Elder Ben Mullins: Badminton and the Quaran

Hey Everyone!

This week was great! We had tons of fun! Lots of work is getting done in Puchong, and we're slowly but surely building up the area for the next missionary. Transfers are next week, so I'm going give one final push so that the area is built up a bit. When I got in the area, we literally had one investigator. So hopefully the next missionary will have 6 or 7 to work with when they get here.

Monday, we went to a park over on the other side of KL with all the missionaries to play soccer, but then they all showed up an hour and a half late, so we left and went to a mall that had a super cool tie store. I didn't find any awesome ties that were less than 300 ringgit, but it was fun to check it out! Then Elder Tennant wanted to find some crazy shorts at H&M, so we spent some time looking at super weird clothing there. That night we just went contacting. Oh, Elder Marsh bought a badminton racquet too, but it wasn't strung, just the frame.

Tuesday was great! Kind of. We had zone meeting, and it was really good. We got a nice training on why we need goals and stuff. I felt like I already knew what they told us about the goals, but it was a great reminder! It inspired me to set more goals! And it's working! After the meeting, we taught Awi. Awi. He had been talking with his pastor about the Book of Mormon, and decided to quit learning. When he met with us, he asked us 3 things - Do we believe in the Bible as well as the Book of Mormon, do we believe in the trinity, and do we believe that we can become gods? We answered all his questions, then he said he didn't want to meet anymore. We dropped him real quick! But it's ok, because that made more time for us to find other people! We DID end up finding more people! The Patterson's (a senior couple) brought us a rice cooker too. Elder Marsh wanted one, and apparently, they're reimbursable so they just got one for us and talked with us for a while.

Wednesday morning, we decided to drop of Elder Marsh's racquet at a badminton place to get it strung, and contact all along the way as well as all the people that were playing badminton. We headed out right after studies, and it started to DUMP rain. It's the most it has rained in a while. I whipped out my umbrella, Elder Marsh whips out his umbrella he found sitting in a corner in the apartment, and we start walking. It was so rainy that the water started dripping through the umbrellas, and it was super windy, so Elder Marsh's umbrella kept folding inside out since it was a Malaysian umbrella (the umbrella's here are super low quality). He wasn't too happy with walking through all the rain, but I was laughing at him the entire time. Since it was dumping rain, literally nobody was outside. We were walking through 6 inches of water in the road. It was bad. We'd have to block the water from cars passing by a lot, but it was a ton of fun. Once we made it to the badminton place, there wasn't anyone there except for 2 workers that only spoke Malay. Guess who can't speak Malay? Elder Marsh and me! We ended up figuring out that their machine that strings the racquets was broken (I know the work for broken in Malay. That's how we figured out.), and we'd have to come back on another day. We walked all the way back home in another 6 inches of rain. It was great. Elder Marsh didn't think so, but I was laughing at him the entire time. It was awesome. We spent about an hour in the rain, and Malaysians think that the rain makes you sick. When we told people we were in the rain for an hour and got soaked, they couldn't believe that we weren't sick. I try to tell Malaysians that rain doesn't make you sick, but they don't believe me... I dunno. Different culture.

We met with Livia later in the day, and she still wants me to baptize her! Hopefully I stay in KL! We'll see! She's doing great!

Thursday, we met with a really cool guy named Joel! He makes you say the 'el' in his name. It's like Joe El instead of Joel. He loves studying religion, and he was super interested in the Book of Mormon, but he didn't show it until the very end. The lesson went really badly it seemed like. He just didn't respond to anything we asked or did, and he looked super uninterested, but at the end, he had a million questions and was really interested. When we finished the lesson, we told him that we were going to get dinner, and he asked if he could come. We ate dinner with him and started talking about religions, and he said he had a Quran he could give me. I can't remember how we got onto the topic, but I really wanted a Quran, and he had an extra one! He gave it to me on Sunday! It's awesome. Super different from the Bible. They basically shorten all the Old Testament stories so they're really quick, and then it's all of Muhammad's writing. It's a cool souvenir to have! After that, we advertised for English class at a night market. It was a lot of fun. I love night markets. There's so much stuff to look at and a lot of the local food there smells super good. Joel came along with us for that too!

Friday, I went on exchanges with Elder Tennant, and we visited Sonia. Her family members are members of the church, but she isn't. She's just waiting for something amazing to happen I guess. She's awesome though! Super nice! Sister Stephanie brought a dessert to the lesson called mango sticky rice. It's Elder Tennant's favorite dessert, so he loved it. I don't like mangoes, so I choked it down. If I liked mangoes, it would have been super good. We contacted a lot of the day, then taught one of the Chinese Elders' investigators named Poh Poh, but it was all in Chinese, so I didn't understand most of it. I added my little testimony in Chinese though! I practiced during language study. So that was good! After that, we taught English class for the rest of the night!

Saturday, we taught English class, then grabbed a taxi and drove over to Caryn's house. Caryn is a less active member (She's actually active now though), and has a brother named Jim that isn't a member that we were going to get as a new investigator. Jim likes us a lot, so we decided it'd be worth a shot. Normally the ride would be 45 minutes, but the taxi took 2 wrong exits, and we went out of our area 2 times on those two wrong exits. Caryn lives on the northern border of our area, so the ride was long, but the 2 wrong exits made it take an hour and a half. We were super late, but we taught her, and Jim wanted to learn too! We ended up getting him as a new investigator! They're awesome! Super weird, but really fun to talk with. We grabbed dinner with Kok Cin after, and it was fun to talk with him.

Sunday after church, we met with Jim and talked for about 15 minutes before he had to go, and then 20 minutes later, we met with a new guy named Tham. Elder Forsyth and I met Tham a long time ago (I think it was my second transfer or something), and he didn't seem super interested, so we just gave him a card and told him he could go to the website on the card. A few weeks ago, Elder Marsh and I saw him and talked, and he still wasn't interested. But while Elder Boud and Marsh were on exchanges, they saw him again, and he had gone to mormon.org and wanted to learn more! We taught him the restoration, and he really enjoyed it. He's excited to learn more about the Book of Mormon, and we're excited to teach him! He seems like he's got a ton of potential.

This should be my last full week in Puchong! It's been an awesome last 7 months, and I can't wait to finish this last week and a half strong! We're building it up, and it's been fun! Today, we're playing badminton with Stephanie and her family! I love badminton. It's my 2nd favorite sport, right next to soccer. I like it because it takes a lot of skill, a lot of strategy, and you don't have to run! It's great. Anyway, I hope you all have an awesome week!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins