Letter #17 - Week of 4 June 2008 - Golden Family and Orangutan Sanctuary

Hello,

This last week was another fantastic week.

We met the most golden investigators last week. I think it was Thursday when we had just visited Tiga Dawi and Rosemarie, and we had about an hour before our next appointment. So we went exploring, looking for houses off the road that had eluded us before. We found a little dirt path lined with palm trees, and there were a couple of houses at the end. One family invited us in, and we taught them about the Restoration. They seemed really excited. We brought some of them to church on Sunday (there are like 15 people there- we managed to get the father and a couple of the grown children in church), and they seemed to enjoy that a lot. On monday, we visited them unannounced and I saw about the most amazing scene I have yet seen on my mission: the 15 year old son was on the porch reading a Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith pamphlet, A 20-something year old son was reading the Book of Mormon and explaining it to his wife and 2 infants, and the father was inside, and came out with his reading glasses on and the Joseph Smith pamphlet in his hand. We found out that the 15 year old son had become good friends with Jonathon Tiga (they live very close together), and the whole family was excited about the church. We set another appointment with them for tonight, at Tiga Dawi's house. Tiga and Rosemarie are more than happy to help us out.

I thought all of that was pretty amazing, until what happened when we were about to leave. The father of the family, Maja Pang's, father had a stroke recently. He asked us if there was anything we could do for him, like maybe give him some sort of blessing. We were very happy to share James 5:14-15 with them, and explain how we could follow the pattern of the apostles and anoint his head with oil give him a blessing by the laying on of hands. We also taught about how the blessing would depend on his faith and the faith of the family. I anointed, and Elder Dhillon sealed the anointing. We are very happy with the family.

Elder Dhillon and I went to see the orangutans today. If you're wondering why I needed money last week- well, it was because I ran out of money for food, and I also sent some mail. Also, some time soon I will withdraw probably another $40 to pay for pictures, mail, maybe another shirt, and for visiting the orangutan preserve and rainforest park today. The orangutan preserve, well, was not worth the money. It cost $10, plus transportation, and we only got to see like 6 orangutans for 45 minutes or so. They didn't even do anything special. But after that, we were getting ready to go back to town. We had to walk a mile or so back to the main road. As we were going, we found another park, Sandakan Rainforest Discovery park. We decided to check it out. It only cost like 3 dollars, and it was so amazing. It was about 3 miles worth of trails, and all the trails had beautiful rainforest plants from borneo, as well as from other places. It also had signs that explained each plant. It was very fun to walk around and take pictures there. I'm exhausted now, though. We did a lot of walking.

It sounds like your week was a lot of fun. I'm curious: did you try seeing the Minerva Tichert exhibit at the art museum? I got to go see that one time, and it was pretty awesome. I'll admit, the creamery was way too close to my apartment last year. I myself am surprised I did not gain significant amounts of weight there. I guess the cost held me back. Speaking of weight ... I'm actually kind of staying the same. 85 kg.

Ben- thanks for the email. Sounds like a fun week. Brother Anderson- such a classic. 2 phone numbers. Impressive. That's 2 more than I ever got at efy; well, okay, that's 2 more than I ever got. No, that's a lie. I got one at BYU. I hope you had fun at Aaron's camp also.

I'm not sure I ever explained the naming customs here. Take Tiga Dawi, for example. His full name is Tiga bin Dawi. Tiga is his given name; Dawi is his father's name. Thus, his sons are named Jonathon bin Tiga, Joseph bin Tiga, and Jeffrey bin Tiga. That's with cultures without surnames. The Chinese have a different thing going on. For example, Wong Ket Vun. Wong is the family name. Ket is the given name. The 3rd name, depending on who it is, is either another given name or a smaller family name; i.e. brothers would have the same 3rd name, but cousins would not.

I haven't had any encounters with strange animals lately. No, that's a lie. Today, when we were at the rainforest park visitors center, there was a huge rhinocerous beetle. And when we were at the orangutan sanctuary, we were around a bunch of white people.

I was reading in Ecclesiastes today and found an amazing scripture:
"For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion" To me, that tells me it doesn't matter how weak we are( hence the dog/ lion), as long as we are trying hard, we're doing better than the strong. It also tells me that it doesn't matter how much good you have done in the past (dead lion), you need to go do good today (living dog).

This week, I happened to be reading in Isaiah at the same time I was reading the same chapters from the Book of Mormon, so I thought to myself, why not compare them? It says there are differences in over half of the verses quoted in the Book of Mormon, and I decided to figure out what those differences were. One of them in particular stood out to me. Isaiah 13: 10 says "Say unto the righteous, that it shall be well with him." 2 Nephi 13:10 reads "Say unto the righteous, that it is well with him." The difference? 2 Nephi emphasizes the fact that even in the midst of hardship, it is well with the righteous now. The righteous need not wait for the future to know that it is well with them.

Sincerely,
Elder Muffler