Chinese New Year is Finally Ending!

Hey Everyone!

Chinese New Year is FINALLY coming to a close! It's been a long Chinese New Year. It's nearly impossible to meet with ANYONE during Chinese New Year, so we've mainly been trying to visit less actives, but most of them aren't home. The weeks go by fast, but it seems like Chinese New Year has been going for quite a while. I forgot my planner, so I can't remember exactly what we did this every day this week, so I'll just put what I remember.

First and most important, we found a ping pong table that we can play every morning in our apartment complex. It's in the second tower of apartments, and it's just on the second floor. There's a floor that's 80% outside.  There’s a ball pit and a ping pong table out there. It's awesome. Every morning for exercise, we play ping pong. I'll be a professional by the end of my mission. Since there was a really cool ping pong table/ball pit on the second floor of the building next to us, we decided to check and see what was on our second floor.  We went to the second floor of our building, and there were a couple homeless people sleeping on cardboard.  We decided to just keep going up and pretend we didn't see anything.

Last Monday, we played badminton with sister Stephanie and her family, so that was tons of fun. The court was super-hot though, so we were all DRIPPING sweat by the end. Badminton is a ton of fun, so once I go back to the states, I'll have to find some people that can play so that I can keep playing it. Badminton is HUGE here. Every Malaysian is born with a badminton racquet in their hand (just kidding). Literally everyone plays it.

We did tons of less active visiting, and some contacting. Elder Forsyth is STILL with me (that's 3 and a half transfers now, and still going), and there's no end in sight. So that's pretty cool! He'll leave one of these days. Maybe the same day I leave! I dunno! I'm thinking I'm gonna leave Puchong at the end of this transfer! March first! That's my guess. I think I'll replace Elder Child in Melakka. Elder Child and I are really good friends, so that'll be fun to take over the area he's been in since we both got to Malaysia. That's 100% a guess though, so don't tell anyone I'm going to Melakka. I don't even know how to spell the town name.

Let's see... What else happened... We met with Kok Cin a couple times, and he helped us out on Wednesday too!  That was awesome! He followed us around all day and helped out with missionary work. He's awesome. He's still progressing toward the 18th, along with Yuen.

When I first got to Puchong, 70-80 people attended church every single week. The last 4 weeks (not counting last week, because it was Chinese New Year and everyone was gone), we've had 110, 107, 105, and 110 people attend. It USED to be that if you got over 100 people 3 weeks in a row, they'd start looking for a place to build a church building, but some problems arose, and now it's a lot harder to get an actual building. So maybe one day, Puchong will get a building. The building we're in now only has room for 140, so if we get more than that, they won't have any other choice than to get us a bigger building.  That'll be great! Maybe in another year!

My first transfer in Penang, a few weeks into my mission, I met a guy named Elliott who was super awesome and mega prepared, but his parents wouldn't let him go to church. 3 weeks ago, he moved to PJ (opposite side of KL from me), and is going to be baptized this Saturday!  He's super excited! He's such an awesome guy.  He came to Puchong branch yesterday, and we caught up on life! I'll send a picture of us 6 months ago and a picture now!

The 8th day of Chinese New Year is a really important day for all the Hokkian people (it's a subgroup of Chinese. No idea if I spelled it right).  There were tons of dragon dances and fireworks everywhere. They have the longest strings of firecrackers ever in this country... It was tons of fun to watch all the fireworks at night though!

 Sorry the email is a little shorter than normal this week. I just can't remember what we did.  I took quite a few pictures so hopefully that makes up for it. I hope you all have an awesome week! Maybe Elder Marsh will finally make it over to Puchong this week! …We'll see.  Now that the Chinese New Year is ending, we should have lots more to do! Hopefully we’ll find a few new investigators this week!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins

Ball pit

Found a Bentley

Boomerang

Chair tower

Happy Chinese New Year!

Hey Everyone!

Chinese New Year is the worst holiday ever. Because it means everyone we can actually talk to is GONE. Everyone cleared out of Puchong and went back to their "hometowns". Everyone calls it a hometown, but really it's just where their parents or grandparents live. They don't actually have to have lived there for it to be their hometown. I dunno. Kinda weird. ANYWAY. It was a really fun week!

Monday, I emailed after we did everything, so nothing else really happened. We just went contacting at night. Tuesday, we had a day of contacting too, but we had a lot of fun.  I decided we'd try our hardest to build our teaching pool, and it actually worked! We got tons of new investigators this week, but I think we'll drop most of them. We'll see what happens! I'll write more about them once I'm more positive they're solid.

Wednesday was awesome. We got a text Tuesday night from Kok Cin that said he wanted to help us out all day with missionary work if that was ok.   Of course we said YES.  Kok Cin helped us do missionary work allllll Wednesday. From 12:00 to 9:25.  He was pretty exhausted, but he enjoyed it a lot!  He's super good at talking with people. We met some people who didn't speak any English, so he just took over the contact, then said, "Ok, they're free on Friday at this time. Does that work for you?", then we'd have appointments, but we had to pass them to the Chinese Elders.  He's seriously going to be the best member ever. He's such a cool guy. He was planning on helping us out on Tuesday and Wednesday this week too, but he ended up having something come up, so he can't anymore. He'll be the coolest baptism ever.

Thursday was pretty fun. We visited Jing Jing and her family. They're a less active family, but they have the most adorable little girls ever, and they're always going CRAZY. It was tons of fun. They had little hamsters that would run everywhere, and they would freak out and chase them. It was tons of fun. They ALSO had durian. So I ate a piece, and it was just as bad as the last time I tried it, BUT I forced myself to swallow it.  I've officially ingested a piece of durian. That was the last time I'll try it until I have someone in the family with me there. I'll give it another shot then. After that, we taught an 18 year old named Ezekiel. I felt like he had some potential, but his parents made their own Lutheran church about 20 years ago, and they're still really strong in it. We'll have to figure out how much potential he really has.

That night Sister Saffron brought us and Kok Cin to a UFO Cafe. It was actually a really cool theme. There were spaceships, astronauts, and other space stuff everywhere.  It was a seafood place. It's ok though, because the fish here tastes a little bit different than in the US so I can choke it down. It took a lot of rice along with the fish to actually be able to eat. It was a really cool place though!

Friday, we taught a couple lessons, and then we had English class. Friday night was the night before Chinese New Year. It's the equivalent of Christmas Eve. It might even be more important to them than Christmas Eve.  We were thinking nobody would show up since all of the students are Chinese. Nobody showed up until 5 minutes before the class started, and my main man Ibraham came! He hasn't come to English Class in months! He's a guy from Yemen who's super awesome. Super legit guy. Anyway, instead of teaching him English, we had him teach us Arabic. So that was pretty cool!

Saturday, one of the most intense experiences of my life happened. We were teaching English class (lots of people showed up some reason. It was the first day of Chinese New Year.), and I looked down, and there were 2 cockroaches by my shoes. Then I looked next to one of the student's feet, and there was another one. So I stood up, left the room, and grabbed the roach spray. Every now and then, there's a roach in the church so I just spray it and it's gone, but there were THREE in one room. I decided I needed to take care of it right then.  I told everyone that I was just going to kill a few roaches, and then sprayed them, and all 3 of them died really fast. No big deal, right? I went to go open the window so that the spray smell would leave the church, and once I opened it, I turned around, and a MASSIVE roach flew onto my shirt.  Everyone started FREAKING out.  I just smashed the roach on my shirt (It left a stain by the way. It's ok. Nothing a little bleach can't fix), and everyone was freaking out.  The roach ran away once it hit the floor, and everyone decided we needed to change classrooms. They all left, and Elder Forsyth and I stayed in and looked for the roach that I had smashed. There was some trim on the bottom of the room, and it had a little crack between the wall and it. I took the spray, and started to spray in the crack to see if there were any roaches in it. When I sprayed, about 15 roaches came out of this crack, and started flying everywhere.  I'm tried to spray them on the ground, Elder Forsyth is screaming, the people from English class are either running to our door to see what's happening, or cowering in the corner of another room, and it's total CHAOS.  Just when you think 15 roaches coming out of a small crack is bad, it got worse. When I started spraying the carpet (because the roaches were landing on the carpet), hundreds started popping up out of the carpet. They were BURROWED INTO THE CARPET I KID YOU NOT. So I'm UNLOADING this can of cockroach poison, there are literally THOUSANDS of little roaches unborrowing from the carpet, trying to run away from this poison, there are roaches all over the walls and in the air, people are FREAKING OUT, the poison smells awful, and I'm sitting there trying to keep all of them off of me while trying to kill as many as possible. Absolutely disgusting, total chaos, roaches everywhere, shriveling up and dying, flying, and all running to this crack in the wall. I finally knew what I had to do. I took a step forward into the masses of baby roaches unburrowing from the carpet, and sprayed this crack in the wall for like 15 seconds, then ran out of the room along with everyone else before I breathed in too much poison, and before the roaches got me.  We were standing outside of the room in the church, everyone was making tons of noise, and the Chinese elders ran over to where us asking what on earth is happening. Then roaches started falling out of the door between the cracks; just a few. They started freaking out, then we told them what happened.  Brother Michael, a member, decided he'd go in with two bottles of poison.  He basically demolished as many roaches as possible in the room. Most epic experience of the week right there! I've never seen so many roaches in my entire life! It was INSANE. So we miiiight call an exterminator sometime soon. Yesterday, the room was littered with roaches.

Sunday, not a ton happened. Since everyone was gone for Chinese new year, we only had one hour of church.  We decided if we walked through neighborhoods, we might be able to find some people, and we did.  We seriously walked for 4 hours straight through neighborhoods. It was a ton of fun though! We just talked and talked and talked. Every now and then, we'd bump into someone and talk with them, but we didn't really find anyone super solid.

This week was great! Elder Forsyth is STILL here! We might be companions for 1/4 of our entire missions! That'd be crazy! This is his 7th transfer in Puchong. He'll have spent nearly half his mission here by the time he leaves. He could leave any day, but I don't know if he'll leave this next week or not! We'll see I guess! His birthday is on Friday, so maybe that will be President Simmons' birthday present to him! Kok Cin and Yuen are still going to be baptized on the 18th, and we're starting to find new people, so everything is going great! I hope everyone has an awesome week! Thanks for all the support you give me! Love you all!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins

Pink Beetle

Visiting Jing Jing's family

Malaysia Boleh

When it rains it pours