Elder Ben Mullins: Back from Singapore!

Hey Everyone!

We did TONS of stuff this week! It was so busy! It was awesome! Last Monday, after emailing, we went to an escape room. It's a place where you have to solve a bunch of puzzles and go through different rooms to be able to escape this room that you're "trapped" in. We had an hour, and we did it in 47 minutes! We had a really hard time with the first puzzle, but after that, we did a really good job! It was super fun. We got to climb a ladder and go through the roof to the exit and climb down a ladder in the middle of the mall. It was awesome. So that was fun. Then after that, we had dinner with Sister Chrissy and a guy that was a missionary here 20 years ago or something close to that. He was an awesome guy, and he actually teaches art at the Waterford School over in Sandy where Brian (my horn teacher) used to teach. I don't know if he still teaches there or not. Anyway, that was cool. Then we contacted a bunch for the rest of the night.

Before I go on, let me just say that in the USA, McDonald's ice cream machines are NOT that reliable, but in Malaysia, they're always working. They actually have a separate counter for just ice cream, because so many people buy it! Oh, and learning Chinese is going well too. And Jayden gets home in a couple days.

Tuesday morning, I put some bread in our oven (we don't have a toaster). I went to hurry and grab something, then forgot about it, and started my study early. I was sitting there reading the Book of Mormon while Elder Allred is doing whatever across the room. Then all of a sudden, I smelled my toast…burning. So I yelled "OH NO! MY TOAST!", then sprinted to the kitchen to save my toast. It was only burnt a little, but Elder Allred thought it was the funniest thing in the world because of what I said. So he keeps saying it now. So that's awesome. I must be a quotable person. After that morning, Elder Ng and I went to Singapore, and then hung out at the AP's house that night when we got there. It was a short flight, but we're required to get to the airport super early, and it's an hour long drive when traffic is bad to the airport. So we burned a whole day. But hanging out with the AP's was fun. They're really nice guys.

Wednesday, we played basketball with the AP's and got wrecked, then met with President and Sister Simmons! They're so nice. We had a training on how to not be stressed and how to study well and stuff. Between those two activities, we had a pizza break. So we ate SINGAPOREAN PIZZA. They use weird pepperoni. The pizza was pretty good, but not the best. Pizza is pizza. Then after training, I had a 3-minute interview with Sister Simmons, a 15-minute interview with President Simmons. Then we rushed off to the airport to fly to KL then to Penang. Apparently, it's easier to get through KL customs than Penang customs, so that's why we did that. We got through without a problem, but there were these Tamils (another Asian people) that kept trying to cut ahead of us in this HUGE line (it took longer to get through customs than it did to fly from Singapore to KL), but we kept them back. So we got back to Penang at 11:30 (past curfew), and woke Elder Marsh and Allred up to give them their packages. Elder Allred got a TON of Koolaide. So that's awesome. We've been drinking lots of Koolaide. It tastes even better here than it did in the US. Before we had Koolaide, Elder Allred would make lemonade every other night, and it was really good. Sometimes we ran out of cups, so we'd just pour the lemonade in bowls and drink it from the bowl. The best part was, Elder Ng didn't think it was weird. Asians have a different culture. I still have a hard time understanding everyone's accent here. But that's ok. I'm getting better. We actually started counting like this. "one, two, bush, four", because Elder Ng says tree instead of three. So to show how weird it sounded to us, we said bush instead of three. He thought it was pretty funny.

Thursday... Elder Ng could hardly talk because he had a really bad cold, so we took it easy, contacted a bit, planned our week, and just found a few potentials. Pretty calm day.

Friday was exchange day! I went with Elder Allred! Elder Allred is awesome. He's such a great guy. We have correlation meeting on Fridays, so we were trying to figure out what to do. Biking from the church to Gurney (a giant mall) takes about 20 minutes. By the time we got to the church, we would have an hour. We were having a hard time deciding if we should bike to Gurney and contact for 20 minutes before biking back, or if we should go to the church and just try to find people around the church. The church is right in the middle of a place that NOBODY walks. There are "haunted houses" and stuff that scare all the superstitious people away (pretty much everyone), and it's just in a really bad location to walk. Nothing really important is there, and it's right between two highways. We prayed about it and felt like we should go there and just see if we could find anything. We started walking up the road when we found a Filipino lady and talked to her. She was a golden contact. She asked us if she could come to church and if she could give us her phone number so we could call her to teach her sometime. I love it when contacts go like that. Her name is Anitha. She's a really good person. We didn't see anyone else when we were contacting there, but I think we miiiight've gotten a baptism out of that. We'll see I guess! After that, we went contacting along Burma Road. Elder Ng and I tried contacting there once, and it was terrible. We passed like two people. But Elder Allred said he wanted to, so we did. And we got about 5 potentials in an hour. It was a miracle. Then we stopped at this fruit shop, and I FINALLY tried DRAGON FRUIT. I thought it'd be super flavorful and stuff, but it really didn't taste like anything. It was flavorless. Super disappointing. I got some guava too. Elder Allred made me try a piece of watermelon. It's not as bad as it was last time I tried it, but I still didn't like it. I think Asia is conditioning me for pretty much any food. I think I'm actually starting to get used to the food here! It's a miracle! Our appointments all cancelled, so we taught Brother Tham. He just got baptized a month ago! He's super awesome, and he's the assistant branch mission leader! So that's cool. He's a super nice guy! That night, when we were contacting at Gurney, there was this juggling show. Apparently juggling is AWESOME in Asia. There were hundreds of people watching this juggling show, so it was pretty hard to contact. We walked around outside trying to find people that weren't watching the show. But it was an awesome day!

Another off subject paragraph: I really miss bread. There isn't any really good bread here. There are a few bread shops where they make really good stuff, but there's hardly any bread in meals. Actually, almost none. So I go through a loaf and a half of bread a week at home.

Elder Ng is an ARTIST. I can't believe how well he can draw. It's insane. It's like he printed it off a computer. AND. Apples here taste super good.

There's this watch brand here called G Shock, and they're AWESOME watches. But they're really expensive. Maybe I'll get one for my birthday or something. (mom???)

Saturday, I got Elder Ng's cold. So that was pretty bad. I lost my voice and couldn't talk for about half the day, and I actually just got my voice back this morning! So that was rough not being able to talk. We taught a lesson or two on Saturday, and Sister Chrissy bought us PEANUT BUTTER! Peanut butter here is wayyy expensive, but it's soooooo good. I love it. It's every missionary's favorite here. We got peanut butter and TONS of fruit. It was awesome. We're set for the week on peanut butter and fruit. Rambutan are really good. She also got us 'preserve'. It's just jam, but Elder Ng kept getting mad at me because it's not jam. It's preserve. It's really good. Oh, and while I'm on the subject of different words, a truck is actually called a lorry. That doesn't even make any sense! But you know. Asia.

Sunday was AWESOME. We went to church. I felt bad, because I couldn't talk because my voice was gone. A bunch of members kept asking me why I was being so quiet. So that was funny. Do you know how many people told me to gargle salt water? A TON. I don't know if they just thought I wouldn't know to do that or what. Haha! At least they care enough to try to help. And everyone here thinks that medicine can fix anything. I was also told to take medicine a lot. Haha! Brother Henry is super funny, and really passionate about the gospel, but he has such a thick accent, that even the locals can't understand him a lot of the time. When he gets excited while he's teaching, he talks even faster and faster, then nobody can understand him, and then he keeps saying "ah" between every other word, and it's suuuper funny to listen to him. That was awesome to hear him teach. After church, we went to the Kendrick's! They're the only American family in the branch. We had enchiladas. They were super good. Elder Ng had never even heard of enchiladas. So it was nice to have HIM try the new food. Then we had cobbler and ice cream, which was even better. The Shannon's (an American couple that lived here for two months and are going back to the US tomorrow) invited us over for pizza tonight! So that's exciting! I can't wait! I thought I had made it through an ENTIRE WEEK without eating anything that made me want to throw up, but I was wrong. Elder Ng scheduled an appointment with the Soon's, and they gave us this bean soup. It was just beans and water. It was disgusting. Then when I ate all the beans, brother Soon told me to drink all the soup, so I choked it down in like 6 big gulps. Then I was trying to drink my water to wash down the taste. Elder Ng had told them earlier that my throat was sore and I couldn't talk, so he poured a bunch of this lemon extract + water chestnut juice. Once again, I nearly threw up when I drank it. It was DISGUSTING. You would think the lemon would cut out the water chestnut, but NOPE. Definitely not. It just made it harder to drink really fast. So I didn't make it the whole week. The worst up until then was when we were in Singapore, we were in a store that was selling cup of noodles, and one of the cups was bone marrow flavored. Luckily, I didn't have to try that.

This morning, we woke up, played basketball, and then taught Elliott right before we went to email! Elliott is still super solid, and he's awesome. He's having trouble with trying to get us into super deep doctrine when we just need to teach him the basics first. We jump between basics and super difficult to talk about doctrine, so it's been a fun day with lots of questions. We've officially called this P day "P Day Chill Day". We're gonna hang around the apartment, write letters, watch approved movies (like The Prince of Egypt), and just hang out! It's gonna be awesome!

Nowwww for my spiritual thought! I was thinking about the premortal life and how Lucifer wanted to take the role that Jesus had, and to force everyone to do right. Then I thought about how Jesus thought that atoning in Gethsemane was almost too much to bear. All of a sudden I had an EPIPHANY. If it had been Lucifer in Jesus's place, and HE had to atone for the sins of everyone (assuming that everyone still had agency), he couldn't have done it. It would have been too much for someone so selfish. He wouldn't have had the strength to rely on God to save him and help him through such an agonizing pain. So be grateful that Jesus is our Savior! Because he's the best! I grow closer and closer to Him each day, and as a missionary, it's awesome! I get to strengthen my relationship with him 24/7 while helping other people strengthen their relationship with him!

Have an awesome week! This next week is full of excitement for pretty much everyone! Penang is awesome, and the work here is going really great! If only investigators could get a day off…But we should be teaching a lot of lessons this week! So that's awesome! I love you all!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins