Elder Ben Mullins: I Ate a Turtle

Hey Everyone!

This week went by super-fast! Lots of crazy stuff happened this week! Elder Marsh and I are back together, and I'm still in Puchong! We picked up Elder Marsh from KL on Wednesday night, and we've been working hard to get the area moving again. I stuck with the Chinese Elders for a few more days before picking him up, and we had a lot of fun and taught at a lot of appointments.

Monday, we played badminton at Sister Stephanie's place with her and her sisters and their kids. It was a ton of fun. I'm getting pretty good at badminton too! I'm probably better than 99% of Americans; mostly because badminton isn't played in the USA. After we played badminton and went shopping, we had Kennedy pick us up in a really small car and drive us to this super sketchy place to eat. We got some turtle, some giant lizard, and some Asian racoon thing. The turtle tasted kind of funny, but the meat wasn't too bad, the lizard was pretty good, and the racoon was terrible meat, but the sauce was alright. There's definitely a reason we eat beef, pork, and chicken.

Tuesday, we met with 2 people from China named Tom and John. Tom is a super tall Chinese dude. I took a picture with him. They should be baptized at the end of the transfer. After that, Saffron took us to dinner, and we went to a super good burger place. The rest of the day and night, we just contacted.

Wednesday, we met with a guy named Vicky. He's moving to Singapore in a few weeks, and he'll probably be baptized there. Lucky Singapore! Free baptism! After that, we waited for Dorothea to show up to her appointment, and while we did that, we did our to-do list and called PI's. An hour after we had scheduled her appointment, she showed up. We almost just left and told her we'd meet on another day, but then she said she had something super important to tell us. She said she prayed about Joseph Smith, and said that she just has a really good feeling that he really was a prophet. So BOOM! She'll be baptized as soon as she quits smoking. Half way through the lesson, I had to go get Elder Marsh from KL, so I went on splits with Kennedy all the way down to KL and back. Once we got back, we ate dinner super quickly, then met with Kok Cin. We taught about forgiveness and repentance, and it was actually a really good lesson! Kok Cin is a great recent convert. He's gonna be a leader one day in Malaysia!

Thursday was Elder Marsh and my first full day back in Puchong! We went and visited our brand-new investigator, Livia! Livia is 9 years old, and her parents are both members, but Livia wasn't baptized when she was 8. Her parents finally decided she should get baptized. They were waiting for a few things to happen that didn't, so now we get to teach her! Livia is adorable. She always asks us crazy questions. When we tell her we don't know the answer, she says, "I don't believe you! You're just saying that!" She likes asking questions like "Did God tell me that I would be living here when we were in heaven?" There's no scripture that says He did, but it's totally possible that He did! We just say we don't know and move on. Her two little sisters are super cute too. They're 6 and 4. They try to help us teach their older sister and like sitting between me and Elder Marsh while we're teaching. When we knocked on the door and the 3 girls saw that it was us, they all started yelling and coming to the door. Then they latched onto us and all started trying to talk with us and tried giving us hugs and jumping into our arms and stuff, BUT we're missionaries, so we just stood there not knowing what to do. All 3 of them love us. It's a ton of fun! Their names are Livia, Hazel, and Vera.

After we taught Livia, we went to the church and taught Shena. She taught us how to say a prayer in Malay. Now I can pray in Malay! After the lesson, we had to ride the train over a few stations so that we could get a ride to our dinner appointment with the Teh's! They made some noodles and mushroom soup. I don't like mushrooms, so I just ate around them. It was all really good except for the mushrooms. Then we shared a quick message and hurried home.

On Friday, we met with a new person named Mark. He only had 20 minutes, so we taught the shortened version of the restoration, and committed him to CPR. We'll see if he turns out or not. He's going down to JB for 2 weeks, so we'll meet with him after that if he's still interested. After we met with him, we met with Cedric again! We taught Cedric a long time ago, and then he moved to Penang. He moved back, and while we were calling potential investigators, he sat down at our table and said hi and we talked for about 30 minutes. He started smoking and drinking again, because he didn't meet with the Elders in Penang. We'll have to get him to stop those again, and then baptize him!

We ran over to Ariz's work before we had to go teach English, and he's doing great! Ariz is still himself. It's been a while since I've seen him. He should be able to start coming back to church, so I hope he keeps his promise! He's still awesome. And he made us super good fruit juice.

Saturday was kind of crazy! We woke up and got ready super-fast, then rode a train down to KL so that Elder Marsh could baptize a girl named Ellie! She wanted him to baptize him before he left KL, but then he left. We went back to baptize her. It was a great service. Two Americans gave talks, and I had the realization that American speakers give completely different talks from Malaysian speakers. I didn't realize how different they are! Americans use a lot of stories and relate them to a topic, and Malaysians just talk about the topic. The American way is definitely better. Elder McCusker was in Puchong a transfer ago, but then he left, and now he's back in KL, so I got to talk with him a bit and catch up on the last week and a half with him for a while. It was a lot of fun.

We traveled back after, and taught English, then went contacting until 6:00. We headed over to Brother Chin's house for dinner. We had some local food, and it was alright. Then we sat down for the 15-minute thought. The 15-minute thought started with, "Brother Chin, why is the sacrament important to you?" The 15 minutes ended up being a response from him about why the sacrament is important to him. Then he transformed the 15-minute thought to a 30-minute thought, then 45 minutes, then an hour before we finally cut him off and said we had to leave. BUT. The information he shared in the hour-long response was actually really helpful! One thing stuck out to me. A lot of people (including me) believe that "teaching by the Spirit" means asking good questions you're prompted to, listening carefully to responses, and trying really, really hard to listen to the things the Spirit tells you to say. That CAN be teaching by the Spirit, but it's a ton of work. Brother Chin offered some insight to make teaching by the Spirit a lot easier. Always teach from the scriptures. It's that easy. If you're always using the scriptures, then you can let the person you're teaching know that it's not you that said, it, it's God that said it. The way he explained it was really good, and it made me realize I need to use the scriptures a lot more.

Yesterday, before church we taught Kyle. In the lesson, he told us that when he prayed about the Book of Mormon, "The Spirit whispered to [his] heart that it's true". He has an answer! We're so excited! After church, we taught Livia the Plan of Salvation, and she asked some pretty crazy questions, but it was a lot of fun to teach. Later that night, we went to dinner with Sister Stephanie. She made some super good food. We had Kok Cin, Brother Lim and his family, and Dorothea over. It was super good food, and a lot of fun!

This week flew by! I don't really even know where the time went! It was a lot of fun though, and we have a lot of appointments scheduled next week with new people. I hope the appointments go through! We'll see I guess. I hope you all have an awesome week! I get another one and a half months in Puchong, so I'll have hit 7 and a half by the end of this transfer!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins