DAVID CHONG IS AWESOME!

Hey Everyone!

This week was CRAZY! David Chong was being a hero and helped us out pretty much every day. Tons of fun, lots of miracles, and right now, I don't have a ton of time. Our boat came late to pick us up, so I think I'll start off with today, then flash back to the rest of the week.

Today, we went out to the docks right after studies, and met David Chong.  We hopped on a small boat that was going to take us to his big boat.  We hopped on a small boat, Elder Mickelson and I tightened each other’s life jackets as tight as we could, then set off to the big boat.  David's dad owns this boat.  It turns out it's the second biggest pontoon in the world. It could fit 500 people.  It had this thing that went underwater, then the walls were glass, so you could see a bunch of fish and stuff in the ocean. It was mega awesome!  About 30 minutes into the gentle rocking of the pontoon, I threw up.  It was pretty awesome.  After that, I was good.  We went to this super awesome island and hiked right over the top, then all the way back down, and walked around it after.  It was super awesome and super pretty with lots of jungle. After exploring, we went back to the pontoon, and there was an all you can eat buffet. Guess what? We ate so much chicken, they ran out. BUT. Not really.  We, David Chong, and Elder Schellenberg ate 30 pieces of chicken each, plus the rest of us. SO.  It was mega awesome. We made sure they regretted it was an all you can eat. Hahaha! Just kidding.  We ate a ton. Afterwards, the boat to take us back to KK was late, so we got back late.  Emailing time is almost done. And - I got the activity approved by President Simmons, so we're not apostate. Apparently, you're allowed to ride commercial boats! Pretty awesome! Also, all my pictures but 2 failed uploading. So. Sorry! Next week for sure though!

Let's see.  I almost have no time…so highlights... Andrew and Inday are progressing super-fast. By Saturday night, we had only gotten 1 new investigator.  I said a nice long prayer about helping us hit our goal of 2 new investigators, then put my trust in God. A member that lives super far away was back, because she had to use her off days, and she brought her niece, a non-member, to church.  Her niece has 7 siblings. SO. We are super excited. We picked her up as a new investigator, and we're super excited.

David Chong helped out a ton this week, and he's super funny. We had to cross a few gutters to take short cuts to places, and that includes crossing beams of cement over super stinky puddles of water. David was freaking out when we did that, but we all made it across ok.

Sorry this is the worst email I've ever written! I love you all and hope you have an awesome week! I get to watch conference this next week, so I'm excited to see what the Apostles have to say!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins

Elder Johnson, David Chong, and me

David's pontoon

Elders and David

Getting ready to go

Glass bottom boat

Boat trip

Exchanges All Week!

Hey Everyone!

This week was awesome! We had zone conference, so we got to go on exchanges every single day after Wednesday! Pretty crazy! It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot from the other missionaries in the zone! All the missionaries came to KK, and we had 8 Elders in our house. It was a little crowded since our house is so small, but it was pretty fun. Also - the internet is really slow this week, so I hope I can get all my pictures uploaded in time. One more thing, it's transfer week. Elder Mickelson is coming to KK too, so that's way great! We won't be companions, but we'll be in the same house! So that's super great! We'll also be zone leaders together, so we'll be able to do a bunch of awesome stuff together too. Last thing is I've been getting my coloring game on, and I drew some awesome pictures with verses.

Monday was pretty chill. We just cleaned and went to a really lamesauce museum.  It was ok, because on Monday night, we met with a PI named Bidgroy!  He brought a friend, who brought a friend, who brought a friend the next day!  We got Bidgroy, Adrian (the two solid ones), then some other guy with a super crazy name that I always forget, and his friend Imanuel, that aren't solid. Not solid as in ‘study anti material before the lessons so they can argue with us’.  SO. Bidgroy and Adrian.  Super cool. I'm excited to see where they go. They're somehow related, and both ate up everything we taught.  I loved it when we shut down all the anti-stuff. They were trying to shut down their friends too. So that was awesome. They are mega solid.

Tuesday, we spent most of our time in a place called Kapayan Ridge. We met with Ivy (SHE CAME TO CHURCH LAST WEEK), Andrew (MEGA SOLID AND GONNA GET DUNKED SOON), Cai (Old deaf dude that didn't even hear us knocking, so we didn't actually get to meet him, but we tried our best.).  We had a few appointments fall through, then met with a referral named Martin who we taught last week too. Martin went to the Catholic church and asked for a bunch of anti-information.  It was really funny, because all the anti-stuff was false, so it was super easy to stop. It was pretty awesome.  We made sure he knew that all the churches were different, because he kept trying to tell us that all of them were the same. SO. We destroyed with the spirit. Then after him, we met Adrian's friend and his friend, and they had a bunch of anti-stuff too, but we stopped it all when we said that we only had one mom each. Pretty awesome. Anyway. We definitely dropped them. There is no way they would have progressed.

Wednesday, we had to do weekly planning, which made everything else a little bit harder to do since we had less time.  We went and found a few less actives.  We had to get back to the house early since all the other elders in the zone flew in, and we had to take them to the house.  We also had two dinners with the two companionships of elders that flew in.  We were still hungry afterwards, so we made some dinner at home too. We must've worked really hard or something, because we were starving. Oh yeah, we met with Inday and Lodelin too! I forgot about that.  It went great! Inday felt a little nervous because her baptismal date was getting really close, so we moved it back.  I think that was actually a couple weeks ago now. I can't remember.

Thursday, I went on exchanges with Elder Sigan. He's finishing his mission today actually!  We had a good exchange. Something super weird happened though. We met with this kid named Raymond, that had met with the sisters before, but they passed him to us. He told them that he was a member, but they couldn't find any record of him or anything.   We met with him, and we were going to meet inside, but he asked if we could meet outside where it was really warm instead, so we met outside in the heat! He was kind of weird. We asked him if he was a member, and he said yeah, so we asked him how long he'd been baptized. He said he was baptized last week. Then I asked if he was baptized in KK, and he said yes. We didn't have a baptism last week, so I asked him how he got the sisters' number (he just randomly called them one day), and he said that his Indonesian friend gave him their number. Pretty weird.  This kid is a little mentally insane I think. Definitely not a member. He didn't know how to pray, didn't know who Joseph Smith was... All that good stuff. We'll see what happens with him.

Friday, we had zone conference! It was really long, but I learned a lot!  That night we taught Andrew. He’s super solid. He wants to learn English too, so hopefully he'll learn it! He asked for an English Book of Mormon so that he could read it and the Malay one side by side. After him, we met with a recent convert over at his kampung house on top of a tall hill. it's super fun to ride bikes down that hill... Anyway, it was lots of fun.

Saturday, I went with Elder Hapairai. He’s a super cool guy. He’s Tahitian Korean mix, but looks Malay. He’s super funny though. We had a lot of crazy things happen. A guy that was drunk out of his mind tried hurting me when he shook my hand (super weird), we got a free bus ride, taught a bunch of people, and had a good time! OH! I ALMOST FORGOT.  Someone translated all of President and Sister Simmons' power points into Malay, but whoever translated them didn't know how to speak Malay.  There was a slide that said "feed my sheep" in English, but it was translated to "makanlah dengan domba" which means "EAT WITH THE SHEEP!"  It was Super emphasized, so the entire congregation started laughing.  President Simmons turned to me, and said, "Oh no. What does it say?"  I just told him it says eat with the sheep, and he started laughing.  I think he was pretty embarrassed. It was pretty great though!  Pretty much the entire power point was wrong. Whoever translated that Malay definitely couldn't speak Malay. Anyway, I think that he's going to check next time with someone that can actually speak Malay.

Sunday was district conference, and there were tons of people! We had some really good talks, and DAVID CHONG got to KK! He's a legend. He's basically the best member you could ever imagine. Has absolutely no life because he just helps the elders with 100% of his spare time.  He's either at school or helping us out. Normally he's over in KL, but he's here since he's got a semester break.  We'll be using him quite a bit. He helped us teach Ana, and then at night time, we met with Brother Ian! He and his wife made us a suuuper good meal--curry and other stuff. SEDAP.  After that, we had an awesome lesson, and played Simon Says (I'm the master Simon in Simon Says apparently), and then came home! I had interviews with President Simmons earlier too, so that was great.

This week was just a really solid week! I enjoyed it a ton! Thanks for all the emails you send me! If anything changes, I'll try to send out an email about it! I hope you all have an awesome week too!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins

Cool Old Cars

Swinging Bridge

Running over a Bridge

My awesome coloring!

Suit Shorts?

You didn't think I was that heavy, huh?

Andrew

THE BOOK OF MORMON IS TRUE!!!

Hey Everyone!

This week was GREAT! I really loved this week a lot. Tons of stuff happened, and lots of miracles happened too. Let's see if I can remember them all... Oh, and the place we're emailing from today doesn't let us upload pictures... SOOOOO no pictures this week. Sorry.

Monday night, we went over to Brother Jopius' house. He's really funny. He was flipping through pictures of all of the missionaries that had been in KK, and he would tell us about each one. He is a pretty cool guy. Both of his sons are on missions, so it's just him and his daughter at home. His wife lives over at their kampung, so I haven't gotten to meet her yet. It dumped rain the entire night, and there was a ton of traffic.

Tuesday, we met with an inactive member named Paredick, and he came to church yesterday, so that was way good! Then we met with Joel, a recent convert. He's 10 years old. He told us we have to teach his 7-year-old brother so that he can get baptized too.  We're going to teach his little brother as we teach Joel the recent convert lessons. Pretty funny. They're pretty set on having us teach all the lessons, so we'll just have to get him to follow all of Joel's lessons! 

One thing about Elder Johnson is: he bakes. He’s way good at baking.  He made these muffins that are WAYYYY GOOD.  He calls them shower muffins.  He makes them in the morning, sticks them in the oven, takes a shower, and right when he finishes showering, the muffins are cooked! So. Shower muffins. Mega good.

The AP's came over for exchanges, so they flew in at night time. It was good to get back with Elder McCusker and Allred. I'm really good friends with both of them, so it was tons of fun to catch up on everything over the last few months.

Wednesday, I got to be companions with Elder Allred all day! It was tons of fun. Elder Allred is super fun to be companions with.  He couldn't speak Malay, so I pretty much did all the talking.  It was still tons of fun! We had 1 appointment set up, but we ended up meeting with 5 people, so it was a great day! We met with Binus! It's been a long time since we got in with him.  We talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he liked it.  He had just moved, so we had a hard time finding his house, but he came out, and found us, then drove us to his house.  Later, we were walking to an inactive's house, and we saw a guy that was about 20 shoveling a dirt wall that had just collapsed.  We talked with him, and he was way cool. His name was Juan.  The J doesn't make the h sound, it makes the j sound.  He was a super nice guy. We set up an appointment for Friday.

Thursday, I fixed my tire, because it was broken from the night I rode into the pothole.  For weekly planning, we talked about really checking to see where Andrew was on his testimony of the Book of Mormon, because I felt like we really needed to hit the importance of the Book of Mormon this week. We had already been answering all of his questions with the Book of Mormon, but we had a lesson with him that night. We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and then at the end, we asked him if he had been reading and praying to receive an answer.  He thought about the question for a while (like he always does), then he said, "yeah." Then there was about 10 seconds of silence while we were waiting for him to expound, but that was all he was going to say.  Then I asked if he had received an answer, and after thinking a bit, he said, "yeah.", then we had another 10 seconds of silence. Then I asked what the answer was. There was a realllllly long pause while he thought.  He started to grin, then he just had this HUGE smile on his face, and he said, "I know the Book of Mormon is true." So. Elder Johnson and I on the inside are FREAKING OUT, because we've been working with him for about a month, and he just got his answer to the Book of Mormon.  On the outside, we just smiled and said that it was super good, then asked if he knew what it meant.  He listed off that it meant the church was true, and that Joseph Smith was a prophet, and all that good stuff. So. We are MEGA pumped. We were super excited, and ever since then, he's read all of first and second Nephi in about a week. He wants to finish the Book of Mormon before he's baptized. CRAZY.  We're mega excited for that. I don't think I'll ever forget the smile he had on his face when he said he knew the Book of Mormon was true. After him, we met with a member referral named Martin. He’s a pretty cool guy, but he interprets the scriptures really weird. He got hung up on a scripture in Amos 8 that was in the pamphlet, and just kept saying it was talking about when Jesus came to earth and stuff.  We just kept telling him he's got to read the Book of Mormon and pray to know if it's true, so we'll see what happens there.

Friday! We met with Juan, and he brought his Muslim friend. It was pretty awkward telling his friend that he had to leave our lesson, but he ended up being ok with it! I think... BUT. FLASH BACK REALLY QUICK. We met with Binus earlier, and figured out he's a 3-minute walk away from a member's house.  We taught Binus the Word of Wisdom.  He said getting rid of drinking and smoking will be super easy, but TEA AND COFFEE, he couldn't even imagine giving those up. I could hardly believe it. It is literally harder for him to give up tea and coffee than alcohol and smoking... So that'll be interesting.  He said one way he can start giving up alcohol and smoking is by getting a new job.  He said to ask around and see if we can find a job at a hotel for him. That was the job he wanted. Ok, now fast forward again to our lesson with Juan. We taught him, got a firm church-pray-read commitment, and then he said that he wanted to show us where he worked since it was super close to the place we met.  He brought us to his work at a hotel. We asked him if there were any openings. He said they're looking for people to hire. It's a hotel and Binus wanted a job at a hotel. WHAT IN THE WORLD!!! I could hardly believe it! WE FOUND A JOB FOR BINUS LIKE AN HOUR AFTER HE ASKED US TO. So. #miracles We'll see if it works out though. Oh yeah, we met with Lodelin and Inday too. They're solid. Lodelin is loving life as a baptized member of the church, so that's awesome. Inday wants to take her time learning, so we're going to slow down the pace a bit.  She'll get baptized within the next two transfers I think.

Saturday, not a ton happened, BUT we did meet with a new guy named Virus. It's pronounced veeroos, but I always just say virus. He’s a super cool guy, but his wife is mega NOT interested.  They live across the hall from the branch president, so I think we'll be able to fellowship them into the church.  They are a super cool family, Virus is super interested. I'm excited to see where that goes!

Sunday... Let's see. We met with Andrew after church.  He had a bunch of questions on priesthood keys and why they are important (because we learned about them in priesthood), and then we taught the Word of Wisdom. Last week at church, he learned about the Word of Wisdom, so he said he had already stopped drinking coffee and tea, and he's good to go! WOOHOOO. Solid investigator. He's seriously way cool. I need to get a picture with him so I can send it to all of you! We had a few appointments reschedule from Sunday, so we pretty much tried visiting members. It was pretty good.

This week was super crazy. We met with lots of new people, and I'm really excited to see how they progress. I've been working a lot on teaching out of the Book of Mormon this transfer, and it's super exciting to see the fruits that come from it! I'm excited for this next week too! Next Monday, we get transfer news!  I'll probably stay here with Elder Johnson, so not too much news! Next Monday, I might email a little later than normal, because we have a zone activity too.  I hope all of you have an awesome week! Thanks for the emails.  I'll send a bunch of pictures next week to make up for this week!

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins