Hi dad. Im still safe.
I am sorry there are so many hard things happening in the world today. I
feel very blessed and protected. We take extra precautions to remain safe.
So this week has been a week of miracles. Naveen was baptized on Saturday
and it was amazing. It was also very stressful. Right up until the baptism
we didn't know if he was going to make it because of work. But he did.
I've never seen him so happy. After he was baptized he kept saying, " oh
sister, i have been waiting for this for such a long time". I love this
Punjabi man. But the stress still wasn't over. He still had to make it to
church the next day to receive the Holy Ghost and get confirmed. We do all
we can to let the converts know how important it is to come to church the
next day. If they don't come we kind of have to start over. Late saturday
night Naveen text'd us and told us he couldn't come and that he was so
sorry. His boss wouldn't let him. We said a lot of prayers on his behalf
that night, praying and praying that he would come. We got to church the
next day and Naveen was there sitting on the couch. He said "Sisters, i did
like you said, I just turned off my phone". I was so proud of him, that
takes so much faith. He was really nervous to go in to work on monday, he
was worried his boss would fire him. But the Miracles just keep coming.
Not only did his boss still want him to work, his boss also gave him every
Sunday off from now on. I couldn't believe it, this never happens in
Malaysia. Work is our enemy. But Naveen has really been blessed. He looks
so happy all the time.
At church on Sunday there were a lot of Americans traveling from the
States. One girl was there on her honeymoon touring Southeast Asia and
knows macsen and lisa. Her name is Stephani Tanner ?? Small world.
Another miracle on Sunday was Janak. Nanda's friend Janak is getting
baptized next week but in order to be baptized he needed to come to church
on Sunday. If he didn't come we were going to have to postpone his baptism
for the second time. We had to postpone the first time because on Sunday
Nanda sent Janak to go to the Embassy for some reason, on Sunday. Nanda got
in trouble for that one :-). Don't send our investigators on errands on
Sunday! Anyway, the week prior he got Dengay. We were so sad A. because he
was sick, and B because we didn't think he would come to church. But Sunday
morning came and in walked Nanda and Janak. He was feeling so much better,
which is crazy because Dengay is pretty serious. I was so happy, and he
looked so happy too.
Let me tell you about the Myanmar family we met last week. Remember them?
So, they invited us back on Sunday night. We showed up and the whole family
was there plus some others. It was quite the crowd and they were all
sitting on the floor waiting for us. We came in and sat down with them and
they told us it was going to be a little while before we could start. We
were not sure why but soon realized. People just started flowing into this
little apartment, all from Myanmar. I counted and we taught 35 people, all
crammed in one room. They sang a few songs in Burmese while playing a
guitar. And then Aboi, the only one who spoke english leaned over and told
us we each had twenty minutes to preach to them. It was little
intimidating, but they were all ears. Sister Mccurday sang for them a few
hymns, since they sang for us. And Then we taught them all about the
Restoration of the Church, complete with pictures. We kept it very very
simple because Aboi was having a hard time translating. We also gave them a
few pamphlets about Joseph Smith in Burmese, it is all we had. It is hard
to teach without any printed materials. When we finished they requested we
sing again for them, which we did, and then we sat and drank Coke haha.
They want us to come back at least once a month to preach to them.
Unfortunately none said they could come to church so we don't know if it
really is a good use of our time. We shall see. It was quite the
experience. As we left we shook all 35 of their hands. Myanmar people are
so cute!
We have begun teaching a man named Farooq. He is from Pakistan and is
working here in Malaysia. He is the most humble and happy man I have ever
met. We teach him in his tiny 4x4 ft guard hut, where he works and also
lives. He used to own a shop in Pakistan but it got burned to the ground by
people who found out he is Christian, so he came here to work. Everything
he earns he sends back to his family. Hence the reason he lives in the
guard hut. He is awesome though. Every time we see him he talks on and on
about how he is so blessed by god and what a good life he has. To me his
life seems pretty sad, but he is so happy. He really wants to get baptized
so we are excited to help him do that.
Man, you guys missionary work rocks so much. It seriously is the best. I
am so in love with everyone we teach. Nanda introduced us to two more of
his friends this week who are coming to church on sunday. The work is
awesome.
love you all!
No Im sorry shannon, I cannot see mt everest from Malaysia, ya dork.
sister v
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Jan. 12, 2010
Subject: don't worry. I'm safe.
Don't worry dad. We are safe. You are right though. There has been a lot
of talk and anger about the new "law", I guess that is what it is, about
the Malay word for God ("Allah"). Christians are no longer allowed to use
it. It makes me so sad. There is another word "Tuhan" we can use, but it
really doesn't have the correct translation, it works though. Like I have
mentioned in letters previous, things are sensitive over here. Five
churches have been bombed in Malaysia this past week; three in Kuala Lumpur.
Luckily our church looks like a Spanish Bungalow, so we are ok. It is just
sad to me how close minded people can be. But we are being smart, we don't
talk about anything that has to do with religion when there are a lot
Muslims around. We are currently only teaching one family from East
Malaysia in Malay and it is sad to me when we read with them from the Book
of Mormon and we read the word God but can't say it. Such is life in these
parts. The silly thing is, Allah is not their word. Countries all over use
it. It is part of the Malay and Indonesian language, among many others.
But that is just the way the government works over here so... we'll just
pray for change I guess.
Other than all that the work has been going really great. This week has
been fun.
Last week I ate at a place I vowed I would never eat at. It is called
Suzi's Corner, we walk past it ever day and the gutters around it smell
absolutely horrible and I see rats scurrying everywhere all the time. But,
we were with the Elders and some recent converts and they wanted to eat
there, and they basically made fun of me when I complained about their
sanitation problem. So I caved. The food was really good; and I didn't get
sick, amazingly. My stomach was blessed that night.
I also tasted Durian for the first time this week. Mr. Kong brought me some
just so he could watch me taste it. Durian is the really stinky fruit. Man
o man it smells so bad. It's loved by most of the people here. I'm not
sure why. The smell is horrible as you are eating it. The texture is slimy
and horrible as well. And after you eat it you have "durian burps" that
last a couple hours, and you get all hot like a fever inside. It's
horrible. The taste I guess wasn't that bad, but when the smell and texture
are so bad, why would you want to eat it??? Everyone was telling me not to
go drink alcohol afterwards because apparently if you drink after you eat
durian, you die. Why do people eat this stuff?
Want to know something really cute. The word for "sister" in Nepali is
"didi". I have been called "didi vi" on occasion. It cracks me up.
There was a wonderful baptism this weekend! Som didn't end up getting
baptized, his work just wouldn't budge; we are still working on it. But a
boy named Zohib from Pakistan was baptized. The Elders have been teaching
him, his story is amazing. His family has been in the Branch for quite some
time. I am good friends with his sister Zobia. Zobia got her mission call
to the Singapore Mission too and left for the MTC in the Phillapines last
Friday. Her brother Zohib was baptized Thursday, the night before she left.
He has been in prison in Pakistan for the last seven years because people
there found out he was Christian. He just came to Malaysia at the end of
last year, and Zobia was able to see her brother baptized the night before
she left on her mission. It was awesome. Can you imagine being in prison
for 7 years just because you are Christian? What a world we live in. I'm
excited for Zobia too. It is pretty certain we will be serving together at
least once since there are only ten sisters, and I'm looking forward to it.
Nanda skipped work to come to his baptism. Nanda comes to every baptism we
have, whether he knows them or not, whether he works or not. When Nanda
showed up I asked him "Nanda, don't you have work tonight?" He just smiled
at me and said, "Yes sister, but God will provide". I don't know how he
still has a job. I think he just and sits on his royal little butt and does
what he wants. Nanda has been begging us to make him a Branch Missionary.
We are trying, the Branch Presidency is a little slow at giving callings.
Naveen is getting baptized this weekend! You remember him? I love this
Punjabi man, he is so cool. We were talking with the Elders the other day
about how we wanted to get Naveen baptized and I called him right then and
asked, "Naveen, you want to be baptized Saturday? you are totally ready".
His reply: "alright". haha so simple.
This is awesome: Yesterday we were knocking. Knocking is not very
efficient I don't think, but we were sick of trains and buses. We went to
these flats and started on Building A. This building's elevator was broken.
We climbed up eleven stories. Why? not sure. We should have gone to a
building that had a dang elevator. But, on the eleventh floor we knocked a
door where a bunch of people from Myanmar lived. There were tons of them
crammed into that little house! They invited us in. Only one of them spoke
English, very poorly. So he translated for everyone. There were about 15
people there with a bunch of little kids running around. We sat on the
floor and they asked us how we knew they lived there. We of course didn't
and told them we were just knocking doors in the area. They told us to
teach them something. Naturally, we were obliged to. They said we had to
come back Sunday night to study the Bible with them. In fact they told us
we had to come, "with out fail". Awesome. We don't get that everyday.
Usually we are the ones begging people to show up for return appointments.
We will see how it all works out.
I hope everything is wonderful at home.
Macsen I think that's awesome you got yourself a minor. And your job sounds
sweet. I can't imagine working 30 hours. I'm not that smart.
Lisa: M for W? really?
Bryson: HAVE FUN ON YOUR DATE YA HOTTIE
I love you guys so much
sister v
Don't worry dad. We are safe. You are right though. There has been a lot
of talk and anger about the new "law", I guess that is what it is, about
the Malay word for God ("Allah"). Christians are no longer allowed to use
it. It makes me so sad. There is another word "Tuhan" we can use, but it
really doesn't have the correct translation, it works though. Like I have
mentioned in letters previous, things are sensitive over here. Five
churches have been bombed in Malaysia this past week; three in Kuala Lumpur.
Luckily our church looks like a Spanish Bungalow, so we are ok. It is just
sad to me how close minded people can be. But we are being smart, we don't
talk about anything that has to do with religion when there are a lot
Muslims around. We are currently only teaching one family from East
Malaysia in Malay and it is sad to me when we read with them from the Book
of Mormon and we read the word God but can't say it. Such is life in these
parts. The silly thing is, Allah is not their word. Countries all over use
it. It is part of the Malay and Indonesian language, among many others.
