Elder Ben Mullins: The City of the Cat

Hey everyone!

Wow, this week... I don't even know where to begin! Possibly one of the best weeks of my mission! It's crazy here in Kuching! You tell someone that their church isn't true, and they say, "Oh, really? I didn't know that! Thanks for telling me! Can I get baptized into the true church?" Unbelievable. We literally found 11 new investigators between Wednesday and Sunday... So. Kuching is NICE. We had 12 come to sacrament even! Super crazy... The church here is crazy. Missionaries baptize a lot here, but the retention rate is terrible. President Simmons asked us to make sure that we work through members a lot so that we retain who we baptize. Elder Sorensen and I have been setting the standards really high, telling everyone about how serious it is to be baptized and if you break your promise with God, you're in big trouble. So hopefully we'll retain better than other missionaries have!

Elder Sorensen is an animal. He’s a work horse, does a ton of work, good at planning, and gets a lot done. He's from Ohio, Virginia, and everywhere else all over the USA, so that's cool. He knows a lot of people with the last name Mullins. He's been out for almost a year, and I think he might become a zone leader next transfer. He's just really good. We're going to enjoy our time together for sure.

Monday, Elder Mickelson and I went to Mixter's house, and he taught us how to weave a basket. I took a picture with a black and yellow basket that I wove! It was way fun, and it only took about 2 and a half hours. Mixter is awesome. That night, we went over to Adrian and Alana's house and said bye to all of them. The crazy thing is that Alana's brother in law, Vincent, is getting baptized in about a month and a half, and we literally got him to quit smoking this week. It's been good. Anyway, Adrian and Alana are coming to Kuching in a month and a half so that they can be there for his baptism! He's super solid. Alana and her sister, Natasha, are almost the exact same person too... It's ridiculous.

Tuesday, we said bye to a few more people, taught a few more investigators, and then I packed at night. I'll really miss a lot of people, but especially Sofrey. KK was tons of fun and had a ton of awesome people!

Wednesday, I went to the airport where my flight got delayed an hour and a half, then made the hour and a half flight from KK to the opposite side of Borneo to Kuching. Kuching means cat in Malay. But. There are a lot of dogs here, and not too many cats. The dogs are a little mean and like to chase us, but that just makes it more fun. I got here to Kuching, said hi to Elder Sorensen, figured out Elder Forsyth and McCusker had bronchitis, and then we blazed out the door, and went and found a bunch of people!

Thursday, we met with Dylan, a referral that a super funny member named Wilson gave us. Wilson wants to serve a mission, so he's preparing by helping teach his best friend. Dylan literally asked us if he could be baptized. What in the world... So he's on date. We also ordered KFC, and the guy that delivered it to our door ended up being named Larry. He was interested in church. He didn't come this week, because he stayed up really late, but he'll come next week for sure. We also met a guy named Sem. Sem is an interesting one for sure. He wants to commit, but at the same time he doesn't. We might drop him. We're teaching wayyyyyy too many people anyway. We might have to come back to him once we have some free time. We taught Vincent (Adrian and Alana's brother in law), and he's way cool! We learned he smoked, so we asked him how many cigarettes a day. He said 8. We made a plan that he'd just smoke one less every day until no more. Guess what he did? Smoked 4 the next day, 1 the next day, and now he's done. So. Vincent. Wild beast of the field! He's wayyyyyy cool. We're excited for him.

Friday, we met a guy named Joshua, and he loves cats. He has 15 cats. His wife also loves cats. Pretty weird. We'll see if they go anywhere. We just taught them in their house while we were knocking doors. We also got rain dumped on us. It was really bad. Soaked through and through. Nothing was dry. Except for inside my backpack. So that was good. It was crazy. That night we taught a guy named Sam and his wife Layam. Sam is this ripped Iban guy, and he's got a big heart. He’s super cool. He's committed to get baptized for sure. His wife is really down too. They had only been taught once, so I just barely got here in time to teach them.

Saturday, we met a super cool family. Henry and Poloma, Ben and Karen, and Robert. We taught them the restoration. They thanked us for telling them that their church was wrong, and asked how and when they could get baptized, then invited themselves to church. All about them. So selfish. (that was sarcasm). They're wayyyyy too good though. Henry and Poloma are married and have this super cute little baby girl. Ben and Karen are married, and Ben has the same name as me. Robert's wife was at work so we didn't meet her. Robert is a super big guy who loves Jesus and always has a stuffy nose. During church, as they were saying the closing prayer, he kept yelling, "HALLELUJAH" every now and then. It was super funny. We'll tell him he shouldn't do that next time. Ben was crying he was laughing so hard at the hallelujah's, so Ben realized that wasn't normal in our church. They brought 2 friends to their lesson after church, Terry and Melony Tersisa or something like that. I can't remember her name. They're pretty cool too, but a little bit stubborn in their religion. It's OK, we'll get 'em.

Church was craaaazy. So many investigators came... 12 investigators, 8 of which we found this week, nobody knew where to go. It was crazy, but tons of fun. The branch got pumped out of their minds at how many people were there. I was blessing the sacrament (No idea why none of the other people did it. The branch president just asked me to, so I did it), and we were one cup short for the sacrament. Literally, one more cup and it would've been perfect. I went into the back room to try to find a small cup, but couldn't find one. Then the other person blessing with me went back, found one. We filled up the one cup, and then it was good. Apparently, the attendance this week was a ton higher than normal; like 125 or something. That's like a ward, but most of them are women, so that's why there's no stake here yet. We need more priesthood.

Coming to church today, we brought that big group of people (Henry, Robert, Ben, etc), and they followed us on their motorcycles, and it was tons of fun. They just trailed us, and we took pictures. I don’t know.... it was awesome! Also, after church, we were visiting this family we were thinking of working with, and then their neighbors were all drunk (classic Sarawak). There were two women screaming at each other, and then they started sprinting at each other ready to fight. Their husbands were trying to hold them back, and it was actually pretty terrifying. No idea what happened there. So. Don't ever drink.

For some reason, Elder Sorensen didn't think we would need food this week. We reached Sunday, and realized we had no food in the house. We literally ate the last slice of bread for breakfast. So. We decided we weren't going to eat all day. When we got to church Elder Sorensen told a member that we had nothing to eat at the house and we were just going to starve tonight, and boom…dinner appointment. Just like that. Easy. So that was awesome! The dinner appointment was really good, and it was probably the best curry I've ever had in my entire life. Maybe second best. Not sure. But it was super good.

We found a ton of other people too, but I can't remember all of them at the moment. We should be meeting with all of them again next week, so I'll try to remember to write down all their names so that I can tell you about them. Kuching is absolutely crazy. Some reason it chose to explode the day I got here. Now we have double digit numbers for everything, and we should be getting tons of baptisms as long as the people we're teaching are ready to promise God that they'll come to church every week. If they're not ready, I guess they won’t get baptized. It's awesome here!

Also, the Malay Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price was just barely released on the phone this week! Everyone here is super excited about that! Maybe I'll be able to get a hard copy before I finish my mission! It'll be nice to have all of the standard works in Malay... Sometimes it was hard, because there weren't cross references or we couldn't share a scripture from the Pearl of Great Price, so this will be really good!

I'm super excited to keep working in Kuching. It's been a crazy half week, and we're just getting started! Soon, we'll be teaching so many people, we won't be able to keep them all and we'll have to start giving them to other missionaries.

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins