Walk With Jesus, Dude

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Joyfully Serving the Lord!

So this week we had President and Sister Simmons come for a few days while we had a mini -zone conference/Christmas Devotional, and it was great. Oh! We also had our branch Christmas party. It was all a blast. I pictures from that this week. My pictures are kind of random and I don't have time to go through them to pick them out so I just uploaded random ones from this week. Hope they're good!

Funny fact, about once a week we have a tri-lingual lesson with one of our investigators. Haha, So he's an Indian man who speaks some English, more Malay, but mostly Tamil. So we start out in English (because he wants us to so he can learn more) but somewhere in there switch to Malay, then his girlfriend jumps in and explains something in Tamil, and then we switch back to Malay, he answers in English, and back and forth it goes. It's the weirdest thing, mostly because it doesn't seem that weird, because hey, it's Malaysia! The place of campur. I can't think of the English word.

Oh! I got approved for a ukelele or violin this week! ...Now I just have to find one. I found a ukelele shop, but I kind of want to get a violin, I just don't know where music shops are.
Hey! I heard that something is going on between ISIS and my home country? What's the word on that?

Also, something cool. I want to tell you that this is probably the happiest I've been in my life. I'm so happy! Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm just smiling, which is a little strange, but really it's just awesome, haha. It's weird for me to see how much I've changed in just six months, because it seems like a lot.

\Oh! Also, I want to be a .....oh what's it called! An I night person! Ah! I-Team Leader! At BYU-I that winter semester. I don't know when I'd have to apply? Probably not for a while, but I just wanted to bring it up before I forget.

Sorry, I'm everywhere today!

Christmas. I brought it up to the Simmons in interviews this week and they said they'd send an email out about it....but I haven't gotten in this week, so I'll probably know by next week! So my Christmas Eve morning? Okay, I'll shoot for that. I'm so excited! It's like two and a half weeks!
So the Konfrinsi zon yang kecil, aka Mini Zone Conference. One of the biggest themes was talking to everyone and not worrying about being awkward, because contacting can seem sooooo awkward! It's been really hard for me, too, because I'll be on the bus and I see someone, right? So I think, okay, just say hi. Ask how she is! There's no harm in that! Once you get a conversation started it'll be easy! But what if she thinks I'm weird for trying to talk to her? Is it normal in West Malaysia to ask people where they're going? Oh my goodness, what if I offend her! Ah!!! ......and that's basically how it goes in my head until the person gets off of the bus. haha. But the training was so great because they talked about how valuable the gospel is. How valuable is it? Way more valuable than an arm full of hundred dollar bills. More valuable that anything on this planet! If it's so valuable, shouldn't you be sharing it with people? Imagine it's that arm full of hundred dollar bills that you're asking people if they want, because it's that valualbe times infinity. None of that really makes sense, but that point is that it was really helpful. Since that day it's so much easier to just talk to people. And if they'e Muslim? I find out some cool stuff about a really cool person.
Anyway, hahaha, sorry again that I'm everywhere. I love you so much! Have a blast at Disneyland!

Companions on the subway

She's really "grabbed the bull by the horns!" lol

Merry Christmas!

Happy

Silly

Teaching

Eating

On the bus

She found a kitten!

Artsy

Sorry, Sisters, you can't sit there...

Happy Selfie!

Branch Christmas party food! yum!

This is one happy missionary!

Monday, November 30, 2015

Monkeys, White People, & Contacting Adventures!

I love all the pictures! Haha, The matching sweaters are... there are no words. Haha, It's so Kristen and KC, I love it.

Oh shoot. My dropbox is full and I have a really funny video of my giving a monkey a pass along card! Ummm.... I don't know what to do now. I'll leave that to you.

Yes! We had Thanksgiving with all the Americans in our Branch. Maksudnya, we have a real mixture of cultures in our branch; expats/white people, Brazils, Philipenos, Indians, Chinese, Korean, Indonesian, Iranian, Pakistanian, German, etcedera, etcedra. ...I don't know how to spell that word. There are probably about 40-50 people in our branch and yes, the friend of.... oh Sister Worthen! Anyway, you mentioned her last week, and yes, she's in my branch. :)
The roughest part of my week was probably when I tried to contact white people. Three different times. And utterly failed. In case you were wondering, yes, contacting white people is very different from contacting an Asian! Very, very different... Goodness, 6 months in and I'm already awkward around white people! I'm a goner.
We do a LOT of conatcting here in KL. A lot. People are very busy and have really unreliable work schedules here and so appointments often get canceled which leaves huge chunks of time in our day. Which means, you got it, contacting. We usually ride the MRT or go to malls or big public places to find people who want to learn but this week I convinced sister Lee to go door to door. Haha, It was rediculous! We contacted for two hours and found TWO Christians! In other words, it was about 90% Muslim. We'd walk past homes and see prayers written above their door, or Christmas lights on their house (I still don't get it but it's a clear indicator of a Muslim house. WHo knows) and say, "muslim, muslim, muslim, Hindu, Bhudist, Muslim, muslim, muslim...." Haha, and we found a Bhudist man who was completely insistent that mormons have many wives! Many! When I told him that I definitely only have ONE mom he said that I probably wouldn't know because I'm a girl. Hahaha.

We have a few investigators here but we're not really sure where any of them are going, haha, because they're all kind of one leg in, one leg out. So we're really praying to find people who God has prepared to hear His gospel. But our Investigators Yoong Hong and Stephanie are getting baptized on December 19! Yay! They're both awesome. Yoong Hong's girlfriend gave as cookies this week too! Yesss.

Last P-Day we went to Batu caves, which were awesome! There are many Hindu statues there. And Monkeys. I bought bananas to feed the monkeys but before I could blissfully hand out my bananas one by one to the friendly little fellas, this stupid monkey ran up and stole ALL OF MY BANANAS! There were hundreds of police officers there and they all saw it happen and they litterally pointed their fingers and laughed at me! Thankfully I wrestled a single banana from the little thief to hand out later, only to have another monkey jump onto my arm five minutes later and wrestle me for THAT banana! The jerk! He leaped onto my arm and was fighting me for the banana! And surprise, surprise, the monkey won. Bodoh. Next time 'I'll be the one eating the bananas laughing at them! But hey, at least I didn't get monkey poop thrown at my like sister Drew. Haha. Ha. haha.

For Christmas I'd love to go to the Pines! I'll be happy anywhere, but that's my first choice. :)

I'm working on getting a Uke approved! I asked president today.
Oh, we have a Christmas party this week!.

No one's heard anything about calling for Christmas yet but President is coming this week so I'm going to ask him then.

I'm going to dye my hair brown again today! Hopefully.

Sister Lee and I live with Sister Anderson and ....Tueh? I really need to learn her name. They're so much fun! This is by far the most comfortable I've been in the mission yet. I've learned how to work hard, I know how to pray hard, and now I'm learning to have fun while doing it all. Yay! The fun part really balances things out.

I'm so excited to talk to you all! Do you think I'll be able to talk to everyone....? Or does it depend when I call?

Do you think you could send me the Allens cookie and Toll house cookie recipes some time?

I love you so much! It sounds like the cabin was/is a blast! I love all the pictures. Kristen looks gorgeous in her prego pics, and I love Maddie's bump! (I sent her a photograph of JUST her sister-in-law's baby bump! lol)

Talk to you next week!

Oh, and the pictures of the Asians and missionaries in the MRT is when this Asian church youth group came up and asked us to do a push up challenge with them. I guess it was like a weird scavenger hunt? But it was really funny. There is a video, but there wasn't enough space on Dropbox for it. :-/ Love you!

Batu Caves

Monday, November 23, 2015

So I moved to KL this week! We had an exciting Taxi ride over where one of the other sisters ended up sitting on my lap because the driver wanted to pick up another person and we made a friendly stop at the taxi drivers house for a few minutes. Haha, Malaysia.
So my new companion is Sister Lee. She's from California and has been out about a year. She also speaks Malay!

KL is pretty different from East Malaysia. Very different. It's like halfway between someplace in America and someplace in East Malaysia. There are also a tooooon of Muslims! Everywhere. We actually just accidentally tried to contact one when we stopped to test out a foot massager thing and he got really upset when we told him we couldn't talk to him about Jesus Christ because it's against the law. It was really sad!

I don't bike anymore, which I'm sad about. I really like biking. BUT I also really like buses and MRTs and LRTs and all these different trains and subway like things. It means a LOT of contacting though. You get on a train, spot someone who think might not be Muslim, sit down by them, and talk to them. Or that's the plan. It still kind of scares me. When I was Malay speaking I thought it would be so much easier to contact people in English! Then I started to get contacting down in Malay and got switched to English! Now I know that it is definitely NOT easier in English. Haha, People here, or anywhere, aren't used to random white girls coming up and talking to them, so they feel a little awkward. We just want to give you salvation! Come back!
Have you ever seen the Church's 12 step videos? They're absolutely amazing. Look them up.

So as I've implied I'm now in an English area. Whaaaat?? Supossedly I'm still a Malay sister but really I'm just an English sister right now. Not a lot of people here speak Malay because KL is a city full of people from everywhere! So the language only comes in handy every now and again. Sister Lee and I are helping each other keep the language up by talking to eachother all the time in Malay. It's really fun. :) Anyway, so we teach a lot of Chinese people, some people from places like Ghana or Africa, and... actually that's about where the racial diversity ends. It's really fun to teach in English, even if it's just broken English. My Chinglish is really progressing. ;) There's a huge difference between teaching in Malay in East Malaysia and teaching in English in West. Because of things like religious background and such it was all very simple and surface, but now, while there's still a lot of that we're now teaching people like Jerry from somewhere in Africa who has read the bible his whole life and asks questions that are really pretty deep. I love it! I love both, actually, it's it's fun to experience both. I think I got a little cocky about it though. Yesterday I was eating my lunch and thinking about how strangley easy it's been to teach in English, and I was really impressed with myself for being able to answer a lot of peoples questions as well as I had and so they understand things. I stuck a bite of carrot in my mouth and stopped mid-chew when the thought came into my head "it's not you." I kind of sat there for a second as I realized that it really wasn't me that was so great at teaching, but Heavenly Father has been blessing me and literally giving me the things that I needed to say and giving me understand and knowledge, so that I can explain things and answer questions of the people we're teaching. Suddenly, everything made so much sense. Now I realize that Heavenly Father is letting me be a tool in His hands and that's a really, really neat opportunity. I still believe I'm being blessed with the gift of tongues, too, because I can understand all these different accents most of the time!

I love you so much!