But that is just the way the government works over here so... we'll just
pray for change I guess.
Other than all that the work has been going really great. This week has
been fun.
Last week I ate at a place I vowed I would never eat at. It is called
Suzi's Corner, we walk past it ever day and the gutters around it smell
absolutely horrible and I see rats scurrying everywhere all the time. But,
we were with the Elders and some recent converts and they wanted to eat
there, and they basically made fun of me when I complained about their
sanitation problem. So I caved. The food was really good; and I didn't get
sick, amazingly. My stomach was blessed that night.
I also tasted Durian for the first time this week. Mr. Kong brought me some
just so he could watch me taste it. Durian is the really stinky fruit. Man
o man it smells so bad. It's loved by most of the people here. I'm not
sure why. The smell is horrible as you are eating it. The texture is slimy
and horrible as well. And after you eat it you have "durian burps" that
last a couple hours, and you get all hot like a fever inside. It's
horrible. The taste I guess wasn't that bad, but when the smell and texture
are so bad, why would you want to eat it??? Everyone was telling me not to
go drink alcohol afterwards because apparently if you drink after you eat
durian, you die. Why do people eat this stuff?
Want to know something really cute. The word for "sister" in Nepali is
"didi". I have been called "didi vi" on occasion. It cracks me up.
There was a wonderful baptism this weekend! Som didn't end up getting
baptized, his work just wouldn't budge; we are still working on it. But a
boy named Zohib from Pakistan was baptized. The Elders have been teaching
him, his story is amazing. His family has been in the Branch for quite some
time. I am good friends with his sister Zobia. Zobia got her mission call
to the Singapore Mission too and left for the MTC in the Phillapines last
Friday. Her brother Zohib was baptized Thursday, the night before she left.
He has been in prison in Pakistan for the last seven years because people
there found out he was Christian. He just came to Malaysia at the end of
last year, and Zobia was able to see her brother baptized the night before
she left on her mission. It was awesome. Can you imagine being in prison
for 7 years just because you are Christian? What a world we live in. I'm
excited for Zobia too. It is pretty certain we will be serving together at
least once since there are only ten sisters, and I'm looking forward to it.
Nanda skipped work to come to his baptism. Nanda comes to every baptism we
have, whether he knows them or not, whether he works or not. When Nanda
showed up I asked him "Nanda, don't you have work tonight?" He just smiled
at me and said, "Yes sister, but God will provide". I don't know how he
still has a job. I think he just and sits on his royal little butt and does
what he wants. Nanda has been begging us to make him a Branch Missionary.
We are trying, the Branch Presidency is a little slow at giving callings.
Naveen is getting baptized this weekend! You remember him? I love this
Punjabi man, he is so cool. We were talking with the Elders the other day
about how we wanted to get Naveen baptized and I called him right then and
asked, "Naveen, you want to be baptized Saturday? you are totally ready".
His reply: "alright". haha so simple.
This is awesome: Yesterday we were knocking. Knocking is not very
efficient I don't think, but we were sick of trains and buses. We went to
these flats and started on Building A. This building's elevator was broken.
We climbed up eleven stories. Why? not sure. We should have gone to a
building that had a dang elevator. But, on the eleventh floor we knocked a
door where a bunch of people from Myanmar lived. There were tons of them
crammed into that little house! They invited us in. Only one of them spoke
English, very poorly. So he translated for everyone. There were about 15
people there with a bunch of little kids running around. We sat on the
floor and they asked us how we knew they lived there. We of course didn't
and told them we were just knocking doors in the area. They told us to
teach them something. Naturally, we were obliged to. They said we had to
come back Sunday night to study the Bible with them. In fact they told us
we had to come, "with out fail". Awesome. We don't get that everyday.
Usually we are the ones begging people to show up for return appointments.
We will see how it all works out.
I hope everything is wonderful at home.
Macsen I think that's awesome you got yourself a minor. And your job sounds
sweet. I can't imagine working 30 hours. I'm not that smart.
Lisa: M for W? really?
Bryson: HAVE FUN ON YOUR DATE YA HOTTIE
I love you guys so much
sister v
Jan. 5, 2010
Subject: happy new year dawgs
Happy new year dad! sounds like it was fun. Shannon said you told her if
she got kissed she couldn't come home.... how do you ever expect your
daughters to be cool girls if you say things like that dad. :-) you keep
that up they are all going to end up on missions like me.
My new years was hysterical. I have three words that will sum it up nicely
for you "Asian Talent Show". Oh my goodness i about died. Can you just
picture a middle aged asian man singing a young womens song written in the
80s. It was awesome. Then we had a couple hip hop dances. And my personal
favorite were two African brothers who got up and did a rap entitled
"Radical for Jesus". What a nite (the signs put up said Talent Nite
everywhere, not sure if the misspell was intentional or not). We got home
very late because the trains were slow. I managed to see 4 different
firework shows from my bedroom window out over the city. But all in all New
Years didn't seem that big, they are saving it all for Chinese New Years in
February.
Oh I wanted to tell you Dad, be proud, I bowled a Turkey last P-day. The
Elders were ticked. Especially because my first game's total score was 55.
Haha they were so mad. I beat em all.
We had another wonderful baptism Saturday morning. Aite was baptized,
Kiran's friend. We held it Saturday morning because all the Nepali brothers
work nights. We had them come straight from work to the baptism and then
they could all go home and sleep after. Khem, who just got the priesthood
last week got to baptize Aite. I was so excited. And then we had Kiran and
Suran, another recent convert, share their testimonies. These guys get so
pumped for baptisms. And seeing Aite receive the Holy Ghost on Sunday was
awesome. He looked so happy.
Also on Sunday Kiran blessed the sacrament for the first time. He was so
nervous! I couldn't help but laugh a little. He looked like he was going
to throw up. His prayer was good though, no mess ups :-). It makes me so
happy to see these boys progress in the gospel and use the Priesthood they
are given.
Sunday was also excellent because some people came that we totally were not
expecting. A couple weeks ago we were knocking some flats and were not
having any luck at all. Nobody was home. We were heading back to the
trains and Sister Mccurdy decided she wanted to go into this random flat and
walk up the stairs. She is far more spiritually in tune that I am. While
walking up the stairs we met a Chinese lady named amber, who said she likes
to go with her two children to church on occasion. She said she was
interested but wouldn't give us her phone number. So we just gave her our
card and hoped she would contact us. She showed up at church on Sunday and
brought her two kids! It was awesome. I had actually forgotten about her.
I'm so happy she came. They came late and missed sacrament meeting but we
sent her daughter to Young Womens, her son to Priesthood, and took her with
us to Relief Society. They probably were a little overwhelmed but they
still came away smiling. And a chinese couple who were recently baptized
really welcomed them and talked to them for about 45 min after church. I
couldn't understand anything they were saying but they were laughing and
seemed to be getting along. I am so grateful for members who just walk up
and introduce themselves to people we bring to church. It means so much to
us missionaries and it helps our investigators feel so much more welcomed.
Sometimes it is like pulling teeth getting members to go talk to
investigators. So I was really grateful to this couple for being so nice
and welcoming.
This next week should be good. We have mission tour on Friday and this
weekend Som will hopefully be getting baptized. Keep your fingers crossed,
he is ready, but his work is Satan.
Oh! Nanda said he found an article from the Ensign about members in Nepal
is this true? we don't get the Ensign here. Nanda was pretty pumped about
it. He seems to know one of them and wants to get ahold of him to get
things rolling in Nepal. Nanda says one call from him and Missionaries will
be safe and bothered by no one in Nepal; I don't know how true that is but
he really wants it to happen. I have a feeling in the future the church
will open up there; I pray at least. Nanda also said he wants to play polo,
make millions of dollars doing it, and then with it all work for the church.
hahah he has some big dreams. He also said he wants to buy me a Volkswagon
Bug when I get married as a wedding present. He makes me laugh that one.
We were talking to some guards across the street from our church and
one of them pulled out a Nepali Bible. I instantly recognized it as Nanda's
from the torn cover and asked Nanda about it later that day. He said he has
no idea who the guard is or how he got his book. He also said he has given
out 60 Nepali Bibles here. hahah. he is awesome. He is begging us to be
called as a branch missionary. We are bothering the Branch Presidency about
it but things just are slow here. Hopefully he will get his dream calling
soon. Not that it will really make that much of a difference. He already
is a branch missionary.
I haven't read your letters yet but after skimming them it sounds like you
are all nice and busy. That's good.
I had forgotten that Kimberlee was going to Jerusalem, and I didn't know
Ryan was getting married. That is all so exciting.
I love you family
sis v
Happy new year dad! sounds like it was fun. Shannon said you told her if
she got kissed she couldn't come home.... how do you ever expect your
daughters to be cool girls if you say things like that dad. :-) you keep
that up they are all going to end up on missions like me.
My new years was hysterical. I have three words that will sum it up nicely
for you "Asian Talent Show". Oh my goodness i about died. Can you just
picture a middle aged asian man singing a young womens song written in the
80s. It was awesome. Then we had a couple hip hop dances. And my personal
favorite were two African brothers who got up and did a rap entitled
"Radical for Jesus". What a nite (the signs put up said Talent Nite
everywhere, not sure if the misspell was intentional or not). We got home
very late because the trains were slow. I managed to see 4 different
firework shows from my bedroom window out over the city. But all in all New
Years didn't seem that big, they are saving it all for Chinese New Years in
February.
Oh I wanted to tell you Dad, be proud, I bowled a Turkey last P-day. The
Elders were ticked. Especially because my first game's total score was 55.
Haha they were so mad. I beat em all.
We had another wonderful baptism Saturday morning. Aite was baptized,
Kiran's friend. We held it Saturday morning because all the Nepali brothers
work nights. We had them come straight from work to the baptism and then
they could all go home and sleep after. Khem, who just got the priesthood
last week got to baptize Aite. I was so excited. And then we had Kiran and
Suran, another recent convert, share their testimonies. These guys get so
pumped for baptisms. And seeing Aite receive the Holy Ghost on Sunday was
awesome. He looked so happy.
Also on Sunday Kiran blessed the sacrament for the first time. He was so
nervous! I couldn't help but laugh a little. He looked like he was going
to throw up. His prayer was good though, no mess ups :-). It makes me so
happy to see these boys progress in the gospel and use the Priesthood they
are given.
Sunday was also excellent because some people came that we totally were not
expecting. A couple weeks ago we were knocking some flats and were not
having any luck at all. Nobody was home. We were heading back to the
trains and Sister Mccurdy decided she wanted to go into this random flat and
walk up the stairs. She is far more spiritually in tune that I am. While
walking up the stairs we met a Chinese lady named amber, who said she likes
to go with her two children to church on occasion. She said she was
interested but wouldn't give us her phone number. So we just gave her our
card and hoped she would contact us. She showed up at church on Sunday and
brought her two kids! It was awesome. I had actually forgotten about her.
I'm so happy she came. They came late and missed sacrament meeting but we
sent her daughter to Young Womens, her son to Priesthood, and took her with
us to Relief Society. They probably were a little overwhelmed but they
still came away smiling. And a chinese couple who were recently baptized
really welcomed them and talked to them for about 45 min after church. I
couldn't understand anything they were saying but they were laughing and
seemed to be getting along. I am so grateful for members who just walk up
and introduce themselves to people we bring to church. It means so much to
us missionaries and it helps our investigators feel so much more welcomed.
Sometimes it is like pulling teeth getting members to go talk to
investigators. So I was really grateful to this couple for being so nice
and welcoming.
This next week should be good. We have mission tour on Friday and this
weekend Som will hopefully be getting baptized. Keep your fingers crossed,
he is ready, but his work is Satan.
Oh! Nanda said he found an article from the Ensign about members in Nepal
is this true? we don't get the Ensign here. Nanda was pretty pumped about
it. He seems to know one of them and wants to get ahold of him to get
things rolling in Nepal. Nanda says one call from him and Missionaries will
be safe and bothered by no one in Nepal; I don't know how true that is but
he really wants it to happen. I have a feeling in the future the church
will open up there; I pray at least. Nanda also said he wants to play polo,
make millions of dollars doing it, and then with it all work for the church.
hahah he has some big dreams. He also said he wants to buy me a Volkswagon
Bug when I get married as a wedding present. He makes me laugh that one.
We were talking to some guards across the street from our church and
one of them pulled out a Nepali Bible. I instantly recognized it as Nanda's
from the torn cover and asked Nanda about it later that day. He said he has
no idea who the guard is or how he got his book. He also said he has given
out 60 Nepali Bibles here. hahah. he is awesome. He is begging us to be
called as a branch missionary. We are bothering the Branch Presidency about
it but things just are slow here. Hopefully he will get his dream calling
soon. Not that it will really make that much of a difference. He already
is a branch missionary.
I haven't read your letters yet but after skimming them it sounds like you
are all nice and busy. That's good.
I had forgotten that Kimberlee was going to Jerusalem, and I didn't know
Ryan was getting married. That is all so exciting.
I love you family
sis v
Dec. 29, 2009
Subject: hey hey
ya my comp is related to a dave mccurdy. but she also says there are a lot
of mccurdys so....who knows.
So good to talk to you all on Christmas! I feel like I did a lot of the
talking though, I'm sorry. And I got your package yesterday! The
Assistants came to do splits with the Zone leaders here in KL and brought it
from Singapore. Looks like it arrived Dec 22. Awesome timing. Thank you
thank you! Just the other day I was looking at my shirts thinking "man, I
am totally sick of all of these and don't want to wear any of them" and it
has only been 4 months. Not good. so thank you for the shirts. And the
umbrella!!!!! so thoughtful. Wow, I can count on you guys. this is the
best christmas ever.
We had the most wonderful sacrament meeting this past week. Nanda, Khem and
Lito all got the priesthood! It almost made me cry seeing them stand up and
get sustained by members in the ward. Men like these are needed so badly in
these parts. Our branch is a little interesting because we never really
have planned talks. The Branch President likes to hear from the members so
the past few sundays have been like Fast and testimony meeting. ANd if no
one gets up, they call on you randomly. I like it. I was looking at Nanda
across the room and motioning for him to get up and bare his testimony. He
kept laughing and shaking his head no way. But then sister mccurdy joined
in and he got up finally to speak. We were so happy! We have been trying
to get him to bare his testimony for quite a while now. I love hearing him
express his love for this gospel. After him Kiran also got up and shared.
It was awesome.
Khem was so excited to have the Priesthood. This is a text he sent us that
Sunday night:
"Hi, today Im very happy because I get Priest. Now I can baptise other
people. when they give a Priest to me I fell so good. that I can't forget
this movement. thanks a lot to u sisters that you teach me abt Christ and
now Im in good sutation. Now a days I fell proud my self. Now I become a
good Christ follower man. I can't explain in words how much happiness you
give it to me. U R really genious girls that u can give happiness to
others. Many mannnnnny thanks to u"
hahahah I love it.
On Saturday the Elders had a baptism but forgot to fill up the font until
the morning of. The font takes about 12 hours to fill. It was not near
full enough when the baptizm started but we decided to give it a try anyway.
Vincent, the boy getting baptized was pretty tall and they just couldn't get
him all the way under. Finally they had to just push his body under and his
legs under. It was kind of funny.... Hopefully they won't forget again. I
swear, the faucet to the font is a trickle.
Kiran told me he talked to shannon . He said her english was "SOOOOOO nice
and love to listen to it because she speak sooooooo nicely" He was happy.
I laugh every time he speaks.
It is good to know that even though plans you make don't necessarily turn
out. Good things still happen. Yesterday we planned to meet Aite, who is
getting baptized next week. But he was sick and cancelled. We decided to
go visit a lady sister mccurdy used to teach but stopped coming to church.
Nothing good really came of meeting with that woman but on our way there we
met the cutest Indian family in the world. She had six adorable small
children and said she goes to Christian churches sometimes and that it would
be totally fine if we came over visited her. awesome. Som earlier that day
had given us a bunch of crazy fruit called Mata kucing (cat eyes) - they
literally look like you are eating eyeballs - and while we talked I kept
giving the little kids fruit to eat. They were so adorable. They would
grab my hand and kiss the back of it. Man kids are cute here. We are going
to visit her on Friday. Hope it goes well. We have really been looking for
a family to teach. We are teaching all single young men right now and they
are fun, but we are ready for some women. Problem is, the women just don't
want to listen, the men do. What to do huh?
Som is also getting baptized next week and we are pretty stoked. He is so
happy and excited.
Sure love you guys!!
sis v
ya my comp is related to a dave mccurdy. but she also says there are a lot
of mccurdys so....who knows.
So good to talk to you all on Christmas! I feel like I did a lot of the
talking though, I'm sorry. And I got your package yesterday! The
Assistants came to do splits with the Zone leaders here in KL and brought it
from Singapore. Looks like it arrived Dec 22. Awesome timing. Thank you
thank you! Just the other day I was looking at my shirts thinking "man, I
am totally sick of all of these and don't want to wear any of them" and it
has only been 4 months. Not good. so thank you for the shirts. And the
umbrella!!!!! so thoughtful. Wow, I can count on you guys. this is the
best christmas ever.
We had the most wonderful sacrament meeting this past week. Nanda, Khem and
Lito all got the priesthood! It almost made me cry seeing them stand up and
get sustained by members in the ward. Men like these are needed so badly in
these parts. Our branch is a little interesting because we never really
have planned talks. The Branch President likes to hear from the members so
the past few sundays have been like Fast and testimony meeting. ANd if no
one gets up, they call on you randomly. I like it. I was looking at Nanda
across the room and motioning for him to get up and bare his testimony. He
kept laughing and shaking his head no way. But then sister mccurdy joined
in and he got up finally to speak. We were so happy! We have been trying
to get him to bare his testimony for quite a while now. I love hearing him
express his love for this gospel. After him Kiran also got up and shared.
It was awesome.
Khem was so excited to have the Priesthood. This is a text he sent us that
Sunday night:
"Hi, today Im very happy because I get Priest. Now I can baptise other
people. when they give a Priest to me I fell so good. that I can't forget
this movement. thanks a lot to u sisters that you teach me abt Christ and
now Im in good sutation. Now a days I fell proud my self. Now I become a
good Christ follower man. I can't explain in words how much happiness you
give it to me. U R really genious girls that u can give happiness to
others. Many mannnnnny thanks to u"
hahahah I love it.
On Saturday the Elders had a baptism but forgot to fill up the font until
the morning of. The font takes about 12 hours to fill. It was not near
full enough when the baptizm started but we decided to give it a try anyway.
Vincent, the boy getting baptized was pretty tall and they just couldn't get
him all the way under. Finally they had to just push his body under and his
legs under. It was kind of funny.... Hopefully they won't forget again. I
swear, the faucet to the font is a trickle.
Kiran told me he talked to shannon . He said her english was "SOOOOOO nice
and love to listen to it because she speak sooooooo nicely" He was happy.
I laugh every time he speaks.
It is good to know that even though plans you make don't necessarily turn
out. Good things still happen. Yesterday we planned to meet Aite, who is
getting baptized next week. But he was sick and cancelled. We decided to
go visit a lady sister mccurdy used to teach but stopped coming to church.
Nothing good really came of meeting with that woman but on our way there we
met the cutest Indian family in the world. She had six adorable small
children and said she goes to Christian churches sometimes and that it would
be totally fine if we came over visited her. awesome. Som earlier that day
had given us a bunch of crazy fruit called Mata kucing (cat eyes) - they
literally look like you are eating eyeballs - and while we talked I kept
giving the little kids fruit to eat. They were so adorable. They would
grab my hand and kiss the back of it. Man kids are cute here. We are going
to visit her on Friday. Hope it goes well. We have really been looking for
a family to teach. We are teaching all single young men right now and they
are fun, but we are ready for some women. Problem is, the women just don't
want to listen, the men do. What to do huh?
Som is also getting baptized next week and we are pretty stoked. He is so
happy and excited.
Sure love you guys!!
sis v
Dec. 22, 2009
Merry Christmas!
Im sorry im sorry im sorry. I should have emailed home about calling last week. Last week when I emailed I actually forgot it was Christmas, it seemed for like the fourth of July to me. I know you guys probably have a lot of fun things planned for Christmas, so i'm sorry if not knowing when I am going to call has stressed you out. Hopefully my call won 't interrupt anything fun you have planned. I'm going to call the morning after Christmas actually so for you guys it will be about 7-8pm Dec 25. You should be 14 hours behind me. Calling the US is cheap here. We have a calling card for about an hour time limit that cost 10RM, about $3 dollars. nice. So ya, the plan is to call at 7am here, so about 5pm there, maybe closer to 6pm, I don't want me sounding like I just woke up haha. Can't wait to talk to ya. I hope this is ok, cuz if it's not I'm not going to get your reply until next week...
It sounds like so much fun at home.
We did a service project at an orphanage the other day that was really fun. Our branch went and cooked chicken curry for about 100 kids, to give the kitchen staff a break. The cooking conditions were somewhat frightening. We had a bunch of red buckets outside we dumped all the vegetables in to wash, using water that looked like it was coming from a gutter. And everyone sat on tables and cut potatoes, wierd green leaves, chicken, ginger, carrots, garlic, onions etc. all morning. As I was helping I was getting kind of nervous to eat this meal, fearing for my digestive tract. After we got everything cooking we took all the kids and watched the Polar Express, I love this movie, and then played a bunch of games. Then we ate with them. I ate the curry. The kids I was sitting with kept taking my camera and taking random pictures, and poking me. they think they are so hilarious. They were cute though. I found a chicken foot in my curry that kind of startled me. And the next day I didn't have any stomach problems so it all worked out!
Last night was quite the experience. We were teaching Aite and Muskan with Kiran's help and afterward he said he wanted to take us to meet another one of his friends in a place called Kota Raya. Kota Raya is a kind of scary place, and we were going at night. I usually just keep my mouth shut because I am always scared at night, doesn't matter where we are, and sister Mccurdy seemed fine with it so I trusted her and kiran. Kiran took us to a restaurant tucked away in the upstairs of this old building, full of Nepali men. We looked so completely out of place. His friend Menika owned worked there so we were able to sit down and talk with her awhile. She was adorable; the first Nepali woman I have met! And she wants us to teach her so awesome. She works all day everyday and never has a day off though. Her brother owns the place so we urged her to bother him for an off day so we could teach her. We'll see. Anyway while we were there men kept coming up to Kiran and us to talk. It's amazing how brave people are when they are in their own element. These people would never have come and talked to us if we saw them on the street. With each person we talked the conversation always ended up with them asking us if we could take them to the US. They want to get there so bad it's ridiculous. We just say, sorry can't help you with that.
Nanda's friend Janak is loving church. He says before he started coming to church he always had money problems, but now he doesn't have them anymore. awesome. I just thrilled me made the connection that it was only after he started coming to church that the problems went away.
I taught kiran how to wink the other day. It's hilarious. Something funny happened that kiran and I were laughing about and I winked at him. He says "Sister! you blink eye what does that mean?" I taught him how and on our bus ride home he kept winking at me. I told him it meant "hey". hahah not entirely true but oh well.
We taught a lesson to Nanda two days ago about General Conference and gave him a copy of the General Conference edition of the Liahona. He loved it. I don't think I have ever seen anyone as hungry for more knowledge. I said "give me one night only sisters and I will finish". The next day, he brought back the magazine, asking for another one. I think I'm just going to hand over Jesus the Christ to him, that'll keep him busy. We gotta get this guy subscribed to church magazines.
Mr. Kong is working in Johor Baru, right next to Singapore, for the next three weeks. We are sad. He usually goes out of town for two days or so and then comes back. So when he originally told me he was going to be out of town the beginning of January I didn't think anything of it. WRONG. We are debating on whether we want to pass him to the Elders down in JB and get him baptized down there.
Britt- I can't believe jason is walking. That's so cute.
Jacey and Tari thank you so much for the emails! Merry Christmas to you guys to. It's always good to hear from you all.
Macsen I can't believe you are applying to Medical schools...
I MISS DEBS GINGERBREAD MEN
talk to you on christmas
sister viehweg
Im sorry im sorry im sorry. I should have emailed home about calling last week. Last week when I emailed I actually forgot it was Christmas, it seemed for like the fourth of July to me. I know you guys probably have a lot of fun things planned for Christmas, so i'm sorry if not knowing when I am going to call has stressed you out. Hopefully my call won 't interrupt anything fun you have planned. I'm going to call the morning after Christmas actually so for you guys it will be about 7-8pm Dec 25. You should be 14 hours behind me. Calling the US is cheap here. We have a calling card for about an hour time limit that cost 10RM, about $3 dollars. nice. So ya, the plan is to call at 7am here, so about 5pm there, maybe closer to 6pm, I don't want me sounding like I just woke up haha. Can't wait to talk to ya. I hope this is ok, cuz if it's not I'm not going to get your reply until next week...
