Letter #78 - Week of 29 Jul 2009 - Just for the record, I won at Chinese Chess

Hello,

Things are still kind of rough here in Ipoh, but it's all pretty good.

Zone Conference was excellent. I think that, start to finish, it was the best one I've been to yet. The rest of Thursday was awesome. During my interview with President Clark, we talked about the problem of finding new investigators in our area now. He gave some really good advice that I've thought a lot about and surely will use over and over and over again. As soon as I told him we were trying really hard and not finding new investigators, he asked "Are you obedient? Waking up on time? Exercising? How are your personal studies? Your companion studies? Language studies? Are you getting out on time? Are you praying together before you go out?
Are you praying frequently throughout the day? Are you being smart and deliberate in your finding efforts? Are you feeling the inspiration of the Lord? If you are doing your best at those things, you will recieve the blessings of the Lord, and just need to keep working."

It was just an excellent diagnosis pattern:
Are you worthy? (the basic principles of the Gospel) Are you obedient? (the other instructions/advice you recieve) Are you following the Spirit? If you can answer yes honestly to those three questions, you just need to work and wait.

President Clark didn't mention when I would be transferred, although Sister Clark did mention that between September and October we will be getting 23 new missionaries. That's one new missionary for every non zone leader area right now, so there will be lots of changes then.

The trainings of zone conference were perfect, exactly what we all needed to hear. President Clark is an awesome mission president. He already has a complete handle on things.

He has a lot of interesting stories. He lives a really active lifestyle. I think if we had a mission-wide 5K race, he would win. He was telling about some of the things he has done, like water skied the entire length of the Columbia River.

For this week's district meeting I prepared a training about enduring affliction cheerfully and waiting for the blessings of the Lord to be fulfilled. During district meeting, I found out that Elder and Sister Spanos were in similar discouraging experiences like we are now, so it was cool to know I had been inspired in my training subject.

Cathleene didn't come to church this Sunday (nor did any of other investigators). She is really facing a lot of opposition from her family and friends in the methodist church. We had an awesome, very powerful lesson with her last night when she brought up all the things that we had suspected. Elder Hall tearfully told of a recent convert in Singapore that had gone through the same things and faced the same questions. We exhorted her to pray about it all, and we'll see where she goes from here.

That's really nice to hear about the trek. Stake youth gatherings are powerful. It was at a stake youth conference that I first knew I had a testimony. I don't know if some of the adults in the church know how much those things affect us. President Hinckley said something to the effect that "Every good thing in my life can be traced back to my days as a missionary." I suppose that will be the case for me also, and I can tell you that many of the good decisions I have made as a missionary have been highly influenced by the firesides and youth conferences and trek and aaron's camp and other youth functions I was a part of. I'm very thankful for all the people who made those possible for me and who still work to help the youth.

Elder Stone taught me how to play Chinese Chess. It was so fun to learn.
It's deceptively similar to our chess. Chinese Chess has a river down the middle of the board, and only some pieces can cross the river. Also, some of the pieces are quite different. There's one piece, the cannon, that moves like a rook, but can capture pieces by jumping over another piece.
It's dangerous. There is also a box that the king and two guard pieces cannot leave. It is way fun. Unlike western chess, you need a defense and an offense.
Just for the record, I won.

I thought I was just about done with my culinary adventures, but I found a whole new world yesterday. Indian sweets. Amazing.

Love,
Elder Muffler

Letter #77 - Week of 22 Jul 2009 - Zone Conference in KL

Hello,

I'm writing from KL this week. There was a surprise change in zone conference schedule, so here we are. It's been really fun so far. We rode a train from Ipoh here. It was a nice experience. I've never been on a real train before, unless you count the underground in Singapore. I really liked it. It was nicer and much more relaxed than taking a bus, and cost only about 3 US dollars to come what would be a 3 hour car ride. After we got in, we played the loudest game of uno I've ever been a part of. Tonight, I'm looking forward to learning how to play Chinese chess, and maybe some other games.

This last week was kind of similar to the previous week.. Lots of hard work and few visible results.

I've realized that the best way I can tell I'm working hard is when I meet people that are crazy or have crazy stories, the kind of people you write about in your journal or tell the other missionaries when you see them. Like, this week, we met a man who had to move to Ipoh to stay with his brother because a broken leg prevented him from working. So I asked, "How did you break your leg?"
"A crash."
"A crash! Were you riding a moto or in a car?"
"No, no, no. Not a crash. A clash. I was too slow with my weapon."
"...Okay ... Hope to see you at church."
Crazy guy.

We had a few investigators come to sacrament meeting unexpectedly. One of them is named Soosay. That's the Indian form of Joseph. He's a Roman Catholic man, about 60 years old, who after years of going to church has begun to question the truthfulness or completeness of what he has been hearing. Specifically, he is concerned with the cases of child abuse by priests, as also the empty feeling he gets at church and the apparant emphasis on worldly wealth by the members of the church. However, he has been tetering on the edge between the comfortable zone of investigating without personal commitment and the opportunities for growth that await his exercise of faith. We told him very plainly that for us to continue to teach him, he needed to go further, and for him to go further, he needed to come to church. Then he did. It was a beautiful thing.

Also, there was a young man named Chris who we met a couple of weeks ago while knocking gates in the rain. He was a pleasant young man, but wouldn't agree to anything. After a couple of follow-up calls, he finally agreed to come to church if someone would take him. We asked two young men (who are recent converts themselves) and their non-member father if they would take him to church, which they gladly agreed to. Chris came and was really enjoying sacrament meeting (he absolutely loves Christian music). Actually, Chris is a Buddhist who has never before been to a Christian church in his life. As the sacrament was being passed, Chris interupted the quiet of the occasion by asking me urgently "What's the name of the street this church is on? " I showed him the map on our name card, and he left the room for 10 minutes, after which he came back in with a girl his age. I didn't get to talk to her much, but I know her name is Tammy and she goes to the same school as one of the young men in the branch. We went to the youth sunday school class and saw them do wonders in welcoming our investigators. We expect they'll come next week, perhaps with even more friends.

On Sunday night, I had a dream about having a flat tire. I mentioned it to Elder Hall at the beginning of the day, but didn't think much of it, until we were coming home at 9:30 PM. My tire was getting low, so I quickly filled it up. After riding for 30 more seconds it was completely flat. We didn't have anything to change it with, so we had to leave the bikes, find someone with a phone, and beg the Spanos's to take us home. We locked the bikes, but I didn't really feel comfortable leaving them overnight in that area of town. Thankfully, they made it to the morning when we could get them fixed.

Elder Hall has been having more medical problems that cause him a lot of pain in his upper leg in the middle of the day. We went to a couple of different doctors, and they couldn't really tell, but they suspect it's either tendinitis or an impending hernia. The only thing he can really do now is grin and bear it. We did change his bike seat, though. We got him a huge, super comfortable seat that he likes a lot.

It sounds like there's been an exciting week at home. If you see Spencer, tell him it's my turn to write, but I'm just more lazy than ever.

I had kind of a rude awakening today. I talked to Sister Russel, who was in the MTC together with me. She is going home in 2 weeks. Weird.

Love,
Elder Muffler

Letter #76 - Week of 15 Jul 2009 - Chinese woman with a southern accent

Hello,
Well, this last week was a very fun week. Tiring but fun.
We haven't found a lot of new investigators but we'll continue to look. I'm sure the Lord will lead them to us or us to them.

On Saturday night, we found this Chinese lady who spoke english with a southern accent. Further inquiries revealed she had spent 20 years in Alabama, and has been back in Malaysia for the past two years. She was extremely nice, and invited us in so she could get us a drink and talk with us some more. We ended up staying for dinner and meeting her husband and daughter. She's Baptist, absolutely loves the Bible and country music. She spent a couple of years in New York, where at one point she took some cake decorating classes from some place called Culinard. She showed pictures of her cakes. They were the fanciest cakes I had ever seen. While extremely nice, she is not yet totally interested in learning about the Gospel, but hopefully that'll change.

Cathleene is still working her way toward baptism. She came to church on sunday, and we'll be going with a few branch members and the Spanos's to have a family home evening this Friday.

That's exciting to hear about the missionary work back home.

Elder Stone is now my zone leader. It'll be fun to work with him again. I'll get to go on exchanges with him after we have been companions for a third time. That seems to be kind of a rare opportunity.

Love,
Elder Muffler

Letter #75 - Week of 8 July 2009 - Finding a wife for Elder Dhillon

Hello,
My goodness, I'm excited right now. I just love life. I haven't felt this much energy in a long time.

The end of last week was really lame. We just did our normal thing, and things weren't really going well. Friday, we finally got out in the sun all day and were talking to people and that was good. Saturday, I woke up, and was just feeling sad. I knew it wouldn't be a good day. Lunch rolled around, and after lunch I started my fast. I decided to fast for faith, because I think I was really running low on the first principle of the Gospel in my life. I remember asking for experiences to build more faith, knowing full well that when you ask the Lord for experiences, he gives them to you, and they aren't pleasant.

After that, I remember feeling very depressed. I could feel it in my body, it was so bad. I did not want to work. But then again, there wasn't anything I wanted to do, because I didn't want to quit, either. I don't know if you've ever been caught in that quandry, having no desire to do what you should. I've never felt that way before. Most of my life my challenge has been to bridge the gap between information and application. I at least want to do the right thing. Saturday was different. Well, at least I had something driving me through the day so, to be short, the day passed uneventfully with a few drops of sweat and a few tears. Not a whole lot was going well. Then Sunday came. Church was a great relief. I'm not sure what has happened between then and now, because everything has changed so much that I can't really recall very well what I felt like on Saturday or what was going on in my head. I just know it was very difficult. But I can tell you I have a lot more faith now than I did. The circumstances haven't changed much (we've almost lost all of our investigators), but I'm feeling awesome. We've been working hard this week. Elder Hall is good to go with the bikes. Because the referrals just aren't coming in, we're back to finding people ourselves, and it has been a lot of fun. I've never felt this natural or done it with this much energy before.

Exchanges with the zone leaders have certainly helped the excitement.Me and Elder Kwok went out together yesterday. He has seen a lot of success in just trying to invite people to church instead of inviting people to learn more, so that's what we did yesterday. Elder Kwok is an American born Chinese. He has a Chinese face but is as American as I am. It was really beneficial because when Chinese people see him as opposed to two orang putih, they're less likely to completely ignore us.

Elder Kwok introduced me to a new game they play while they contact. I mentioned that I was thirsty. He said, all right, we'll split up, and the first person to get a 100 plus (an Australian brand of carbonated gatorade), while contacting someone and teaching them a gospel message, wins. I won. I didn't even ask for it.

Another fun thing Elder Kwok did with me was, as part of our goals for the day, he not only wanted to set the number of new investigators, but he wanted a more specific goal. For example, every day he goes out, he says "I'm going to find the future branch president today." A few of the people we wanted to find were:
A wife for Elder Dhillon. He asked Elder Hall a couple of weeks ago to find him a wife, so Elder Kwok and I were looking especially hard yesterday. It made it more exciting to think, maybe this is the one for him. A Chinese couple who are 85 or older to replace the current Papa Toh and Mama Toh. I don't think they have much longer left with us. A husband for Sister Loh.

We got to meet President Clark today. He decided to come around on a tour of the mission. Since the zone leaders are going down to another area tonight, they stayed with us last night. The zone leaders on exchanges usually check for apartment cleanliness as one of their responsibilities. Our apartment was okay: messy, but not exactly clean. They wanted it to be spotless for President Clark, so they graciously cleaned it while we studied this morning, after which we joined them. There is a lot of clutter from past Elders, which they had no mercy on. They made a huge pile of junk right outside the door. The house looked beautiful and smelled nice, and we were all finishing up. The mission president was supposed to arrive at 12:30 or so, but we knew he might be a bit early. Now, I'd like you to picture what happened at 11:40. 4 Elders in nothing but their garments are running around trying to put furniture back in its place. The television is playing EFY music, and the Elders are singing along. The front door is obstructed by a pile of clothes, old church magazines, water and soda bottles, bags full of trash, etc, waiting to be taken to the dumpster outside. A knock comes to the door. I had just barely gotten dressed, but I was the only one. Everyone looks at me (I was close to the door at the time) and asks "That isn't them, is it?" It was. Now put yourself in President and Sister Clark's shoes. Here's four missionaries you've never met. You come up to the apartment, and to get to the door you have to climb over three feet of junk just to give a knock. A missionary opens the door just a couple of inches. "President Clark! Nice to meet you, I'm Elder Muffler. Could you just wait a minute, the other missionaries are getting dressed."

After the initial craziness, we got settled down in the apartment, and got to just talk with President Clark for a while. He wanted to come around to each area just to talk to everyone and get to know everyone face to face. My first impressions of President and Sister Clark is, well, they're very different from the Skeltons. I'm sure we'll witness them growing into their calling. I really like them. They're very ... normal. President Clark reminds me of a counsellor in a bishopric or a ward clerk. He's just that kind of guy. He has the personality of a dentist. As also his wife has the personality of a registered nurse. They're very easy to relate to. I will enjoy learning from them.

Elder Compton called on Sunday night with some fantastic news. Do you remember Jonon and Rosaia? They were a Dusun family in KK. The wife had been going to the Jehovah's Witness church, and the husband had been indifferent toward religion, until seeing us. We found them on a Sunday afternoon, after seeing an appointment fall through, and I followed the whisperings of the Holy Ghost to talk to a group of people who turned out to be Muslim, but on the other side of them was Jonon's house. Anyway, they were all baptized this past weekend. Well, Jonon and Rosaia and the oldest daughter. Their son will be turning 8 later this month, and Jonon will be baptizing him himself. So awesome. I really want to learn more about what has happened during the last few months while they have been investigating the church.

Things are awesome, I'm feeling great, and I hope you are too. Thanks for the pictures, and if you get the chance, thank the Henries for emailing me.

Love,
Elder Muffler

Letter #74 - Week of 1 July 2009 - Trip to Butterworth

Hello,

This last week has gone by far too quickly.

We are indeed operating under a new mission president. He is actually coming around for zone conferences in not too long a time. I'll be able to meet him on the 30th and 31st.

Yesterday, I had my first experience getting a visa extension. Most areas have immigration offices where you can get a 2 month extension on top of the 3 month tourist visa. Sandakan and KK did not. But Ipoh does. Actually, even though Ipoh has an office, they sent us to an office north of here in the city of Butterworth, because a lot of tourists go there and so we don't look suspicious. So we hopped on a bus yesterday morning. While riding the bus, I noticed the man sitting in front of me was reading a book about prophets. Besides mentioning a few references to Old Testament prophets and one reference to Jesus Christ as a prophet, I couldn't get any clues as to what religion he was. All the western religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity) believe in the Old Testament prophets, and most of the eastern religions are willing to accept any inspired man as a prophet, so I couldn't figure it out. However, while we travelled, I prayed for the opportunity and boldness to share a message about a modern day prophet with that man. After the bus stopped, that man got away from me, and I lost my chance because I wasn't quick enough.
Elder Hall had served in Butterworth before, so he asked a member to pick us up from the bus station and go with us to the immigration office. It was a very pleasant, low-key experience. We went in, filled out an application, turned it in with our passport, and waited. No questions. No immigration officers threatening to send us home because they just know we must be working or doing something else illegal. We just waited (we did wait quite a long time), then paid our fee, picked up our passport, and left.

When we got back to the bus station with 15 minutes before our bus was set to leave, a man started talking to us. Malaysians are a friendly set of people. They know we're strangers here, and they want us to feel welcome. He asked who we are and what we're doing. He mentioned he saw us that morning in the Ipoh bus stop. Elder Hall said he remembered the man, but I couldn't for the life of me. After a couple more sentences, something pierced a hole in my hard, thick skull, and it clicked "Here's your chance." That man sitting in front of me had never turned around for me to see him, but I knew it was him. I can't tell you why I know. I have absolutely no other clues to go by. There were 30 or 40 other people at the bust stop that morning. But I knew it was him. I told him "So you were the one sitting in front of us, right?" (Elder Hall hadn't realized that). After some more pleasentries, I said "I noticed you were reading a book about prophets. Are you Christian?" He replied that he was Hindu, but was open to all religions. I then taught him a bit about the prophet Joseph Smith, took his phone number (he invited us to come eat with him some time: perhaps it was because when he asked us "what do you like about Malaysia", the first thing out of my mouth was the food.), and proceeded to get on the bus. Later, at a rest stop, we got out and talked and he again urged us to call him later when we have time. I'm thankful that despite my weakness, Heavenly Father answered my request to serve one of His children.

I've had a lot more spiritual and emotional struggles during the last week. But things are getting better. Much better. The wonderful part about the Gospel is that no matter where we are in our lives, if we exercise faith and repent, we can have the companionship of "the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent [who is certainly more powerful than any challenge I face], which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually." (Mosiah 5:2) The beautiful part is that we can experience this mighty change over and over again. Challenges will come our way. We are bound to stumble and fall, and maybe occasionally stay there on the ground because our legs are tired and the sun is hot, but with the help of Christ we can get up and start running faster than ever before. "Therefore if any man be in Chirst, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

Cathleene got called into work last week, and for one reason or another we haven't been able to meet her during the last week.

We are teaching a former investigator by the name of Albert. The missionaries stopped teaching him before due to his being inconsistent. He has told me he wants to change. He is very excited about the church. He knows all about the Restoration and has a testimony of it. A question came up "Do I really need to come to church on Sunday?" Yes, you do need to act on our message. It is not enough to know.
I did get my Easter package this week. I'm going to have lots of fun with the tie. Thank you Grandma! The jerkey and candy is also excellent. Especially the jerkey. It's been so long.

Love,
Elder Muffler