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

February 23, 2015

Hey guys this week was great! It was actually Chinese New Year, and you would think that is a great time to meet people, but just like any other holiday nobody is home. We didn't get to meet a ton of people this week but there was a couple parties here and there from members that aren't Chinese (regardless of whether you are Chinese or not you still celebrate it no matter what).

So anyway we are still working with our investigators here S and St. They are so close to their baptism.  If we weren't going to Singapore this week then we might have them baptized this coming Saturday. They are way way cool. They have a very interesting history.  One of them being a caterer in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, you name it.

So anyway this week Elder Beliang and I have started the Beverly Hills Project. Essentially what Beverly Hill is (here in Sabah) is a set of 104 flats that have 84 doors each flat.  So there is more than 8000 doors to knock, and we have so far knocked on 250 doors and have gotten 7 potential investigators from it.  So we are just going to do our best in following up and just keep building up our teaching pool until it explodes. This is only a small portion of our work though.  Members obviously will always make the best work, as we work with them, make friendships with them and receive referrals from them.  9 times out of 10 referrals usually end up being the investigator that stays in the church far longer. But we see lots of promising stuff in just knocking too, so we will continue to do that every now and then.  I'm also going to categorize each door based on whether they are Chinese for the Chinese sisters to knock if they want because Chinese people do not like talking to us anyway unless its in Chinese.  Every door that has opened that has been Christian has accepted for us to come back.  That's a pretty stunning percentage so far.  Annndd yuup so this Wednesday I go to Singapore and hopefully coming back Friday. Each time I go to Singapore my passport gets jankier and jankier, So I never know for certain whether they'll let me come back. :P

So maybe next week, see you in KK or in Singapore. Still not sure yet. haha

Love

Elder Vincent

Ang Mo Kio - Just for kicks and giggles

Okay everyone. This week has been a crazy week.  So many things happened this week that I would like to list them off in a different email, but as of this Saturday, I was informed that another elder in another ward will be going home due to chronic migraines for the last 6 months.  So that means there has to be some sort of emergency transfer. ANDDD that happens to mean I am effected, being the only Malay elder in all of Singapore. So I am to be transferred later today to Kota Kinabalu (KK) with Elder Beliang in Branch 1.  I have been there before 3 or 4 times already, so I know the area. It is a great place to be, but I am very disappointed that I did not get to stay here in Singapore longer.   My assignment here for only 1-1/2 weeks was just way short.

As of this week, however. I enjoyed it very much. We got to do two service projects this week. Usually we do one a week, but this week we had an especially blessed week. The first one was with a less active member originally from Canada.  He needed our help to set up his trampoline park, in which he owns two and making his third one now. (He is the first one to ever do it in Singapore).

The second service project was with Sister Kei, a recent convert in our ward who has a friend that wanted to volunteer at the animal shelter. We got to clean up a bunch of dog's feces and what not, and play with them for a little while.

Other than that, we are making way good progress with our referrals and potentials. One named R is from Malaysia who is married to a less active member in our ward. She has never learned but is now interested in learning. Very intelligent, and even knew what baptism is. Even Christians I have taught in the past didn't know what baptism was. 

Our investigator, Junior, who has been to church the last 5 weeks but has been too busy to meet with us finally took the time to sit down with us. While we planned to teach him the plan of salvation, however he sat down and he asked "what does the church expect of me before I commit to be a member of your church?" So he basically demanded to know all of the commandments, and he wrote them all down, and committed to follow all of them. Pretty crazy lesson. Never in a million years did I think I would teach all the commandments in one sitting. 

We had to drop one of our old investigators though. He just showed no sign of progressing and no desire to go further... so yeah that's about it for him right now. 

And just lots of work with potentials and other referrals.  Nothing more to report other than I will be in a different area anyway today so here I come KK.

Love,

Elder Vincent

The Ang Mo Kio Ward

This week was incredible. I got into Singapore this Wednesday, but perhaps I can start at the beginning of the week.

So after I got transfer news we hurried to meet all of the members. Tuesday was ridiculous, because I had been up late trying to get myself and Elder Smith packed (cuz elder smith leaves on Tuesday to go home) so Tuesday I was dead tired already and I survived on maybe 5 or 6 cokes so I didn't go to sleep while meeting everyone. We took out one of our investigators for dinner that night. I was pretty sad to leave, because so many memories and so many friends I'm leaving behind. On Wednesday I woke up at 4 am to get my flight at 7 am...kind of early but I shared a taxi with Elder Jahali who had a flight at 6 am.

Anyway, got to Singapore just fine, except I got held up in immigration (surprise surprise) because I have the jankiest passport of all time. But I just gave them President Mains number and they called and let me get 90 days into Singapore with no problems. Get dressed, then look around until I find some other elders, who tell me that my companion is waiting for me in the other side of the airport. Get there, and meet the new missionaries from the MTC too.

During this last week, I have been able to teach a less active family with the stake president's counselor, President Kwan, in which he shared a powerful testimony. I have seen the Elders Quorum president do his utter best to persuade the importance of church to one of our investigators, I have seen another Member help her friend commit to a date of baptism, and I have had some wonderful food.

President Kwan shared something from his journal to this family about how HE 20 YEARS AGO had taught the husband and the brother (Elton and Fredric), and it was way cool to see how things have changed. After being baptized, going less active, but to see them be activated again in the last couple months has been incredible. This message that President Kwan shared not only touched Fredric and his wife Hazel, but Elton also, who has not allowed elders to visit him for quite some time. He is now excited to visit us this next Wednesday with his wife and has asked us to teach him about how he can have a happier marriage with his wife.  Isn't it a perfect introduction to teach the plan of salvation?

I love the Ang Mo Kio ward and it has changed me only in the last 5 days.

I am happy.