Week 39

Hey everyone.

I don't have too many things to report other than a few special highlights for this week and a few exciting things:

Preston, my first recent convert blessed the sacrament for the first time with me.

B was confirmed as a member AND has started going to seminary.

I am learning how to do some native dances (but failing) for the Pre-Gawai party coming up in a couple weeks.

All of my recent converts came to church yesterday. That was pretty awesome. :) 

As for teaching other people, we are still teaching Evelyn's daughter, Olivia. She came to church for sacrament only, but she's starting to come more consistently. :)

Other than that, Gawai is coming up, and we are having a party on the 1st for the other branch, and then one on the 17th for my branch. It's gonna be AWESOME! :) :)

Sorry for this being so short. Not too much time this week.

Love,

Elder Vincent

 

 

 

Week 38 - Easter - Remembering Our Savior Jesus Christ

Hey guys again this week was a pretty awesome week. We got 4 of our investigators ready for Baptism; N, T, B, and S. What better week to be baptized than the week celebrating the resurrection of our Savior? Just a coincidence I guess, I didn't really think about it when setting this week for their baptism.

But anyway we had a few interesting things happen.

On Friday we had our Good Friday party.  Berindin put on a couple embarrassing videos of their youth from a couple years back. Then a little reenactment of the crucifixion and resurrection and a little singing which I helped with a bit. 

On Saturday we had our Baptism. We had our time set for 7:30 and absolutely nobody was there except our investigators, and B's mom came too. I was excited she came, but I was really scared that nobody was going to come, because it is a vacation weekend I guess. 

But by 8:00 there was the youth and some other people, so it wasn't too bad. Standard Iban Time I guess. ;)

I got to baptize N, T, and B.  Elder Sheranian baptized S.

Robecca and Azim gave talks, and then Brother Wong felt the spirit so strongly that he got up and gave an unplanned talk. That was pretty cool.

It went pretty late though so seminary got cancelled. 

That night, I was trying to find the keys. I left them somewhere when getting dressed, so I looked through my bag and looked everywhere. Then one of the members told me to pray. So we said a quick prayer together, and then the second I put my hand in my bag, the keys magically were there. That was an awesome experience that the kids went back home and told their families about it. Haha. :) The power of prayer, guys. :) 

Sunday I confirmed N and T. And Bujang confirmed S.  B was not able to attend for some reason or another. :/ but hopefully we can get that taken care of soon.

Also something that also was awkward was that we found out that S isn't technically an investigator.  Apparently in Arawak, they round up peoples ages. We even asked her birthday when we first started teaching her and it seemed like she was 9, but when we made the record, it turns out she is only 8, so she isn't a convert baptism. So technically I didn't need to teach her, but oh well. The lessons still strengthened the family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So now I'm headed off to the zoo to feed the alligators some live chickens. I'm pretty excited. This should be fun. :D :D :D

Love,

Elder Vincent

 

Week 37

Hello all again. Good to talk to you again. So much has happened in the last week that it feels like forever since I've written to you guys. So as some of you already know, Elder Ormsby was transferred to Ipoh this week and he is training a greenie. I think his name is Elder Marvin or something? English elder, so his posterity has been tainted. Maybe it is because he didn't drink enough Mountain Dew...

So I guess I'll start with Monday. We basically had a huge party with the church members on Monday night. People gave lots of gifts to Elder Ormsby for his going away. Lots of people signed his Book of Remembrance, etc etc, took lots of pictures, stuff like that. 

Tuesday we tried to send his sword home. We went to four different shipping places and they are all scared to send it probably because of everything with MH 370. So we have made plans for it to be sent to Kuching with our friend Mazura (because she goes to school in Kuching) so hopefullly it made it there, and then the senior couple will take care of it there. 

Wednesday we just went around meeting a lot of the members, and then had a party at Martha's house at night. Once it was time to go home, it was very difficult for everyone. The members all had tears in their eyes as well as Ormsby.  Even I did, but that is also because I know I will have to be doing the same thing in a month, or three if I'm lucky. 

Something that Elder Ormsby said that really has changed my perspective on missionary work was roughly around the lines of this, "missionary work isn't hard because of the people that reject you, it's hard because the times you have to say goodbye to the people that love you."

So Thursday morning he left and then Elder Sheranian came in that afternoon. He got settled in and then we were on our way to meet all the members. Honestly it's been such a blur lately of everything we've done. We've continued to teach our investigators. The people seem to like him, but losing a missionary that's been in one area for 7 months definitely was a hard adjustment for all of us. 

But anyway, I'm excited for the future of this branch. I honestly hope I have some more time in this area, because the members are so amazing. 

We finally got to meet the family of Therissa and we got to teach a small lesson to her mom. She seems interested, but she has some pretty ridiculous working hours. 

We also got to meet Olivia again and go over the Restoration with her. It's been about a week and half since we've got to sit down and have a lesson with her. 

We had general conference, but it didn't work out quite as well as we had hoped. On Saturday they were starting to watch the womens general conference but I changed to the actual morning session, 

and then on Sunday our branch watched the morning session, and the other branch didn't come, and so the other barnch watched the evening sesion, and then our branch didn't see that session. Kind of was messy. But there were some good talks in there. I'm going to be watching it in english later on so I can actually understand all of it. Listening to translators is tough because they use the most monotonous voices ever. It's hard to listen for an extended period of time.

Anyway, love you guys. Talk to you later. This be week 19 in Bintulu, the greatest area ever!!

 

 

 

 

Week 36 - Zone Conference In Singapore

Hey guys so just another week in the Malaysia Singapore Mission. This week we went to Singapore for our zone conference which was very needed.

But anyway we left on Wednesday and we had some time to go to Chili's before we needed to be back at the church so a huge group of us goes to Chili's except some of us get split up through the trains and what not, and we actually didn't know how to get to Chili's but fortunately we found a guy that worked there that was on his way to work so we followed him and he was the best server I've ever had. I had a Santa Fe salad, bottomless chips and salsa, and a chocolate cake to top it off. I was pretty content with my meal. We got back to the church for just a little training on family history from the Moulders and then later that night just chilled.

Zone conference was good too, but perhaps a little long. We had a brake for lunch for pizza, and then a 2 hour brake for dinner which we went to Carl's Jr for (YES FOR BACON!!!). Then I tried my first Monster before a zone activity, and I was just jumping off the walls for about 30 minutes, and then I had a hard time sleeping, but that's ok cuz I just knock out on planes. (What a blessing)

uhmm... yup then subway and what not. Ate some cookie crumbs... bought a few new ties and then the guy there gave out a lot of his ugliest ties out for free (with goofy and gumby and sailor moon, etc).

Then we get back going through KL and then back to Bintulu. We got back around 8pm so our night was basically over. The next day we just met with our investigators again and they're still progressing... Yup. That's about it.

Sunday rolls around and it's raining super hard. I left my umbrella at the church so I wore a garbage bag on the way there. (What a sight) We had a pretty good attendance despite the rain. Bujang (the father-in-law of our recent convert) had a daughter come from Kuching named Rainny. We met with them that night and had a nice little testimony meeting with them and taught about the importance of having a testimony and sharing it with others.

That's my week. Yay and now for transfers this week.

Just found out that  my companion is being transferred to Ipoh West Malaysia and I am staying here in Bintulu East Malaysia.  My new companion will be Elder Scott Sheranian.

Love,

Elder Vincent