Week 30

Highlights from this week

• We had a baptism on Saturday, February 22, 2013 for Evelyn. She is a very strong investigator we have been teaching for the last couple months.
• The game is too easy. We have been receiving referrals nonstop for the last week, and so we have been calling missionary work "the game" for now. 
• We received transfers on the 22nd as well. Staying here for now! This will make 4 1/2 months for me, and 7+ months for Ormsby at the end of this transfer. 
• I blessed a car!

Hey guys. This week was awesome and crazy!

We basically went on a rampage to see all the members because Elder Ormsby was sure that he was moving this week, but we found out he is still staying here. That was fun. We made cookies for the members and now they are dying for the recipe so they can cook them themselves. 

We made a "contract" with one of the members that if they could read all of Ether and Moroni by the end of the transfer, we would make cookies for them. They won, so they got like 20 cookies, and now they are spoiled out of their minds! always want more more more, haha. :D just kidding I love that family. (martha) 

So like I said, Evelyn got baptized this week. She came back on Wednesday and asked if she could still be baptized this week, and so we asked our district leader, Elder Stewart, and he said it was OK. So we got everything ready, had her interviewed, and she got baptized by Elder Ormsby and I confirmed her on Sunday. It was pretty great! She now wants to learn English so she can understand us better. She still has a strong desire to learn.

Okay, I said "The game is too easy". Let me explain. The game is "missionary work" and right now, it is just way too easy. The way you win the "game" is to figure out how to work with the members to get referrals from them. These are some of the reasons why the game is too easy right now:

1. Received an investigator from a less active family that we met with last week, Felicia.

2. Received an investigator from a member that just became active that had not had her child baptized, but is older than 8 so we need to teach her.

3. After the baptism, we found out that Evelyn's daughter wasn't baptized and she wants to learn.

4. Two people came to church that we didn't ever expect to come to church. One was from an area that has been less active for a very long time, and now wants her child to be baptized. The other was a former investigator that was just begging us to have us baptize her.

5. This all happened within about 2-3 days. We were just so blown out of our minds that so many people want us to come over. Every single time that somebody came to us to ask us if we could teach so-and-so, Elder Ormsby and I would just look at each other and say "the game is too easy" so that has been our phrase of the week. 

But obviously the Lord has been preparing these people for a while now, and so we definitely can't take the credit for everything. I am being blessed now, but we will see what the Lord has in store for me later on :)

One last thing is Bujang, the father-in-law of my recent convert, Preston, invited us over for dinner on Friday. So when we got there, there was a ton of food! and so we asked what the reason for the dinner was. He told us in English "I want you to bless my new car. How do we bless it?"

And we are like...uhhh... pray for it? and he says "ou, ok. Vincent, I want you to pray for it, okay?" so...I blessed his new car! Haha. :D :D It was the best. 

and that was my week! Yup. How are all of you doing? :) 

Love,

Elder Vincent

 

 

Week 29

Hello guys. So time to let you in on some of the things that happened this week!

An interesting thing that happened was poop shower! so I was in my room while Elder Ormsby was showering, and he shouts out something like "gross!" he stops the shower and shows me what happened.  Brown liquid was coming out of the shower! He was rinsing his hair so his eyes were closed, but when he opened his eyes, he thought it was blood. We checked every pipe in the house and this brown liquid came out of every single place. The hose, the sink, the toilet, everything had this brown liquid. We took a cup of it and smelled it...Poop! He literally showered in poop! Disgusting right? So we tell the members about it and they are just like "ou thats no big deal that happens all the time" and I'm like whaaaaaaat.....but anyway I'm glad that didn't happen to me. It destroyed our shower.

Anyway, onto missionary work, right? :)

So this week our investigator Evelyn "balik kampung" (went back to hometown) to see her sick kid, so she won't be back until the 20th, meaning her baptismal date will be rescheduled...But that will be okay. She seems to be very very faithful and she is still reading the book of mormon while she is with her kid.

