Hey Everyone!
This week went by super-fast!
Lots of crazy stuff happened this week! Elder Marsh and I are back together,
and I'm still in Puchong! We picked up Elder Marsh from KL on Wednesday night, and
we've been working hard to get the area moving again. I stuck with the Chinese
Elders for a few more days before picking him up, and we had a lot of fun and
taught at a lot of appointments.
Monday, we played badminton at
Sister Stephanie's place with her and her sisters and their kids. It was a ton
of fun. I'm getting pretty good at badminton too! I'm probably better than 99%
of Americans; mostly because badminton isn't played in the USA. After we played badminton and went shopping,
we had Kennedy pick us up in a really small car and drive us to this super
sketchy place to eat. We got some turtle, some giant lizard, and some Asian
racoon thing. The turtle tasted kind of funny, but the meat wasn't too bad, the
lizard was pretty good, and the racoon was terrible meat, but the sauce was
alright. There's definitely a reason we eat beef, pork, and chicken.
Tuesday, we met with 2 people
from China named Tom and John. Tom is a
super tall Chinese dude. I took a picture with him. They should be baptized at
the end of the transfer. After that, Saffron took us to dinner, and we went to
a super good burger place. The rest of the day and night, we just contacted.
Wednesday, we met with a guy
named Vicky. He's moving to Singapore in a few weeks, and he'll probably be
baptized there. Lucky Singapore! Free
baptism! After that, we waited for Dorothea to show up to her appointment, and
while we did that, we did our to-do list and called PI's. An hour after we had
scheduled her appointment, she showed up. We almost just left and told her we'd
meet on another day, but then she said she had something super important to
tell us. She said she prayed about Joseph Smith, and said that she just has a
really good feeling that he really was a prophet. So BOOM! She'll be baptized as
soon as she quits smoking. Half way through the lesson, I had to go get Elder
Marsh from KL, so I went on splits with Kennedy all the way down to KL and
back. Once we got back, we ate dinner super quickly, then met with Kok Cin. We
taught about forgiveness and repentance, and it was actually a really good
lesson! Kok Cin is a great recent convert. He's gonna be a leader one day in
Malaysia!
Thursday was Elder Marsh and my
first full day back in Puchong! We went and visited our brand-new investigator,
Livia! Livia is 9 years old, and her parents are both members, but Livia wasn't
baptized when she was 8. Her parents
finally decided she should get baptized. They were waiting for a few things to
happen that didn't, so now we get to teach her! Livia is adorable. She always
asks us crazy questions. When we tell her
we don't know the answer, she says, "I don't believe you! You're just
saying that!" She likes asking questions like "Did God tell me that I
would be living here when we were in heaven?" There's no scripture that
says He did, but it's totally possible that He did! We just say we don't know and move on. Her
two little sisters are super cute too. They're 6 and 4. They try to help us
teach their older sister and like sitting between me and Elder Marsh while
we're teaching. When we knocked on the door and the 3 girls saw that it was us,
they all started yelling and coming to the door. Then they latched onto us and all started
trying to talk with us and tried giving us hugs and jumping into our arms and
stuff, BUT we're missionaries, so we just stood there not knowing what to do.
All 3 of them love us. It's a ton of fun! Their names are Livia, Hazel, and
Vera.
After we taught Livia, we went
to the church and taught Shena. She
taught us how to say a prayer in Malay.
Now I can pray in Malay! After the lesson, we had to ride the train over
a few stations so that we could get a ride to our dinner appointment with the
Teh's! They made some noodles and mushroom soup. I don't like mushrooms, so I
just ate around them. It was all really good except for the mushrooms. Then we
shared a quick message and hurried home.
On Friday, we met with a new
person named Mark. He only had 20 minutes, so we taught the shortened version
of the restoration, and committed him to CPR. We'll see if he turns out or not.
He's going down to JB for 2 weeks, so we'll meet with him after that if he's
still interested. After we met with him, we met with Cedric again! We taught Cedric
a long time ago, and then he moved to Penang.
He moved back, and while we were calling potential investigators, he sat
down at our table and said hi and we talked for about 30 minutes. He started
smoking and drinking again, because he didn't meet with the Elders in
Penang. We'll have to get him to stop
those again, and then baptize him!
We ran over to Ariz's work
before we had to go teach English, and he's doing great! Ariz is still himself.
It's been a while since I've seen him. He
should be able to start coming back to church, so I hope he keeps his promise!
He's still awesome. And he made us super good fruit juice.
Saturday was kind of crazy! We
woke up and got ready super-fast, then rode a train down to KL so that Elder
Marsh could baptize a girl named Ellie! She wanted him to baptize him before he
left KL, but then he left. We went back
to baptize her. It was a great service. Two Americans gave talks, and I had the
realization that American speakers give completely different talks from
Malaysian speakers. I didn't realize how different they are! Americans use a
lot of stories and relate them to a topic, and Malaysians just talk about the
topic. The American way is definitely better. Elder McCusker was in Puchong a
transfer ago, but then he left, and now he's back in KL, so I got to talk with
him a bit and catch up on the last week and a half with him for a while. It was
a lot of fun.
We traveled back after, and
taught English, then went contacting until 6:00. We headed over to Brother Chin's
house for dinner. We had some local food, and it was alright. Then we sat down for the 15-minute
thought. The 15-minute thought started
with, "Brother Chin, why is the sacrament important to you?" The 15
minutes ended up being a response from him about why the sacrament is important
to him. Then he transformed the 15-minute thought to a 30-minute thought, then
45 minutes, then an hour before we finally cut him off and said we had to
leave. BUT. The information he shared in the hour-long response was actually
really helpful! One thing stuck out to me. A lot of people (including me)
believe that "teaching by the Spirit" means asking good questions
you're prompted to, listening carefully to responses, and trying really, really
hard to listen to the things the Spirit tells you to say. That CAN be teaching by the Spirit, but it's
a ton of work. Brother Chin offered some insight to make teaching by the Spirit
a lot easier. Always teach from the scriptures. It's that easy. If you're
always using the scriptures, then you can let the person you're teaching know
that it's not you that said, it, it's God that said it. The way he explained it
was really good, and it made me realize I need to use the scriptures a lot
more.
Yesterday, before church we
taught Kyle. In the lesson, he told us that when he prayed about the Book of
Mormon, "The Spirit whispered to [his] heart that it's true". He has an answer! We're so excited! After church, we taught
Livia the Plan of Salvation, and she asked some pretty crazy questions, but it
was a lot of fun to teach. Later that night, we went to dinner with Sister
Stephanie. She made some super good
food. We had Kok Cin, Brother Lim and his family, and Dorothea over. It was
super good food, and a lot of fun!
This week flew by! I don't
really even know where the time went! It was a lot of fun though, and we have a
lot of appointments scheduled next week with new people. I hope the appointments go through! We'll see
I guess. I hope you all have an awesome week! I get another one and a half
months in Puchong, so I'll have hit 7 and a half by the end of this transfer!
Love,
Elder Ben Mullins
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| Saffron took us out to eat burgers and fries |
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| We felt like we were in California for the night |
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| Sister Saffron; E. Boud; E. Tennant; me; Tom |
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| Tom and Me eating our burgers |
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| Visiting Ariz |
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| Hello Kitty Car |
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| E. Marsh; Erica; and me |
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| Kennedy; E. Tennant; and me |
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| Turtle Soup |
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| Random Weird Dude |
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| Kyle |
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| Livia |
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| Super Tall Dude Tom |
