March 30, 2015 -District Conference, Take 2 in KK

Hey guys this week was absolutely great. We were so busy, so here are just some highlights of things that happened:

1) Taught a girl named Azura. Contacted by the sisters and when we started teaching her she was interested in what we had to teach but she had the strangest question ever. She opened up the bible and went to the scripture that said about being baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. So... what is the names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost? Well the Father and Son is easy for me, but the Holy Ghost? where got a name? haha

2) Knocked on a door with an Indian Biddayuh campur of a guy. Really big guy. we introduce ourselves as missionaries and he says, just a second I need to get a shirt, and I'm just thinking, yup he's going for the gun. But he actually gets a shirt on and invites us to teach him. Way nice guy, and he said he really wanted to try our church out next week. His name is Abraham.

3) Sports night on Wednesday. Way fun and we had lots of good things come from it too.  Two friends came with KK 2nd Branch members and got two new investigators for the sisters (hopefully??).

4) President will be rasing our support to 900 ringgit next month since we have all been telling him we have been using maybe 200 ringgit from personal to survive. That will be nice.  I have been ok since I had extra money from Singapore.

5) We got two of our recent converts to come to a new member meeting early and one of them shared their conversion story. I was way impressed with him, being so new but being willing to share with others. :)

6) At district conference we had these two random families from Texas and Arizona, but living in Saudi Arabia, come to our conference on Sunday. They were vacationing in Sabah and decided to come to church, not knowing about our conference. Seemed way cool. First time I've seen LDS Americans besides missionaries in Malaysia.

7) We've had the Tawau elders in our house for the last 3 nights and it's been quite entertaining... Tough to get them around sometimes to appointments but it's been a blast just like the last time I was in KK when I was serving in Sandakan. Tonight we should have a blast at another family home evening. :) 

-Love Elder Vincent

 

March 15, 2015

Hey guys so if you haven't heard it was pi day yesterday (for you) and I wanted to bake a pie. Went to the store to buy some stuff, and then realized that I didn't have an oven...

I also received my mission call as of today! (for you again, my day is already passed).

 We had a great activity with our branch, played futsal with our priesthood quorum. Our team was kinda rigged though because we had 2 fat guys on our team, and only 2 people that can run around the place, while the other team was stacked with good players. In the end we fought pretty well 16-21.

This week I actually got sick, probably from wasabi. I don't know for sure, but it was probably wasabi, the most disgusting, spicy thing I've ever had. I was puking for an entire day, it was awful. Then the next day I still didn't want to eat anything. Now i'm OK and out and about.

We met with our district president who told us a lot of way helpful things on what he wants to do with the district, but needs our help. I think this transfer will be a lot of fun because everybody in our zone except 2 elders are down to do more activities and more branch-related stuff. One elder is doing a service project of cutting people's hair each Wednesday before district conference so KK looks the most "fly" before the 28th of this month. ;)

This week still following up with a bunch of our potentials. Nothing too positive but we are teaching a girl named Em that is doing really well. She was sick this Sunday, but she has been coming every week since she came to KK. We talked a bit about baptism with her and she said she would be baptised once she learns a little more. On top of that, I get to learn another language called Murut. :) as that is her native language.

March 8, 2015

Hey guys! Baptism this week.

Elder Newing baptized both of them though as he was the first one to start teaching them. I had been teaching them for the last 4 weeks though.

Well everybody was sick during the baptism because all of them ate the same pork that was not good at all, and then the next day they came to church, received the Holy Ghost, and left because they couldn't hold themselves together for three hours, :P We got  to take the sacrament to a couple of their family that just were so bad they couldn't get up. I finally met my branch president this week, as he came back to KK for a day just for the baptism before he went back to KL again.

We had Elder Funk also come this week and train us how to be more efficient missionaries. He gave me the example of a missionary starting to talk about the super bowl to his family and asked if my parents told me about who won the super bowl. I told him I didn't even remember it was the super bowl.  Now that I think about it I guess I heard about it but it seems like forever ago.

It was way good training and I was super excited about it.

 Other than that we found a way solid investigator that was referred to us last week and she has now been coming for two weeks now. She came back from her village and she said it's weird to her to speak Malay because she speaks only Murut in her village. The way to say "I want to eat" is "Asi'a aon angkan." way hard language to pronounce. :P

But then this Sunday we also got another 2 referrals, way way cool right now. That's when you know members are actually wanting to share the gospel with their friends and family. :)

And.... uhm... thats about all. for this week. I'm gonna try sending some pics with this but not sure if this computer can send any. 

and transfer news: Still in KK with Elder Beliang. :D

March 2, 2015

This week was just one of those weeks again... Hmm... Well to start off with we had a pretty good start of the week. We went to Singapore this Wednesday for zone conference.  During zone conference they focused on our new mission plan for 2015. Having achieved 365 out of 545 baptisms last year, the goal for this year is 585, and then split based on our districts. Each district is reasonable except Kuala Lumpur. They have a goal for 175 this year, and yet they only achieved 20 baptisms last year. But if they work really hard I know they can get it.  Bintulu, my favorite area's goal is 40 baptisms, and I know the elders there and they said that they are getting 20 baptisms within the next month, so I have high hopes for the growth there.

Here in Kota Kinabalu, we are just barley pushing to it. My area is barely starting to speed up in the work. I got here with nothing, and now we have 2 to be baptised this week, 3 referrals, 2 of which have started to come to church already a couple times, and multiple contacts to work with. I feel like when coming into areas like this, it's like being on a bike in the highest gear. When trying to start the bike, it's hard to pedal, so you have to stand up and pedal really hard to get it going. But if people have already been pedalling prior to you on the bike and just jump right on, then the pedalling can only get faster and faster. So the point is to keep building up the area no matter what.  Always keep a teaching pool and lots of work for the next elders to replace you. :) 

This week is going to be interesting also. We have Elder Funk doing a mission tour in our mission and we meet him on Tuesday morning. We are having all of Sandakan and Tawau elders come to KK to meet him. They should be coming later today.

Then after that we are going to go hard in our area. we need to really pump up our work as soon as possible. I have high hopes for this area and can see much potential, but it's so crucial that we find who we are going to baptise now! At zone conference, we were taught about being tigers and survivors.  In the war when bombing, there are people that go to the sites that they are required to bomb, and then come back. There are others that go and if they have fuel to hit more sites than required, they come back late. They were called the tigers. It's because of the tigers that the war was ended quicker. Same here, we have the war against Satan, and we can't just be survivors. No matter how tired we are as missionaries, we must hit that other place, even if our fuel is low. LETS GOOOOO!!!!!

Elder Vincent