May 19, 2014 - GAWAI PARTY!

Hey guys! So lots of things happened, both good and bad. I don't really want to talk about the bad things right now, but as for the good things: GAWAI PARTY!

On Saturday it was kind of a bonus day. We had the Gawai party at night, but it was also Christina's birthday that day too. So I decided to make brownies with Martha in the morning, and after that we went to suprise Christina (who was helping with the decorations at the church)

Bought some vanilla ice cream to top it all off. :) yummy. :)

That night we had our Gawai party that started around 7:30pm and we had a bunch of activities. My branch thought I was leaving so they included me in a lot of the activities.

One being an egg eating contest, trying to open and eat 4 hard boiled eggs the fastest. (I can open them up really quickly, but I threw up after 3. I hate hard boiled eggs by themselves.)

Then there was a dance competition to do the traditional Ngajat dance. There is techniques to doing it, but the people here just want to see the white people try doing it. It involved using a sword, so I enjoyed swinging it around (while still trying to not cut myself)

The 4 sungai plan elders (including me) did a dance to a mixture of songs that we put together including Oppan Gangam style, what does the fox say, cant touch this, etc. it was just a silly little dance we put together. :)

I took a lot of pictures, unfortunately I cant upload them right now. the computers are too slow. Hopeflly next week we'll be back to our normal internet kedai. Also, we got transfers. And I'm staying in Bintulu for the fifth transfer.

Love

Elder Vincent

May 11, 2014

Hey guys. This is just a short email because I just got to Skype with my family for Mother's Day.

Everything is going well for this week. We've met a new "old family". They've been in the church for a long time, the Ujang family. They just barely started coming to church these last couple weeks, and so we've met them a few times, and we've started teaching one of their granchildren, Alexander (12 years old), but we also have hopes to teach another part of their family with him as well, who is already married, named Indiana. They have a really huge family, and they all are really strong, but their work has been a hinderance to their coming to church, but they are going to try taking some time off to come to church.

Ujang even said that he wants to get all the old members back, and wants to see "hundreds" at church again. (Back in the day when the church was first here, people were being baptised by the hundreds, so there used to be a lot of members, but then they all disappeared)
So he may be a huge asset to our branch in the future. It's gonna be great.

This week we're planning for our Gawai party for Saturday. It's going to be a bunch of fun. :) :) So excited! 

Love,

Elder Vincent

May 5, 2014 GAWAI IN MALAYSIA

Hey guys. This week was the beginning of Gawai for us in Malaysia. It's next month, but they're starting to have parties this month before Gawai actually hits.

So as far as my week goes, we started out by playing ping pong with our zone at the church on Monday. That night we went to go see a family that I haven't been to for a while. The youth usually comes to church, but the mother hasn't been much, so I thought it'd be nice to visit them. Turns out their daughter was sick, and the mom wanted us to come over anyway to bless her.

Then on Wednesday we had a huge birthday party at the church for a member's bday.  On Thursday, we had another bday party for another member in the afternoon, and then the Gawai party on Thursday night. Turns out that Brother Pulver, one of the MTC teachers (not mine but Elder Ormsby's teacher) came to visit Bintulu and the rest of his areas. He picked the best time to come, Gawai!

Friday we cleaned up the church, cuz it was pretty messy after the Gawai party. Then that night we went to see Bujang's family.  At the end of the lesson, I asked who was good at the guitar, and Bujang's son Ronald, played I am a child of God as we sang. It was a fun little experience for us. :)

On Saturday, I went to the Salleh's and just had a good conversation with them about missionary work and the importance of finding your own testimonies. 

Also we started making a map for the area, because it'd be nice for new elders to be able to see who lives where on a nice clean map. That night we taught our younger recent converts for a little while.

Sunday night we met another less active family we had never met before. They've come to church for the last 2 weeks, and when we went, we found that some of them are not baptized, so we might be able to work with their family some more. There's a lot of potential in that family.  If we can get them all to come, we could have at least 10 more members come to church. That would be really awesome.

Anyway, that's been my week. :) Love you guys. Enjoy life, okay? :)

Elder Vincent