Elder Ben Mullins: Lots of Lessons

Hey Everyone!

This week, we taught a lot of lessons, and we're going strong! Puchong is doing the best in KL! We're on fire! It's great. We have 2 baptisms scheduled for this transfer (Keke and her son Nicholas), and lots more for next transfer!

Monday, we taught Keke and Nicholas, and she brought her friend named Eng. There's a language barrier between us and Eng, so we're going to have the Chinese elders teach her. She speaks Vietnamese, Mandarin, and almost no English. We had a super good dinner, and a really good lesson!

Tuesday, not much happened. We actually taught Amanda, and she's progressing nicely, and we set up 3 return appointments for this week. We had one yesterday, one tomorrow, and one Wednesday. She's excited to learn! I think she'll be ready for baptism at the beginning of next transfer! Oh, and the Zone Leaders challenged us to have a high five day! That's where you high five as many people as possible in one day of missionary work! And we probably got like 600 high fives. It was a lot of fun.

Wednesday was really fun! We went to visit Ariz and see if we could find his boss and ask him why Ariz couldn't have 3 hours on Sunday off, but didn't see him. But while we were there, there was this Chinese lady that LOVED us. She was probably 50 years old, and she was fascinated with us. She asked me how old I was about 4 times. She set up an appointment with us and said she'd bring all of her Christian friends. Ariz thought she was trying to set us up with a bunch of Chinese girls and try to marry us off, so he was super worried. When she left, Ariz told us that we couldn’t go to the appointment. We asked why, and he told us he thought she said she was going to try to get us to marry one of her friends. We explained to him that we're going teach them, not marry them. Haha! He was freaking out for a second, but once we told him, he realized that she really did just mean that she wanted to be taught. Ariz is so funny... On the way out, we met this Tamil dude that was Hindu, and prayed to Jesus. He really got excited when he saw "men of God" like us. Haha! He was super weird, so we left as fast as we could. When we were walking back to the train station, we met this guy that we’d met a couple weeks ago that told us to call him Uncle Lim. He's about 55 years old. When you shake his hand, he just holds on and talks with you for as long as you let him. The first time, it was super awkward. He just kept holding onto my hand and Elder Forsyth's hand. Haha! It was hilarious. We tried to get away, but he just kept holding onto our hands and talked. When we saw him on Wednesday, we didn't shake his hand. He was in the middle of a conversation on his phone, and hung up to talk with us. We said we had to go, so he reluctantly let us. He's a weird guy.

Thursday was CRAZY. The funniest thing of my entire mission happened. We were talking with people on the train about Jesus Christ. We talked to this Chinese girl, and mid-conversation, we heard a phone make the picture taking sound. We looked up to see where it came from, and this Malay dude that's really old took 2 more pictures of us, then just stared at us for a few seconds. We asked him if we could do anything for him, and he said, "STOP BUGGING THAT GIRL! THIS IS PUBLIC TRANSPORT. YOU AREN'T ALLOWED TO TALK WITH PEOPLE HERE., ESPECIALLY ABOUT WHAT YOU GUYS TALK ABOUT. YOU'RE JUST TRYING TO MAKE THIS TRAIN INTO A CROSS SO YOU CAN WORSHIP IT." He was freaking out at us. Haha! We told him we don't worship the cross, we worship Jesus Christ. He kept telling us that we can't talk to anyone on public transport (I don't know what he thinks public means), and if we kept doing it, he'd call the police. Elder Forsyth has a temper sometimes, so Elder Forsyth stares at this dude right in the eyes, and says, "Go ahead. Call the police." Then just walks away. As we're walking away, I hurry and turn back to the girl we were talking with and said, "Sorry for bothering you. We're going to go talk with more people down here." As you can imagine, the Malay guy wasn't happy about that. We talked with more people on the train for about 20 minutes, then a policeman got on the train and the Malay guy brought him to us while we're talking with a guy from Holland about the church. Elder Forsyth and I just pretended we didn't see the cop. The guy was super cool and really nice. The Malay guy was yelling at the cop, pointing at us, and the cop is shaking his head no to the Malay guy. We finished talking with the guy from Holland, we arrived at our station, got off the train, and the cop left. The look of defeat on the Malay guy's face was the funniest thing I've seen on my entire mission. The literal best. Nothing can stop God's work from moving forward! So that was awesome.

Earlier that morning, we taught George (the guy we just baptized) and he said he wanted to be a missionary. He asked how he can be a full time missionary. The problem is, he's about 33 or something. We told him that he can help the missionaries all he wants, and there are opportunities for senior couples to go on missions too. So maybe one day! That night, Cedric called us, and told us about an experience he had just had. He said he went to light his cigarette, and this feeling came over him that he shouldn't do it. He had this huge impression that he should stop drinking alcohol and coffee, and that he needed to quit smoking, so he called us to ask if it was the Spirit. We asked him how it made him feel, and he said it felt good. We then asked him what he thought it was. And he said, "It was the Spirit, wasn't it?" We confirmed that it was, and that he DID need to stop doing all those things, and we set up 3 appointments with him for this week! I'm super excited for Cedric! He's going to be one of the best members ever. He's super solid.

Friday, we taught a new person. Her name is Syuen, and she seems pretty solid. She can't meet for another week, but after that, I think she'll be pretty solid as an investigator. After we taught her, we went to a nonmember referral's house. Her name was Mary, a 72-year-old Tamil lady. We had no idea what her religious background was. She had this huge fish tank in front of her house, and it had one fish in it. And the fish was HUGE. I took a picture. Anyway, we walked in her house, and I was shocked. Lots of Buddhist's build shrines to their ancestors and Buddha, and they have these red glowing lights and all this stuff. She had the exact same thing, but a shrine to Jesus. It turned out, she's a devout Roman Catholic. When we asked her if she would be baptized once she knew the Book of Mormon was true, she said, "No need, all same. I've already been baptized." We asked her that if God told her that she needed to be baptized by someone that held the priesthood authority of God, would she be baptized. And she said no. Sooooo needless to say, we didn't set up a return appointment, and she was a really weird lady.

After her, we taught Shena before we set up English class, then we taught Keke and Eng (Nicholas was sick) right before English started. We went to the Lim's while the Chinese Elders taught English so we could interview Phoebe for baptism! We taught 4 lessons (technically 5 if you count the one to the Lim's) in one day! Which is a TON for this mission. I don't know about other missions. But it was awesome. The day went by so fast.

Saturday, we helped Sister Saffron with a charity thing she was helping set up, and it was actually pretty fun. I got to know Joey, the Chinese Elders' investigator, a lot better. After that, we went contacting. There's this American guy that teaches at a university nearby, and his name is Doctor Carl. We see him all the time, and before we got to know him, we just called him Professor Beethoven, because he has hair like Beethoven. Anyway, we talked with him, got to know lots about him, and I see POTENTIAL. I'm going to see if he wants to learn about the Book of Mormon next time we see him. He stays in the same apartment complex as us, so we should see him quite a bit more.

We also talked with a potential investigator (now investigator, we taught him yesterday), and it turns out he's passionate about growing mushrooms for people to eat. I'm not really sure why, but he's just fascinated with mushrooms. It's his dream to be a mushroom farmer. I’m not really sure why. He's named Slim. He's a funny guy.

Sunday, we taught Slim, and he seems like he could be a pretty good investigator. We'll see how things turn out. I can't really tell yet. After we taught Slim, we had lunch with Sister Saffron, and we brought along Bryant and Amanda. It was lots of fun, we had super good dumplings and char siew, and some really good fried rice. It was great.

I'm loving my mission! Every day is awesome, and I have tons of fun. I can see my life being guided by the Spirit more and more every day. As we strive to read and pray every day, and go to church every Sunday, we can see God's hand in our life more and more. Missions are the best! Have a good week everyone!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins