6 Months and Transfers

Hey Everyone!

WOW. It's already been 6 months since I left! I just have to do that 3 more times, and it's over! It goes by so fast, it's unbelievable!!!  Not only have I hit 6 months, but it's TRANSFER WEEK.  Elder Forsyth and I are BOTH staying in Puchong! This'll be transfer number 4 together! But he's just waiting in Puchong until he gets his worker's permit for Singapore, then he'll leave!  He might leave sometime next week or the week after!  Once he leaves Elder Marsh will come to Puchong with me! I served in Penang at the same time as Elder Marsh, so I know him pretty well, and he's a really cool guy.  I'm excited to serve with him!

Monday, I took a 3-hour nap after we emailed, and it was AWESOME. When we were getting ready to leave at night, I picked up my backpack, and the strap snapped!  We ran over to the mall and bought a new backpack for me!  I have a new pack now! It's a really nice one, and it was super cheap since I bought it in Malaysia. Other than that, not a ton happened last Monday.

Tuesday, we met with Yuen. He's really excited to be baptized, but wants to wait until after Chinese New Year, because he's going to be on vacation for pretty much the next two weeks.  That'll be awesome! We'll have at least one baptism next transfer! Maybe more!

Every day, if we have time that we don't know what to do with, we go to the outside edge of our area, where they're building a HUGE soccer stadium. When we went on Tuesday, the progress was unreal! They shifted into a higher gear. The stadium had so much of it built in a day, we could hardly believe it! I hope that the stadium is done by the time I leave Puchong! I’m sure it won't be. I wish it would be though. Then we could go contacting in the stadium while they played soccer. Or just go watch a game on a Monday.

Wednesday, we had an AWESOME lesson. A few years ago, missionaries came over to our house and taught us a lesson on faith. They had Jaron hold a tea bag, and lit it on fire and told him that if he didn't move, it wouldn't burn him.  Last Monday, I remembered the lesson, and bought tea bags.  Wednesday, we went over to Sister Saffron's work, and taught her the lesson on faith where you light the teabag on fire, and right before it got to her hand, she DROPPED it. She doesn't have any faith in us apparently. Anyway, it's supposed to float up in the air, but she got scared and dropped it. It was really funny. We've taught it 3 or 4 times since.  It was a lot of fun!

Thursday, we went over to Sister Stephanie's for dinner, and it was SEDAP (delicious)! We played an awesome game after, then had a really quick lesson with Kok Cin.  Kok Cin is doing awesome. He's such a great guy. He'll be baptized eventually. I don't know if he'll make February 18th, but I have the faith that if he does what we ask him to, he will! Hopefully he keeps keeping commitments.

Friday, we made a huge poster that said "What makes you happy?" in English and Chinese, then went around and had people write what made them happy on it.  We got answers from money to drinking coffee to family. It made talking with people a lot of fun! They really opened up when we did that, which was good. It was a lot of fun too.

Saturday, TONS of people showed up to our English class. The only problem is, they're all like 80 years old.  They're pretty staunch Buddhists. I don't think we'll be getting any baptisms out of them.  It was really funny to see them so excited to learn English! After English, we taught a guy named Lexy, but he lives in PJ, so we had to pass him to the Elders there. He's a really nice guy, and he's got some potential. We'll see what happens with that! That night, we went to Shawerma, and got a HUGE dinner. It cost 16 ringgit (4 dollars), and was HUGE. Food in Malaysia is so cheap... It was super good.

Sunday, President Simmons surprised us by coming to church! That was pretty crazy! We had a TON of people at church, so he was super impressed.  Then our branch president was talking about how we had 1 baptism last week, and 1 next week, then 2 more a few weeks after, and President Simmons was super impressed. Silently impressed of course.  It was really funny. He was just shocked that he hadn't heard much about all these baptisms.

After church, we taught Lexy one last time since he came to church.  After that, we had TONS of food, because it was a Linger Longer!  Everyone brought food for everyone to eat after church. We visited Ariz after for what was supposed to be the last time, but now Elder Forsyth is staying for a little longer.  We might see him one more time... Awkward. A lot of branch members are going to be really surprised that he's still here on Sunday. We went to Sister Saffron's and had a really good lesson with Kok Cin, plus a really good dinner. Other than that, not a ton happened.

This week was a ton of fun! I really enjoyed it. Elder Forsyth and I are excited to be together for a few more days, and we're ready for whatever comes our way. It's been great, and I can't wait for another awesome week!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins

Ariz

Giant duck

At the mall going over a bridge

When People Eat Up the Gospel

Quick Week!

Hey Everyone!

I can't believe it's already Monday again! That was fast! A lot of stuff happened this week, and it flew by!

Monday, we went to a HUGE mall called Sunway Pyramid, and there were giant Lego things everywhere. I took a few pictures. I'll only send the best one.  It was really cool. We ate at this place with Sister Saffron and one of the Chinese Elders' investigators (Jo Yee). It was the best chicken I've ever eaten in my ENTIRE LIFE. It was way good. Elder Forsyth drew a really cool picture while we were waiting for our food to come out.  I’ll send a picture.  After that, we went over to Keke's and taught her boyfriend.  We also taught him and Nicholas how to tie ties. It was a ton of fun! It was really fast too.

Tuesday, not much happened. We met up with the Zone Leaders that night and started exchanges, so I got to hang out with Elder Orgill Tuesday night and all of Wednesday. Before that, we pretty much just visited some less actives.  It was a pretty chill day.

Wednesday, we had an awesome day of contacting. All day. But it was a ton of fun! Elder Orgill is a really fun guy, and he taught me a lot of new things I can do to get better at missionary work, so that was cool. That night we met with a guy named Cheer. That's really his name.  He wanted to improve his life, and he seemed to have real desire. When we picked Elder Forsyth back up, he let us know that Cheer has been an eternal investigator, and that he pretends like he wants to change, but then doesn't. He's too lazy. We set up a return appointment with him though, so we decided we'd see how things went from there.

Thursday... we prepared a few games for English Class on Friday so that people would really enjoy it and bring their friends!  That was fun to make. We drew pictures and wrote words on cards.  It’s basically a massive matching game of new words for them. That night, we met with my main man Kok Cin! He's awesome; super solid, genuine, great guy. He's really quiet, but really smart, and he wants to know if what we teach is true. We taught him a lot about baptism, and invited him to the baptism that happened Saturday! He was excited to be invited to go to it! That was great!

Friday, we went to Sister Saffron's in the afternoon, and decided to teach her a cool lesson. We told her we had prepared a scripture, and we wanted her to flip open to a random scripture, and that would be the one that we had prepared. She flipped open to a random one, we taught an entire lesson on the random scripture, and she was really surprised that we had prepared such a cool lesson! Haha! I don't think she realized that we were just teaching on the spot.  It ended up being a great lesson! Later that night, we taught a recent convert, Sister Erica. We gave her an awesome Book of Mormon reading chart that we're eventually going to give to everyone. Other than that, we taught English, and everyone loved it. We had a ton of new people, and they were eating up the games. It was great! Sister Saffron is a really competitive person. Haha!

Saturday was an AWESOME day! Well, for most of it. English class was good, and people really enjoyed it. Right before the baptism, Sister Stephanie thought it would be funny to make me eat a tomato. And it was. But tomatoes are literally my least favorite food EVER. I would rather eat pork blood soup or chicken feet or durian than a tomato. But I really have a lot of respect for Sister Stephanie since she's such an awesome person and helps us out so much.  After about 10 minutes of her trying to convince me to eat it, I finally did. After almost throwing up a few times, I finally stomached it. I think my mom has a video of it if anyone wants to see it. Literally the worst thing I've eaten in my life.

After eating that, we had a baptism to go to! The Chinese Elders' investigator, Jo Yee, got baptized! She's awesome!  The best part about her being baptized, is I was the one that found her! That's my first person that I've actually found that got baptized!  That was awesome! I only taught her twice, but I was really happy to see her. We found her when we were advertising for English Class. I gave her a flyer and told her we teach people about Jesus Christ. A few days later, she called the number on the flyer, which happened to be the Chinese Elders' number, and she ended up learning from them. It was an exciting day! Kok Cin came, and really enjoyed the baptism! It was good that he was able to come and watch!

Sunday, we met with Yuen after church. Yuen is an awesome guy. He actually was learning from the Elders over in Canada for about 4 months, and just wanted to talk with his parents before he was baptized, so he's planning on being baptized really soon in Malaysia!  That was a miracle! We might be able to get a baptism in a few weeks! He's learned everything, and had a baptismal interview. He just has to pick a day and he's good!

That night, we went to Sister Saffron's with Kok Cin and the Chinese Elders' investigator Sonia, and had a super good dinner. It was great. Other than that, not a lot happened Sunday.

