Transfer Week AGAIN!

This is a transcript of the audio Elder Mullins sent this week.  It’s really hard to guess how to spell the foreign words.  He will have to help me correct those in his book when he gets home.  

3/11/18

Dear friends and family,

What happened to Azmira?  She was supposed to be baptized on March 3, but she went to campung and her family talked her out of getting baptized. That happens a lot.  

We wanted something cool to take home with us from KK so we went and got sunputungs.  The name comes from campung.   It’s a gourd with a piece of bamboo sticking out of it.  If you hold it the right way you can make noise like a horn.  We’ve heard back in the day, if you wanted to get a wife you went out on the corner and played the sungputung to draw attention to oneself.  Pretty awesome!  It’s a cool instrument.  It’s the second coolest instrument I own.

We were talking with Mixter today.  Since it’s the end of the transfer one of us might leave.  We said, “Mixter, you are a professional basket weaver, right?”  He said, “Well, I’m not professional, but I’m pretty good.”  We asked if he could teach us the art of basket weaving tomorrow.  It turns out that Mixter is a very passionate basket weaver.  He knows the dusung art of basket weaving, but he’s the only dusung from his campung who actually knows how to weave baskets.  No one in his campung knows how to weave except for him.  He’s protecting this ancient art of dusungetry.  At first, we started talking and he got really excited.  We didn’t really know how serious he was until, with tears in his eyes he grabbed us at the end of church.  He said, “Elders, you need to pray that you will always remember what I am about to teach you tomorrow about basket weaving.”  He’s pretty worried about this ancient art being passed down.  I’m so excited about it.  I don’t know if we are making baskets.  I just know he weaves.  

Early in the week we got to have a member named Adric follow us around the whole day.  He’s just coming back from inactivity.  While he was inactive he went to an Anglican church and became the worship leader over there. He said, “I didn’t believe in their church, but their church is more fun so I became a worship leader there.   I was the first Mormon worship leader there,”  Uuummm, yeah, because it’s an Anglican church.  Ha Ha!  He’s way obsessed with Mormon memes.  Mix together “I’m trying to be Like Jesus” and “Harry Potter”.  The tunes are pretty much the same.  (Ben and Elder Mickelson sang it for us to show us.  It was really neat, almost scary…Ha Ha!). We are excited to get Adric back.  He’s also helping a lot of the youth come back to church too.  

Myles

When we were on exchanges with him we met a person named Tien.  Tien looks exactly like my cousin, Kenyon, back in the day.  He even acts like him.  It’s unbelievable.  If Kenyon was Asian, he would be Tien.  He does not believe in God.  We sat him down and taught him a thing or two.  And now, as Tien always says, “I don’t know.”  That’s how he responds to everything.  He’s moving to KL soon.  We will try to solidify him and then send him to the elders there.  

We wanted to find Brother Sofry’s workplace.  We were walking around a place called Bondaron looking for him.  We gave him a call and found him.  He works at a small hotel.  He hired his friend, Jeffry, another church member, to clean the windows and do other jobs for a day.  Sofry owns the hotel and is passionate about it.  He does a really good job with it.  He’s remodeling it and it’s a nice little hotel.  White people live in it.  A lot of times he’s just sitting in the office waiting for customers to come in.  We have this classic Preparing-to-go-on-a-mission- guy.  If we ever find anyone in that area we are welcome to bring them to the hotel to teach a lesson.  It’s really nice and quiet and he helps us teach them.  That was a gold mine find!

A really solid member named Adrian came in with his friend Freddy from Kudot.  That was really cool, because he had to drop another investigator named Freddy, also from Kudot.  Dropped a Freddy, got a Freddy.  

You remember the guy, Myles, who is going to open China?  He’s back!  Remember that other Chinese guy that doesn’t know English that came to English class?  He’s coming every week.  He’s still here!  Myles is the guy that brought that guy from China to Malaysia.  Back in the day he and Myles went scuba diving together.  Now this Chinese guy is getting solid and coming to church.  He even came to a branch activity.  Myles is whipping him into shape and inviting him over.  That is a connection I didn’t think would ever exist.  That was a really cool miracle.  

The last thing…the transfer is coming to a close.  As of tomorrow, anything can happen.  Six months together with Elder Mickelson.  In the same house for nine months.  It could all be coming to an end tomorrow.  

Myle's friend from China

I don’t even know what else to say.  We got haircuts from Elder DJ, because we had some extra time last night.  Elder Mickelson almost beat Elder Loutzin in an arm wrestle last night.  I lost my voice.  That’s why we didn’t make a recording last week.  I have about 80% back now. 

I hope you all have a fabulous week! 

Love,

Elder Mullins 

We got this news a few minutes after his first email:

I'm going to a place called Kuching! It's the biggest city in East Malaysia! Possibly the biggest city on Borneo! So that's exciting! I've heard a ton of super good things about Kuching, so I'm excited to go there! My companion will be Elder Sorensen. He's pretty funny, from Ohio, and a lot of missionaries think that his face looks like Jack Black. Not really sure about that one. Buuuuuut it'll be way fun!

Wesley and Jefrin

At Sofrey's work with Jefrin and Adrick

Fun with kids

Sompotons