Chinese New Year is Finally Ending!

Hey Everyone!

Chinese New Year is FINALLY coming to a close! It's been a long Chinese New Year. It's nearly impossible to meet with ANYONE during Chinese New Year, so we've mainly been trying to visit less actives, but most of them aren't home. The weeks go by fast, but it seems like Chinese New Year has been going for quite a while. I forgot my planner, so I can't remember exactly what we did this every day this week, so I'll just put what I remember.

First and most important, we found a ping pong table that we can play every morning in our apartment complex. It's in the second tower of apartments, and it's just on the second floor. There's a floor that's 80% outside.  There’s a ball pit and a ping pong table out there. It's awesome. Every morning for exercise, we play ping pong. I'll be a professional by the end of my mission. Since there was a really cool ping pong table/ball pit on the second floor of the building next to us, we decided to check and see what was on our second floor.  We went to the second floor of our building, and there were a couple homeless people sleeping on cardboard.  We decided to just keep going up and pretend we didn't see anything.

Last Monday, we played badminton with sister Stephanie and her family, so that was tons of fun. The court was super-hot though, so we were all DRIPPING sweat by the end. Badminton is a ton of fun, so once I go back to the states, I'll have to find some people that can play so that I can keep playing it. Badminton is HUGE here. Every Malaysian is born with a badminton racquet in their hand (just kidding). Literally everyone plays it.

We did tons of less active visiting, and some contacting. Elder Forsyth is STILL with me (that's 3 and a half transfers now, and still going), and there's no end in sight. So that's pretty cool! He'll leave one of these days. Maybe the same day I leave! I dunno! I'm thinking I'm gonna leave Puchong at the end of this transfer! March first! That's my guess. I think I'll replace Elder Child in Melakka. Elder Child and I are really good friends, so that'll be fun to take over the area he's been in since we both got to Malaysia. That's 100% a guess though, so don't tell anyone I'm going to Melakka. I don't even know how to spell the town name.

Let's see... What else happened... We met with Kok Cin a couple times, and he helped us out on Wednesday too!  That was awesome! He followed us around all day and helped out with missionary work. He's awesome. He's still progressing toward the 18th, along with Yuen.

When I first got to Puchong, 70-80 people attended church every single week. The last 4 weeks (not counting last week, because it was Chinese New Year and everyone was gone), we've had 110, 107, 105, and 110 people attend. It USED to be that if you got over 100 people 3 weeks in a row, they'd start looking for a place to build a church building, but some problems arose, and now it's a lot harder to get an actual building. So maybe one day, Puchong will get a building. The building we're in now only has room for 140, so if we get more than that, they won't have any other choice than to get us a bigger building.  That'll be great! Maybe in another year!

My first transfer in Penang, a few weeks into my mission, I met a guy named Elliott who was super awesome and mega prepared, but his parents wouldn't let him go to church. 3 weeks ago, he moved to PJ (opposite side of KL from me), and is going to be baptized this Saturday!  He's super excited! He's such an awesome guy.  He came to Puchong branch yesterday, and we caught up on life! I'll send a picture of us 6 months ago and a picture now!

The 8th day of Chinese New Year is a really important day for all the Hokkian people (it's a subgroup of Chinese. No idea if I spelled it right).  There were tons of dragon dances and fireworks everywhere. They have the longest strings of firecrackers ever in this country... It was tons of fun to watch all the fireworks at night though!

 Sorry the email is a little shorter than normal this week. I just can't remember what we did.  I took quite a few pictures so hopefully that makes up for it. I hope you all have an awesome week! Maybe Elder Marsh will finally make it over to Puchong this week! …We'll see.  Now that the Chinese New Year is ending, we should have lots more to do! Hopefully we’ll find a few new investigators this week!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins

Ball pit

Found a Bentley

Boomerang

Chair tower