January 27, 2015

This week was pretty crazy. I still have no idea how this week went by so fast.
This Tuesday I went on splits with one of my zone leaders, then the AP's came on splits with them that night, and then I had to go on splits again with the district leader. Then Thursday we had to get ready for President to come to do Mains house inspections. We still haven't been able to get everything in order because we just moved all of the church's beds, fridges, and other furniture all in our house while we wait to find a new house to move into. So while getting that in, we got another person on date this week and hoping to get another couple people on date too. A member's husband is down to use the van to pick people up, and he may want to be baptized as we continue teaching him too. :) 

Brother Lawren got his mission call.  His video of him opening call I am in, and I guess it's on Facebook already.  I joked about training him at the end of my mission and finishing his training. Way exciting too.

Friday President came and I got some counsel that really has touched me to help me just keep going and never slow down until the end. I hope to keep it to heart until the end of my mission.  District conference took up the rest of the week and unfortunately it rained all day long and my investigators have to walk a whole hour to get there, so they couldn't attend. It was pretty sad. But what can you do? Just keep working with them to help them have stronger faith and come as much as they can.

I read this verse and I want to start finishing my emails to home with a scripture. just for kicks and giggles, I translated this one into Iban (there is no Iban book of Mormon yet)

Lalu dalam semua masa, enggau semua endur, iya deka muka ka mulut iya lalu nusui injilKu enggau nyawa baka terumpit, maya siang enggau malam. Lalu aku deka meri ngagai iya pengering ti enda kala dipeda di antara mensia.             Ajar enggau Sempekat 24:12

Doctrine and Covenants 24:12

P.S.  Just got transfer news.  I'm being transferred to Singapore and my companion is going to Sandakan.

Called to the Singapore Mission

January 19, 2015

Hey guys! This week was pretty good, save the wrecked shirts.

So about that uhmm...Well let's just say Sibu has been raining non-stop for the last week and trying to get to appointments has been interesting. Wet all day long, cold all day long. My mudflap broke off and so about 5 of my white shirts got destroyed from muddy water. I bought a new one, but it wasn't long enough so a couple days later I modified it to extend twice as long so the water doesn't splash up and hit my shirt. I ended up just buying a jacket to wear while I'm biking, not just because I am getting dirty, but I have been so cold here!  I thought I would never say that but I truly have been cold this whole week.

Anyway, this week we had our zone meeting, so we had a bunch of elders in our house.  Twelve to be exact. Eight of them slept on these taco mats that we have laying down. We also moved our house out because our contract suddenly ended and nobody had warned us. Fortunately we got the whole zone to help us out to clean it up.

We also had some great experiences with our investigators. We got two more investigators on date for next month. They are working out way well. I got the opportunity to talk to a half active member and have maybe one of my most spiritual lessons about the temple and his desire to go to the temple this year so he can get the work done for his deceased wife. Way cool desire and I hope to be able to get him started.

:)

This week is gonna be pretty busy.

Tuesday I'm going on splits with Elder Smith my zone leader

Then Wednesday I'm going on splits with Elder Thatcher my district leader

then Thursday and Friday we are having interviews with President Mains

And then Saturday and Sunday we are having district conference.

Got to do a lot of stuff before district conference happens...

Love you guys!

Elder Vincent

January 12, 2015

Hey guys. I don't have a lot of time again so I will just put some hi-lights. And also I know that those that are on missions don't have time to read them, (unless you are a lot better at reading emails than I am) I'll just put some highlights for this week:

• Got an investigator on date for 7th of February. Hoping to get 3 or 4 more on date this week.
• Moved houses this week to the zoneleaders house. Somebody kinda failed to tell us that we are getting kicked out on the 15th.
• we have the entire zone together this week for zone meeting so we will be bowling later this afternoon
• got to meet one of my old investigators from Bintulu. She is moving to Sibu for university...maybe
• I now have only 6 months left on my mission. Time to go even harder this year before I come home!
• Found a great way to get people to church by bus. It involves gathering people from house to house and getting to the bus stop which is about 15 minute walk away. Lots of less actives don't have transport so maybe we can use that as a way to get them back.
• I  ran into 2 different Chinese people within 30 minutes that were willing to talk to us for a while. (That doesn't happen too often. But it's a referral to the Chinese elders anyway)

Love you guys! Have a great week. Maybe soon it will be warm enough to go play futsal or badminton.

Wait do you guys even do that stuff? ;)

Elder Vincent

Happy New Years Everyone!

Happy New Years everyone!

For those who are lazy to read a huge email, here is just the jist of my week. I honestly get a bunch of emails from other missionaries and I'm way too lazy to read them all. Tl;dr

3 investigators came to church this week by WALKING there for an hour.

English class was successful. We had maybe 10 come this week and then some came later.

One of our new investigators asked us to help him get to baptism before we even invited him to baptism.

I had exchanges with one of my zone leaders on Saturday. We had to go through multiple floods on our bikes to get from house to house.

Another plane has gone down. Third one this year.

We are bringing back family home evenings in Sibu.  An elder before destroyed family home evenings and so we are going to bring it back starting on the 22nd of January.