This week FLEW by! I can't believe we only have one more week until the transfer is over! I'll be emailing a little bit later next week so that we don't have to wait so long for transfer news, but it will come eventually! Have an awesome week! Sorry the letter was a little short this week!

Love you all!

Elder Ben Mullins

Chillin'

Elder Forsyth's art

Giant Legos

Jo Yee's baptism

Stadium

Christmas

Happy New Year!

Hey Everyone!

This week was tons of fun! I don't really know why this week was so fun, but Elder Forsyth and I just had a blast! Everyone in Malaysia has told us "Happy New Year" for the past 4 days, so it's been fun coming up with responses to that. From asking people how much wood would a woodchuck chuck to putting Nepalese guards on date in 5 seconds, we're having a lot of fun here.

Monday, after emailing, we walked home. On the way home, there was a massive group of pigeons. I stuck my hand out, and one of them landed on my hand!!! So I stuck my other hand out, and another one landed on my hand!  We just sat there holding pigeons for a while. I didn't get a picture because both of my hands were occupied at the time. But Elder Forsyth might be able to send me one in a bit. Other than that, not much happened.

Tuesday, we contacted all day, but it was a lot of fun. At night, we visited an inactive member, Alvin Tan. He's the most insane person I've ever met. He has 2 kids, and they had a friend over. I'm just gonna say, that was the loudest house I've ever been in. He would yell, then they would, then he would. He tries to calm them down by making them super wild until they crash, and I bet it works. Super high energy... Wow. Anyway, that was fun!

Wednesday was fun. Ariz gave us a present wrapped up in Nemo wrapping paper, so we carried that around all day!  Nobody even asked about it. He got us all water bottles!  Now I have a new water bottle! Sister Saffron has been getting mad at Elder Forsyth for never carrying water with him for the past couple months. He has a bottle.  He just always forgets it. She bought him one so he'd have to carry it, one of the Chinese Elder's investigators bought one for him, Ariz got him one, and a guy that works for the US embassy gave him one.  He got 5 water bottles in 2ish weeks. Pretty awesome. Now he carries water. We think it's a sign from God.

Other than water bottles, we got Kok Cin to set a goal for baptism finally! It's been 7 lessons, and we had an AWESOME lesson about the last part of the plan of salvation.  He's finally confident enough that he set a goal for baptism! February 18th!  Hopefully he progresses! He's awesome. He'll be a great member. After we taught Kok Cin, we set out to find an English copy of the Qur'an. We went inside a mosque just off the side of the road (they're everywhere), and it was actually pretty cool. TONS of Muslims came up to us and asked where we were from (they aren't used to seeing a couple of white people in their mosques). When we told them that we were from the US, they said, "Oh really? I thought Americans thought that Muslims were terrorists!" It was pretty funny. Really, Muslims are very nice people--most of the time. Some of them aren't too happy to see us, but 95% of them are super nice. It was fun to go in the mosque!

Thursday... Oh! We saw a train that had Rogue 1 advertisements all over it. That was cool.  That night, we advertised our English class at a night market. Night markets are awesome. There’s tons of really cool, random stuff for super cheap. It's like the DI equivalent, except EVERYONE goes to it. It was a ton of fun.

Friday was exchange day for Elder McCusker and me! We hung out, got told by a lot of people we looked like Harry Potter and Ron Weasly.  That was fun! Whenever we were surrounded by a ton of Malays (people we aren't allowed to teach), Elder McCusker would just yell really loud, then pretend nothing happened.  Everyone stared at us. It was awesome.

Saturday, not much happened. We had dinner with a former investigator named Clarence who's obsessed with Utah, and Mormons, and temple square. He's hilarious. He's just too scared to ask his parents if he can be baptized.  He's actually old enough that he doesn't need to ask them. Some reason, Chinese culture makes it so you can't make your own decisions until you're like 25-30 years old. Sooooooo that stinks, but he's a funny guy.

Sunday, not much happened. We went to church, visited a referral (which by the way, has potential to be baptized in like 2 weeks) named Yuen.  We visited Ariz, then went to dinner at Sister Saffron's. It was fun, but not very eventful.

This week was a ton of fun, and I can't wait to see what happens next week! We get to meet with Yuen and see where he's really at, we get to teach Kok Cin, find more investigators, and have fun for the last two weeks of the transfer! I hope you all have an awesome week and a happy new year!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins

Matching Ties

The shop lot

Straight Thuggin'

The Trains

Pigeons