But a good thing happened this week with our branch. Elder Toney, the Assistant to the President, came to our area to follow us around to our appointments. He is an old elder in my branch, so he knows all the people already. The people here LOVE and ADORE old missionaries that come back, so he was able to talk to 3 people that are always virtually impossible to meet, and he set up appointments for us later in the week. (this was Wednesday that he came) We all met them and I think that was really good for our branch. It opened some doors for us. :)

Elder Toney brought 2 packages for me! :D which was sad for Ormsby and Shorts because he didn't bring theirs (they didn't have enough room for everybody's packages but Ormsby got his package today from the zone leaders) really nice stuff in there, thank you Mom! I have already made 3 bracelets for members but I'll give them out when I am leaving this area, probably. 

We made cookies for some of the members too. It was kind of a disaster in the kitchen because we were forgetting something in the cookies but we didn't know what. They just weren't cooking very well. They would bubble really bad and just flatten out really easily, but eventually we got them to cook okay... the members loved them though! They were dying for the recipe. :P So I am going to have to translate the recipe and some people even want us to come over to teach them how to make them. That was a pretty fun experience.

So I am sick again...Yay...Elder Stewart got sick and then shortly after I got sick. This morning I woke up with the runs, and a few days ago I puked a few times. Ormsby also has been puking a lot...I think there is something up with the air, water, and food in Bintulu. Grr...so it's been a little tough. but I will live!

I found out that transfers are going to be next Tuesday, meaning that if I am moving, I will leave on Tuesday. This means that I will still be on next Monday like normal, but we might be going to the beach again for our last get-together (honestly I am not really up to going to the beach cuz it takes too much time).

There is a chance that I will be training somebody, so that means I will leave on Monday, and get back Tuesday night ,so I probably will email on Wednesday if I train. I will try to let you know what is happening. :)

Okay sorry for the long email, but yesterday we went to Niah Caves (or Gua Niah). We spent the night at the Bandar Jaya house on Sunday so that we wouldn't have a hard time getting there in the morning. They live right by McDonalds so we had that for breakfast! :D :D

In the morning we left around 9 to go to the caves, and it was about 2 and a half hours there...sooo long! when we got there, the Miri zone was there at the same time. So we got to hang out with some of them there. One of them that I knew was Sister Tai, who was in Kuching with me. Really fun! so the caves were fun. I got to squeeze myself through a very small hole and look through a crevice down into this huge pillar that goes down pretty far. Did I mention that I got covered in bat poop on the way?

And last but not least, I was pretty happy about my language skills. I got to speak in a mixed version of chinese and iban to this one lady during the trip to the Niah Caves, and THEN I got to speak Czech to these two ladies that were visiting. I had a full conversation with them and didn't have a hard time understanding them, even though it's been like...8 months since I've heard a word of czech. :P 

that was a goooood week. :)

love you guys! sending some pictures soon! :)

Elder Vincent

 Elder Dailey in Cave with me

 Czech Lady I was able to speak with in Czech

Week 28

Hello again

This week was pretty good. The work was slowed down a bit because we had to prepare for our mission president coming for our district conference, which is rather ironic because the theme of our district conference was, "Hastening the Work."

Before I talk about that though I want to talk about a couple people, including our investigator Evelyn!

So we have been teaching her for the last few weeks and we are finally starting to get her husband involved in it, trying to reactivate him too. He is just sooo busy with work. Evelyn has had a problem with drinking coffee, but she told us on Sunday that she already stopped for 2 days, which is sooo cool. She is just the best! She even came to district conference which is hard because it is a 30 minute ride there and she doesn't own a car, but we were able to get people on a van there. :)

Elizabeth, who is Wat's daughter, came back from school in Kuala Lumpur just for a week vacation. She is a really strong member but she is SOOOO Nakal (naughty) she is really funny but just loves to heckle us a ton. She went back on Saturday.

We saw Sheera again (hopefully I can get a picture of her to you soon, I feel like I am just telling you about people without faces to you, but just imagine a chocolate-skinned woman with 2 little kids running around haha) and we talked about faith with her. She definitely has strong faith and hopefully we can rekindle it enough to get her to be active again, because she is just so powerful she could help our branch out a lot.

We found out this week that we are having different transfers. Instead of moving on Thursday, the 26th or something, we will move on the 24th, the Monday, and we find out when we go on the 22nd, Saturday just through a phone call. Probably will still email on Monday that week but just don't know when. I am thinking Elder Ormsby will be leaving and I will have somebody else come, but I doubt I am training.

The reason I think that is because we had interviews with President Mains and he talked a lot about the new people coming in to Elder Ormsby, but not me, so I probably will just get another older missionary. We will see though! :)

District Conference was on Saturday night and Sunday morning. It was sooo awesome. It was the first time I actually understood everything they said, because the people spoke Malay so that everybody could understand (except the mission president and his wife).

Our member, Bujang gave a talk on enduring to the end, and it was just really cool to see him be so excited about his talk. He considered it a privilege to speak at district conference. (Which seems very backwards to how we see talking in stake conference, right?)

Overall a good week. :)

Love you all.!

Elder Vincent

Week 27 - Chinese New Year

Hello everyone!

This week was awesome, and it also made me just appreciate the area I am in more and more.

We are still having a rough time with illness! It's either me or my companion that gets sick and it's just a continuous cycle of us getting sick. It's getting a little ridiculous, but I think now we are both okay. :)

So this last Monday we had a pretty chill evening. We went to the top of the hill that you can see everything. It's a really cool sight and we watched the sun go down at 6:30 like it does every day of the year. Very beautiful sight! :) We brought some ice cream with us which was a bad idea, but delicious. The hill almost killed us because it is soooo steep. 

This week we went finding in an area that we thought would have some good potential. We found a really awesome family that is from the Kenya tribe here in Malaysia. It consists of a bunch of relatives, and we taught them on Sunday about the Restoration. We asked if they would come to church and then they were like "Yes, of course I want to come!" and then we later asked them if they would be baptized if they knew all of this was true and they were like "Sure! Let's do it!" So we now have 6 new investigators! Bam. I'll talk about them all more later when I get to know them better.

The downside is that we have a district conference in Park City so we can't necessarily bring them to church cuz they have no way of transportation.... Bah! :P

Evelyn is doing well. :) We are about half way done teaching her. Continually coming to church. She was sick this week so we gave her a blessing and she got better within a day or two. :)

Chinese new year was this week, which was actually not very fun...Everybody went back to their kampung where all of their family stays, gets drunk, etc etc. (not the members but everybody else) So it was virtually impossible to meet with anybody because everybody was gone. There were some ups to it though. The fireworks were super super awesome. We went to bed at 11 and then BAM fireworks all around the area. I have a video of it so I will show it later when I get home. :)

Then for the 31st, it was Elder Ormsby's and my 6 month mark, plus we couldn't make any appointments with anybody cuz everyone was gone, so we went to Similajau beach. It was supppper awesome. Very beautiful there. That's why I now appreciate my area better. It's not just a trash place, but it has gorgeous scenery too. :)

After the Chinese new year, we had some cleaning to do so we got rid of our garbage the way everybody else does it - BURN IT!!! in our front yard. It was pretty fun, but there were some spiders in the boxes we burnt, so it scared me to pick them up.

Speaking of spiders, spiders have been coming into our house a lot more lately, both small and big. I have killed quite a few just with my shower hose lately, so showering is not as fun as it used to be. Haha. :D Just kidding.  Dad asked if I was a spider slayer now.   Yes I am a spider slayer but I'm still scared to sleep at night because you never know who is in bed with you. :P

This morning we went to play futsal with quite a few of the members. It was a lot of fun to play with them, although I'm not very good at it. :) Still need to practice. It was a very hot day to do it though, but a lot of people have a day off of work so we had our recent convert, Lipson come.  Futsal is basically just like soccer, except its in a small caged outside court that's about as big as our basketball court in our chapel. It has boundaries though so if it goes out then you loose the ball, just like basketball.

And...as for this week, we have our mission president coming for district conference which should be fun. Although I have no idea how we are going to get a ride there because vans don't go out late at night. Hooray for hitch hiking! :D :D

Love you all, have an awesome week.

Elder Vincent

 

 

 

 

  A Bead Tie I'm Working On

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