 FLOODED ROAD - RIDING THROUGH IT ON MY BIKE

FLOODED ROAD - NOTICE THE KIDS SWIMMING IN IT

Christmas Week

Hey guys! This week was so crazy! We basically had parties all through Monday to Friday and then didn't get a lot of missionary work done, but I ended up with 6 more investigators in my teaching pool and still met with every single member and got to carol to them and I tried sharing a small message with them before we went to the next house.
Basically, like I said last Christmas, Christmas week is just a week of eating, and sometimes it's a little overbearing.  My Sibu Christmas was pretty well-rounded.  Not too much, but still a lot of food. Especially the pork. I gotta love the pork. With chilis. Yummm..... :)

Anyway I'm doing very well right now.  Like I said, we got 6 new investigators.  Two from some other elders that just moved to our area, two from a part member family that we found, and two from contacting, so once I find out which ones will turn out to be good, I'll let you know. But from my experience, the ones that are from part member families are always the ones that work out the best. ;)  But you never know, each soul is important to God.

This week I have realised more than ever how much I need to stop caring about myself and think of others. The people here have a lot less than I do. I thank all those who give me gifts for Christmas, but as my mission is starting to come to a close in about 6 months, I am trying to find how I can help those that are in need.  Although I am certainly not a rich person on my mission, but I have enough for myself and also to give others.  But it's so easy sometimes to use that extra money on a nice KFC or something. ;)

As for New Year's Resolutions, I am thinking about studying the Bible more earnestly.  I have not really enjoyed the Bible much on my mission, but now I'm trying to understand it more clearly. I also want to continue learning my mission language by learning at least 10 words per day. That may seem like a lot, but I know I can do it. I've learned 100 words in one day before, so I know I can do it. I challenge all of you to push yourselves and do the best you can with this new year. We only have so many years to prepare before the great and terrible day of our Lord.

Love
Elder Vincent

Masuk Hutan, Cari Miding

Hey guys, this morning I woke up to go to Sister Madeline's house to help her find what is called "miding".  It is a special kind of vegetable (they are all just leaves here) that we were looking for. We waded through the forest for a while when we got to a lovely, bushy, thorny area that loves to scratch up my legs, and she starts pulling leaves down from the bushes, but not just any kind of leaves. They are speccciial kind. But honestly, they look like every other leaf in the forest.  She then taught us what ones are good and what ones aren't.  She can point them out from a mile away, and yet while she is pointing we still couldn't see them.  After a few minutes of trying to pick these out, I got the general idea of what makes this "miding" vegetable different.  And then I picked the most out of my group.

This idea of having a hard time picking out the right leaf could be an important idea of missionary work... still processing it in my head. I'll be thinking about it more later, but I think it's good that the member had to show us which ones were the good ones and which ones to leave alone. Just like they know which people are good investigators, etc.

Anyway this week was probably our most productive week. I had this crazy thought in my head to go through the area book and find all the names of people that DON'T have phone numbers on them, and then to just write down those names in my planner and just hunt them down. This has helped find some potential investigators, and one time we knocked on the wrong door  (cuz when it said the third floor of a place, it doesnt specify whether it is the left door or right door, so I knocked on the one that looked Christian, and the person answered, we asked if she knew the member we were looking for and she didn't know, and then I contacted her and she asked us to come and teach her a little bit. Nice little miracle for this week! :) )

Otherwise, we have had a few Christmas parties.  One on Saturday, again on Sunday.  Both were followed AFTER a baptismal service, one being the son of the branch president that just turned 18. The water accidentally started draining about an hour before, so it was pretty low.  President Gara tried getting him all the way down but failed the first time, and then everyone laughed! wow, I was a bit shocked. When I baptised somebody back in Bintulu, and had to do it twice, everyone was quiet. Quite a rowdy crowd here in Sibu.

This week is Christmas, or better known here as the Day of Eating. Yup... I will be eating all throughout the 24th and 26th.  More than any of you have ever eaten before in your life. It's.... going to be quite an experience. :) *gulp in fear*

Love

Elder Vincent

Zone Conference at Christmas Time in Singapore

Hey guys. So This last week I was in Singapore like I said earlier. The main thing we learned from our Zone Conference is sharing the Gift. They shared the Mormon message with us about sharing the gift. I learned a lot from that and now I'm pumped to share the gift with others.

This last Saturday we had our Pre-Christmas party. We were asked to do a little play on the Joseph Smith story. My companion was Joseph Smith. I was the dark spirit that came and bound his tongue. That was a lot of fun to do. We also were asked to be wise men in the party, but it wasn't as big of a part. Our church finally got air conditioning back this week. It was out for 2 weeks and church has been very very hot.

Our investigator, Ju came to the party too! She's starting to make friends in the church. She basically is another member, except she has been so busy this month to meet with us, so that's the downside. But I'm hoping that this new transfer will come out well.

We are starting to get a lot more referrals coming in and so this next week will be in for contacting them all and start teaching them. We have our youth conference today through Wednesday, so a lot of our members will be there, but we aren't allowed to go there with them. 

We also found a recent convert that got lost in the works when she changed her phone number (here in Malaysia, they just go buy new sim cards every now and then. they are cheap, like 3 or 4 ringgit usually. I'm not sure why, but it really is difficult on missionary work here when members change their number every other week) but she is super awesome, but has not been to church for a few months now. I am excited to work with her and try to bring her back. Our branch is doing extremely well still. Christmas is coming up though, but it isn't Christmas here in Malaysia. It is the Day of Binge-Eating-Until-You-Want-To-Die. I thought it would be rather relaxed because most people go back to their village for the vacation, but I just found out yesterday that there will still be plenty of people here to make sure we get stuffed from sun up to sun down... Yay.... errrrr. :/ but it should be fun. it will be my last Christmas in the mission, so I gotta make the most out of it. :)

That's all for this week.

Love,

Elder Vincent