This has been a pretty awesome week. I have enjoyed it thoroughly.
Our sacrament meeting was good this week. Fast and testimony meeting is the riskiest environment I can imagine for investigators, because with everyone in church being investigators or relatively new members, you never know what's going to happen. I've been really impressed with the dignified, spiritual content of the testimonies here in KK, though. Don't get me wrong, there have been enough funny moments to keep me awake. Like this one old lady that speaks with kind of a thick accent that I really don't understand. Every time she gets up she sings a song. Maybe she was a talented singer in her younger days. Who knows.
Well, this week, the big distraction had nothing to do with what anyone said. In the middle of testimonies, a very large (in stature) family of white people walked in and sat down. They sucked all the attention away from the person bearing testimony. It turns out that they are an ex-pat family originally from Salt Lake currently living in Hong Kong but on vacation here.
After church, we sat down with Patricia and talked to her about her baptism. You see, the member that referred her, Christopher Fausto, will be leaving to the Phillipines probably permanently in a couple of weeks. We had the baptism scheduled a couple of days before he was set to go. However, for some reason, he had plans to go to Sandakan starting at the end of this week until the day before he left, so he requested we do the baptism a week later. So we talked to Patricia about it. We said "Patricia, you have been learning and coming to church for quite a while. You understand what you're doing. We think you're ready to be baptized this Friday." Patricia was even more firm "Yeah, I've been waiting long enough." Well, that presented a challenge of its own. Due to a tough work schedule, it's been hard to do a whole lot of teaching to Patricia. We had a lot of material to cover. Actually, we had about half of all the missionary lessons to get through. No matter, though. We started with making sure she understood what she has read and been taught about the Atonement of Jesus Christ (she is actually a former Buddhist who knew nothing of Jesus until she started coming to sunday school and reading the Book of Mormon). We figured as long as we took the time to make sure she understood that one thing, we could breeze through everything else, teaching very simply and leaving her with the commitments she needs. An hour and a half later we had done it all, and she will be baptized on Good Friday.
We found out this last week that the Church actually has published a Book of Mormon in Jeevan's native language Telugu. I feel so terrible about him not having a Book of Mormon all this time. I've spent the last week trying to figure out the quickest way to get a few copies here, and the Assistants to the President should be bringing them next week when they come in for exchanges with our zone leaders. Jeevan was also interviewed for baptism and should be baptized this coming Sunday.
The church has no satellite equipment in Malaysia or Singapore, so we watch nothing live in this mission as far as broadcasts are concerned. Here in KK, we will watch conference 2 weeks late.
Also on Sunday night we had a good lesson with Sister Lia (Jonon's wife). Jonon did not come to church due to his sister being in the hospital. Lia and the children came, though. He was still at the hospital when we went on sunday night, so we decided to just answer her questions rather than teach something new. I've never had an investigator so full of questions. She picks apart every sentence of the pamphlets we give her. I think she might have learned to read from some lawyers. She asks questions like "It says here that in the spirit world we will continue to learn. What more do we need to learn after we die but before we are resurrected?" Most of my answers start "I don't really know, but here's the simple answer I can give you ..."
Well, one of her questions really showed me she's good to go. She explained. "Before, when I first started learning about the Jehovah's witness church and went back to my kampung, my friends asked me to explain the teachings of the church. I didn't really know what to tell them. So next time, when I go back, and they ask me about my church, I want to give them a good answer. How do I explain this church to them?"
That was way cool. It led to a discussion of her testimony of the Church, why she has continued to learn about the church. She cited a few reasons, including the sudden change in her husband she has noticed and her children's love for primary and interest in learning things about the church.
Monday night brought a good opportunity, as our branch mission leader introduced us to his auntie, who was a former investigator. I'm not sure she stopped learning, but she seems very interested. We also taught her husband. They were both very nice to us, and are very humble. They promised to come to a branch activity on Saturday and to church on Sunday (I'm really hoping there aren't any problems: apparently there's been some sort of family feud going on.) Last night, accompanied by the Douglas's and President Ling (our Branch president) we visited a few less active members who I will tell you more about as I get to know them a little better. Overall, it was an amazing week. We've seen a lot of little miracles lately that have made things amazing here despite all the mistakes we have been making.
I'm glad someone understood my puzzle analogy.
I'm glad Dad kept his job. I can't imagine having to go to work with the prospect of layoffs.
I still thoroughly enjoy cooking malaysian food. I'm slowly expanding my options. My next goal is to figure out how to make fried bananas. I know they sound odd, but I've really acquired a taste for them. Everyone says it's simple. I guess I just have to try a simple flour breaded and fried banana first. This past 2 weeks, I haven't been doing anything fancy, since I was low on money and so was pretty much just eating instant noodles and eggs or rice and eggs every day. I have become a big fan of eggs, though.
We had some awesome lunch today. We went to a fancy Indian restaurant for Elder Kunioka's next to last P-Day Next week we should be going to a steamboat restaurant. Apparently, they're the best. It's all you can eat, and they bring you the raw meat and vegetables and you cook it yourself in a pot or grill at your table, and the food is delicious.
Love,
Elder Muffler
(Click on Pictures Below to see larger)
Here is a picture of Elder Muffler in front of the Kota Kinabalu Chapel:
Here is a picture of a yellow watermelon. There are all sorts of strange fruits here. Yellow watermelons. Red bananas. Black melons. Well, they're just dark on the outside. Red on the inside.
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