Week 26

Okay so I guess I should be sending you guys a weekly letter of what's going on.

This week starts out with a wonderful nonstop rain for about 4 days. It rained and rained and rained and rained some more. This is the reason why so many people are sick right now. That includes me and Elder Ormsby, although I got it a lot worse. He was able to endure through it a lot better than what I had.

On Tuesday, we were going to have our district meeting, but we were on our way to the chapel in Park City (Elder Stevens picks us up almost every time) and he hit a HUGE pothole. It literally slashed his tire open. So... we got to the side of the road and immediately the cars stacked up behind us (because there is no such thing as the side of the road besides a bunch of mud)

It was pretty funny because we were there for 2 hours and so many people were mad at us.

We didn't have a jack or lug wrench so there was no way we could put on a spare tire, so we had to wait for a mechanic, but the only way to get to us is through all of the traffic.

Needless to say, our meeting was postponed until Wednesday, which we got a taxi instead of having the senior couple getting us. We didn't want to go for a second time through that.

So something that has been driving us crazy are these cats that just meow and meow while we sleep, while we study, etc etc. Ormsby is ready to kill them. 

Our investigator, Evelyn, is doing really well. She is still reading, praying, and coming to church. We are teaching her about the plan of salvation right now, which was perfect because our topic for church yesterday was about the creation of the world. 

We found an American restaurant and we got fish and chips. It was delicious...just saying. :)

That's about it. I'm feeling a lot better now. :) Just hope we can do more work this week. :) 

Love you all!

Elder Vincent

P.S.

Ahhhhh already a fourth way done. :O :O

Week 25

Hey guys,

I have a pretty small email this week just because not a lot of exciting things happened this week to talk about. I didn't even take pictures! Sorry. It's been really rainy all week so I didn't want to risk taking it out of the house.

So this week involved Elder Reid going home. He is an Elder in our district that has been really really cool. He was a great leader. Always made sure we were working strong. It was really sad to see him leave even though I knew him for 6 weeks only. I will definitely miss him a lot!

So I got my transfers though. I am staying in Bintulu with Ormsby for another 6 weeks, which I'm pretty happy about. :) 

We had to buy more food on Wednesday because we didn't want to buy food on Monday. Why buy food if you're going to leave in a couple days? I'm completely poor from zone conference though. I have 100 ringgit (30 dollars) to last me the rest of the month. That usually lasts me about a week though.

We have continued to teach Evelyn. She came to church this week with Brother Wat's daughter. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and the Restoration and she has had a ton of questions for us.  We have her on date for next month sometime, so hopefully she continues to progress!

This is something I don't quite understand though. She told us that when she reads the Book of Mormon, she feels a peaceful type of cold. She gets so cold that she has to wear a jacket (and her house is pretty hot too). Then later she said she got hot and then cold. I guess it could be the spirit? I just have never heard that before.

One day we went adventuring a little bit. We took a van to the hospital, because there was a person that we needed to find. Couldn't find her though. Then we went to a place to look for houses. We tried finding the person selling new houses, but the guy didn't want to sell it to us because we were missionaries. Then we tried to get another van back home, but no van wanted to pick us up. So that was a tough day! Just everyone seemed to hate us, but ou well. We finally got a van that took us home for free! Yay I love free. :D :D

Other than that, my trainer, Elder Dailey has come to Bintulu! :D should be fun to have him again in my area.

Love you guys. The weeks are flying by now...

Miss you!

Elder Vincent

Week 24 - Conference in Singapore

Hello everyone!

This week was a very fun one, but also very productive as well. 

I guess I will start out with my Zone Conference.

I went to Zone Conference, which is in Singapura, on Wednesday. It's about an hour and a half plane ride there from Kuching, and it takes an hour to get to Kuching. (So I was on a total of four planes this week).

When we got there, we dropped our stuff off at the church and went to a place called Sentosa. It is basically like a fun American park, but better. We went to an aquarium this time, and saw a ton of really cool stuff. Sadly my camera didn't do it justice, but I got some pretty good ones. I'll try to send them with this letter. After we ate at chilis! Yamai-lah! (Delicious!)

Our zone conference was the next day on Thursday.  Elder Wilson, a member of the quorum of the seventy, came to talk to us. It was really cool! He shook every single person's hand and talked to us for a few seconds. I found out that he graduated from Highland High School in 1968! It was good to see a fellow Idahoan (because there aren't very many of those here).

He taught really good stuff about how to ask people to be baptised and how to use the Book of Mormon. (The cool thing was is that on Saturday and Sunday we asked 3 people to be baptized, and all of them said they would. Only one of them would commit to a specific date.  I will talk about that in a minute.

After our Zone Conference, we went to Marina Bay. That is the place that has all the really pretty stuff that if you Google Singapore, you will find everything about Marina Bay. We didn't go to the main areas. We heard there was a light show, so we went to that part instead.

There was this huge bowl there designed so that you could speak into it and everybody could hear from you anywhere around the bowl. It was pretty neat. We played with that until the light show started. But it wasn't what I was expecting. They shot water out of the lake and they played a 12 minute video on the water, and shot fire out at certain parts. It was really really cool!

Then we got home and we met all of the people we contacted last week. We had a really really long lesson with our chinese investigator, because he went on and and on about the Bible. We tried to end it, but he kept talking. It was successful though.  I just hope we don't have a 2-1/2 hour lesson again next time we go.

Then at Brother Wat's house, there is a family living with them. Evelyn is not a member, so we have been teaching her. We set her a baptismal date in February, so if I stay in Bintulu, I hope I get to see that happen. :) :)

At Sister Sheera's house, we had a great visit with her and her dad. Apparently we are the first elders out of many to get him to read the Book of Mormon. That was something cool I found out this week.

This morning, we went to the beach to have our "end of transfer" barbecue. We forget a lighter though. Good thing this is a Muslim country and everyone smokes, so we were able to get somebody to help us out. It's kind of funny though to think about though: "Thank you, Heavenly Father, for still having people that smoke on this earth." Somebody said that jokingly.

That's my week! I hope all of you are great. :) I am really hoping I stay in Bintulu, but I am still waiting on transfers. The mission president had a hard time getting home last night because his car battery died and so did his phone, so he wasn't able to finish transfers, so I just have to wait for now. 

I love you guys! Have a indubidibly great week.

Elder Vincent

 

Week 23

Hey guys! So this week was really great. Super busy too!

I will start out with my New Year's Eve day. No, I did not do any partying that night. I was way too tired and I knew that the next day would be too tiring for me anyway so I just didn't bother to stay up till midnight (plus I'm not supposed to anyways)

But we had a great couple surprises on the 31st of December. The first one was how we have been meeting Wat lately, and his daughter just appeared out of nowhere! so she started school and is staying with him until she finishes high-school (she is 13 now). That was a really nice surprise so he can be with some family now. :)

The other great miracle that happened this week was how we went to Sheera's house, who is one of the less active members that we went to see on Christmas, and we gave a Book of Mormon to her father, and he seems really interested in learning. So we now have a new investigator! We haven't really had any investigators besides Preston, but now that might change this week.

We went on splits this week on Friday. I went with Elder Reid, and we decided to do some contacting. We found 3 families that are really good potential investigators, and I am super excited for that. Then the next day, we found 3 more people we could teach. People were just literally flying at us this week that we have appointments with throughout this next week. It was so insane. We don't even have much time this week to do a lot, because we are going to Singapore on Wednesday and coming back on Friday, so we really have no time to meet people except Saturday and Sunday.

The other great thing that happened this week was Preston's baptism. We have been teaching him for a few weeks now, and he was really excited to be baptized. He is the only one in his family who hadn't been taught about the Gospel yet, but on Saturday he got baptized, along with the branch president's kid. Elder Ormsby baptized Preston (and he put him down in our GREEN WATER font pretty far so he made sure he was completely immersed)

I will have to send you a program sometime, but I will just send you a picture soon. :) That was basically all my week. Baptism, and lots of new people to teach. :D I have a feeling I will move again, because we are just having way too much success, which is really new to me. I definitely know that God is blessing us at this time. I'm truly grateful.

I love you guys!

Elder Vincent