Elder Ben Mullins: Bahasa Malayu For the Last 15 Months

Hey Everyone!

This week has been a great final week in Puchong! I don't have transfer news yet, so I'll try to remember to put it in before I finish emailing. This week was GREAT. I really did love it. I'll sure miss the members in Puchong, but I'm ready to head somewhere else!

Monday, we played BADMINTONNNNNN. My favorite sport now. I seriously like it just as much as soccer, but you don't have to run as much, so it overtook soccer. I love it. TONS of fun. It'd be terrible in the USA since everyone will be terrible at it, but in Malaysia it's a ton of fun! We had a lot of people go, and we had a blast! The rest of the night, we just went contacting.

Tuesday was a super-fast day. We had district meeting, cooked some pretty good fried chicken, and contacted. A family that the Chinese Elders are teaching invited Elder Marsh and me over for dinner, and we invited one of our investigators, Jim, to come along. We booked a grab car (like a taxi) and it took us to our destination. It was about a 45-minute drive. I kept saying to Elder Marsh and Jim that I could've sworn that they only lived about 15 minutes away, but I wasn't sure since I hadn't ever been over before. The grab car dropped us off. We got out and looked around, and we were in Malay territory. Muslims EVERYWHERE. I think this town was literally 100% Muslim. We went to the house, and it was abandoned. We walked around, and since Muslims are super nice, we asked where we were and where we needed to go. None of them really knew where we were supposed to go, so Elder Marsh, Jim, and I all walked around and asked people for a while, and we were DEFINITELY in the wrong place. We called Saffron since she was the one that booked us the grab car, and she had accidentally pressed the wrong city! It was the exact same street, exact house number, but instead of in Puchong she booked it to Putra. We spent another 45 minutes in a new grab car driving ALL THE WAY BACK to Puchong. Luckily, we were still in our area since Putra is south of us, but it was still a pain, and we had to eat dinner in about 15 minutes because we had stuff to do after. Crazy day though.

Wednesday, we visited Caryn and Jim! they're doing great! On the way to their place, we were a little early, so we stopped by this statue place that I've always wanted to take a look in. We talked to the owner. He wasn't interested in meeting. BUT. He did sell some pretty sweet statues. We took a quick glance around, and then went to Caryn and Jim's place. Jim has to work now, so we might have to drop him, but he'll be baptized one day, once he has some free time. Caryn is still going strong. We taught a quick lesson (some cockroaches interrupted a few times) and then played badminton with them in their airwell. We had a ton of people watching the two white people who were dressed up in a white shirt and tie play badminton with two Malaysians. I think they were all shocked to see two white people. It was lots of fun. After we finished there, we hurried home and changed to normal clothes so that we could do what President Simmons said we should do: BADMINTON CONTACTING!!! We were pumped. We got to the badminton place, rented a court, and we tried for about 20 minutes to get people to come play badminton with us, but they all had groups of 4 so none of them wanted to play with us. Pretty lame sauce. It was a bust. We went back home and changed back into missionary clothes and finished the night.

Thursday was a long day of contacting and planning, but at night, we went over to Brother Chin's! Brother Chin is awesome. He's super intelligent, and really humble. We had a really interesting dinner of unfried spring rolls, and then instead of us sharing a spiritual thought, he whipped out his homemade props of the golden plates and taught us about them. Then he taught us how to invest our money in the stock market. I'm not gonna lie, I will definitely invest money into the stock market once I finish my mission. Other than that, it was pretty uneventful.

Friday was CRAZY. It literally changed the entire course of my mission. Just after we finished personal study, and we were just getting ready to leave the apartment, when we got a call. I looked at the phone, and... PRESIDENT SIMMONS WAS CALLING. I hurried and got Elder Marsh and told him he was calling, but he didn't believe me. I answered the phone and started talking with him, and he said he had a question for me. I said, “Sure, ask away.” Then he said, "Would you be willing to speak Malay instead of English?" Didn't see that one coming. I thought for a second, then said, "Sure, if you want me to, I'll do it." He told me to think about it for a while and let him know if I changed my mind about it. Now I'm not an English Elder! Well, that's how it's supposed to be. We'll see when we get transfer news. I should be speaking Malay now though! Pretty crazy! I've decided I'm excited to learn Malay. It's kind of a useless language outside of Malaysia, but it'll be nice to know a second language. After that, we went out and contacted for pretty much the whole day up until English class.

Saturday was a good day! We got to watch conference! My favorite talk in the Saturday sessions was by Elder Sabin. I can't remember what it was about right now though... I forgot my notes at home. After conference, we taught Tham., and Tham is SOLID. He had tons of super good questions on the Book of Mormon, and was super down to go to General conference for Sunday. After Tham, we met with a new person named Jen! She asked THE PERFECT questions for the restoration. She literally led us through the entire restoration lesson through her questions. It was awesome. She's meeting with Elder Marsh and whoever replaces me. She has lots of potential.

Sunday... Conference was GREAT again. Elder Oaks and Elder Costa's talks were AWESOME. I loved the Godhead talk Elder Oaks gave, and Elder Costa's was perfect for investigators. I really liked them a lot. Definitely going to save those to show people. Between sessions, we taught Tham, and he asked THE PERFECT QUESTIONS for the Plan of Salvation, so we'll teach him that next time. He kept saying, "I noticed in the conference, they talked about family and happiness a lot. Why? And what about the ancestors? Why did they talk about those?" So. Bomb lesson next time. Oh, I totally forgot! Before conference, we met with Joseph again! We taught the full restoration, and he loved it. We said that we were going to watch the prophet speak to us today in church, and he got super excited and kept telling us how lucky he was that he came to church on the day the prophet would address us. He was pumped. He stayed through the first session, but had to go after. He could be pretty solid too though.

After church and lessons, we went to Saffron's for one last big dinner with everyone before I left. It was a lot of fun, and tasted really good. I'll miss Puchong branch, and I think Puchong branch will miss me! I hope I left a lasting impression on the branch. I didn't want to be one of those missionaries that just came and went. I tried my best to leave a mark, and I think I did.

That was my week! Now I'm going to speak Malay, and it'll be an adventure! No news on where I'm going yet, so if I get news before I have to leave, I'll send it! If not, I'll have a member tell my parents where I'm going to something. I hope all of you have a great week! Love you all!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins

*Just got Transfer News! I’m going to a small place called Sungai Plan! I’ll be companions with a guy that came in when I did named Elder Mickelson!