Elder Ben Mullins: Pasar Seni and Zone Conference

Hey Everyone!

This week was great! We stayed super busy the whole week, so that was awesome! We get to watch General Conference next week, so I'll let you know about that next week! All the branch members were talking about the talks at church today, so I hope it's as good as they say it was!

Monday was awesome. Most of you know that I like shopping at Deseret Industries (DI). There's this place by the Pasar Seni LRT station that's basically a DI where they try and rip you off because you're white, but then you can haggle them down to like 3/4 the price that it was, and it's all fake stuff that's super cheap. So I got a G Shock watch for less than 1/10th the price that a real one would be. The watch isn't very high quality, but it looks exactly like a G Shock! So that was super awesome! Elder McCusker bought a pair of cork flip flops, and the guy originally tried selling them to him for 120 ringgit, but he got it down to 35 ringgit. It was way funny, because he started walking away, then the guy called him back and said 35 ringgit was ok.

Tuesday... Let's see. I forgot my planner, so I can't remember exactly what we did every day. I know we saw this super funny horse statue that I took a picture of. There are some houses here that are mansions, and this horse statue was at one of those houses. We hiked up a lot of hills that day when we were looking for less actives... But we had lots of success in a super short amount of time, so that was super awesome.

Wednesday was sort of rough, but I can't remember what we did. I just remember we got 1 potential investigator, and that was the only number we got all day. Some days, people just don't want to talk. If they do talk, they aren't interested. Normally those days are Wednesdays and Thursdays. I don't know why, but Wednesday was a little slow. I forgot! We put a girl named Mars on date for the middle of next month, then asked where she lived as we were leaving, and she lives in Subong's area. We put her on date then passed her to the sister missionaries. So we did all the work. If Mars gets baptized, I'll just kinda take half credit for that... Haha, just kidding.

Thursday was Zone Conference so President and Sister Simmons flew out, and all the missionaries in the KL Zone went to PJ Chapel to meet them! And it lasted ALL DAY. We woke up at 5 AM, took the LRT over to the chapel, then trained for a lot of hours. Then we went to KL Sentral (Everything here is in Malay. That's why central is spelled wrong.) and did a picture scavenger hunt. I'll have Elder Forsyth send the pictures. My goal was to make the pictures look as funny as possible, so I hope you like them all! Talking with President Simmons was fun, and it was great meeting all the other missionaries in the zone! I feel like I actually know some missionaries now! Oh, random thing that happened a lot on Thursday. Everyone thought I wasn't an English Elder because I'd keep using Chinese words here and there and Malay ones instead, because it's fun to practice Chinese, and Malay words sound really funny. So everyone kept asking me if I was a Chinese Elder or a Malay Elder. That made me excited! Haha! Oh, my favorite word to say in Malay is sedap. It means delicious. It just sounds so funny... I love it!

Friday... Let's see. It wasn't a great day for numbers either, because nobody was really interested. At least they all talked with us. It's terrible when you get 10 potential investigator's and none of them are interested when you call! We like the straightforward rejection instead of the over-the-phone rejection. It saves time. We advertised for English Class, and that was way fun. People just love seeing a bunch of white people walking down the road at a green light holding signs that say free English class in the middle of a huge traffic jam! We had this Tamil taxi driver ask us if we were the Mormons. So that was funny. I love meeting people that know the Mormons. Unless they're from the Philippines. Normally they aren't as interested if they're from there. But they're super nice people! If they haven't heard of the Book of Mormon, they're super willing to listen! ANYWAY. At English class, I was bored, so I started drawing pictures on the whiteboards. I took pictures and I'll send them!

Saturday... Hmmm. Oh, we visited Winson again! He's super funny. I love talking with him. Then we found a super nice dog after visiting him, so we took a picture. Before we visited Winson, we took George to the church for his baptismal interview. Brother Kennedy let us use his laptop (the zone leaders didn't want to make the hour and a half LRT ride down to Puchong) to Skype, and he passed the interview! He'll be baptized at the end of the transfer! We're all really excited. He'll be the first male baptism for Puchong in quite a while.

Saturday night, we visited the Tan's. There are a few last names that are super common in Malaysia, and Tan is one of them. We visited Ritcher Tan and her boys. We figured out one is going to serve a mission, and we convinced the other that he should come to church! So that's cool. They're a less active family, but Jason, the one that's planning on serving a mission, comes to church probably every other week. So that was awesome to learn that he's planning on serving!

Sundays are always great! And it was fast and testimony meeting, so it was even better! There's this kid named Miguel that's 8, and he went up and chastised the entire branch for not repenting enough. It was awesome. Then he ran back down and hugged his mom because it was terrifying to speak in front of so many people. He did an awesome job! I'll take a picture with him next week!

We went contacting for about an hour after teaching a recent convert and getting our studies in, and it was really productive. We had 14 potential investigators, and reporting is Sunday night. Our goal was 25, so we were kinda freaking out, because the ZL's really care about our numbers. In just tan hour, we talked to 7 people, and 6 of them were really interested to learn more! What a miracle! God really does bless those that are willing to work! It was a great day of contacting, and a great day of teaching! We got to 20 PI's so that was another blessing. 20 was only falling short by 5 instead of 11. Room for improvement, but not too bad! Haha! After contacting, while Elder Forsyth was reporting, the rest of the Elders and I watched the April 2016 General Conference since we can't watch the new one for another week. We listened to some talks that explained what sustaining meant and why we sustain our prophets and apostles. So that was cool! It's a privilege to sustain President Monson! You're saying you'll support him in his calling, not voting on whether he's prophet or not.

This week went by so fast, and we're already halfway through the transfer! I can't believe it! I feel so new to Puchong! Actually, I AM so new to Puchong. It's awesome here, and the members are great! I asked if it felt like I had only been here for 2 and a half weeks, and they said that when they thought about time, it seemed like I'd been there for a week, but if they went off of how well they know me, it seems like a lot longer than 2 and a half weeks. So positive reviews from everyone for me! That's good! Thanks for supporting me while I'm on my mission! Have a nice week everyone!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins