretty fun, but there were some spiders in the boxes we burnt, so it scared me to pick them up.

Speaking of spiders, spiders have been coming into our house a lot more lately, both small and big. I have killed quite a few just with my shower hose lately, so showering is not as fun as it used to be. Haha. :D Just kidding.  Dad asked if I was a spider slayer now.   Yes I am a spider slayer but I'm still scared to sleep at night because you never know who is in bed with you. :P

This morning we went to play futsal with quite a few of the members. It was a lot of fun to play with them, although I'm not very good at it. :) Still need to practice. It was a very hot day to do it though, but a lot of people have a day off of work so we had our recent convert, Lipson come.  Futsal is basically just like soccer, except its in a small caged outside court that's about as big as our basketball court in our chapel. It has boundaries though so if it goes out then you loose the ball, just like basketball.

And...as for this week, we have our mission president coming for district conference which should be fun. Although I have no idea how we are going to get a ride there because vans don't go out late at night. Hooray for hitch hiking! :D :D

Love you all, have an awesome week.

Elder Vincent

 

 

 

 

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