It sounds like so much fun at home.
We did a service project at an orphanage the other day that was really fun. Our branch went and cooked chicken curry for about 100 kids, to give the kitchen staff a break. The cooking conditions were somewhat frightening. We had a bunch of red buckets outside we dumped all the vegetables in to wash, using water that looked like it was coming from a gutter. And everyone sat on tables and cut potatoes, wierd green leaves, chicken, ginger, carrots, garlic, onions etc. all morning. As I was helping I was getting kind of nervous to eat this meal, fearing for my digestive tract. After we got everything cooking we took all the kids and watched the Polar Express, I love this movie, and then played a bunch of games. Then we ate with them. I ate the curry. The kids I was sitting with kept taking my camera and taking random pictures, and poking me. they think they are so hilarious. They were cute though. I found a chicken foot in my curry that kind of startled me. And the next day I didn't have any stomach problems so it all worked out!
Last night was quite the experience. We were teaching Aite and Muskan with Kiran's help and afterward he said he wanted to take us to meet another one of his friends in a place called Kota Raya. Kota Raya is a kind of scary place, and we were going at night. I usually just keep my mouth shut because I am always scared at night, doesn't matter where we are, and sister Mccurdy seemed fine with it so I trusted her and kiran. Kiran took us to a restaurant tucked away in the upstairs of this old building, full of Nepali men. We looked so completely out of place. His friend Menika owned worked there so we were able to sit down and talk with her awhile. She was adorable; the first Nepali woman I have met! And she wants us to teach her so awesome. She works all day everyday and never has a day off though. Her brother owns the place so we urged her to bother him for an off day so we could teach her. We'll see. Anyway while we were there men kept coming up to Kiran and us to talk. It's amazing how brave people are when they are in their own element. These people would never have come and talked to us if we saw them on the street. With each person we talked the conversation always ended up with them asking us if we could take them to the US. They want to get there so bad it's ridiculous. We just say, sorry can't help you with that.
Nanda's friend Janak is loving church. He says before he started coming to church he always had money problems, but now he doesn't have them anymore. awesome. I just thrilled me made the connection that it was only after he started coming to church that the problems went away.
I taught kiran how to wink the other day. It's hilarious. Something funny happened that kiran and I were laughing about and I winked at him. He says "Sister! you blink eye what does that mean?" I taught him how and on our bus ride home he kept winking at me. I told him it meant "hey". hahah not entirely true but oh well.
We taught a lesson to Nanda two days ago about General Conference and gave him a copy of the General Conference edition of the Liahona. He loved it. I don't think I have ever seen anyone as hungry for more knowledge. I said "give me one night only sisters and I will finish". The next day, he brought back the magazine, asking for another one. I think I'm just going to hand over Jesus the Christ to him, that'll keep him busy. We gotta get this guy subscribed to church magazines.
Mr. Kong is working in Johor Baru, right next to Singapore, for the next three weeks. We are sad. He usually goes out of town for two days or so and then comes back. So when he originally told me he was going to be out of town the beginning of January I didn't think anything of it. WRONG. We are debating on whether we want to pass him to the Elders down in JB and get him baptized down there.
Britt- I can't believe jason is walking. That's so cute.
Jacey and Tari thank you so much for the emails! Merry Christmas to you guys to. It's always good to hear from you all.
Macsen I can't believe you are applying to Medical schools...
I MISS DEBS GINGERBREAD MEN
talk to you on christmas
sister viehweg
Dec. 15, 2009
Hey dad
Ya, we go to an internet cafe to email home and we get on for about an hour.
We hit the cafe only once and don't have time to go back until next week so
i'll just look for the long letter then. No worries about not getting it
sent. Life goes on.
This week has been busy busy. Mr Kong rocks. The other day he brought us
some very strange looking chips. They looked like styrofoam and smelled
like a gutter with fish remains dumped into it. I'm not kidding it was a
horrible stench. Sister Mccurdy was excited and told me they were
delicious, Mr. Kong was watching me closely, so I had to try one. They
weren't good but they didn't taste that bad actually, kind of like a fishy
chip. But after Mr. Kong left Sister Mccurdy told me what they were and I
almost threw up. They are fried fish fat. Sick. I can't believe I ate it.
Right now Mr. Kong is working in JB for a couple weeks and we miss him. But
he is so awesome. He called us to get the number of the missionaries
serving in JB so he could go to church with them. He also took the Elders
out to dinner down there and told them he wanted them to come with him to
teach his cousin about the gospel. I love it when these investigators make
our lives easy.
We are excited also to be teaching Nanda's friends Som, Purna, Kisa, and
Janak. Som and Janak are getting baptized in January and are excited. Som
told us the other day he called his family in Nepal and told them he was
going to be Christian. I wish he would have run by us this idea first
because we could have told him what their reaction was going to be. They
flipped. Som is no longer welcome in his home. These guys sacrifice so
much. Som is so awesome. He loves reading the scriptures. And Som is way
hott, haha ya I said it... he's a cutie.
Nanda helps us teach Som because his English is not very good. Yesterday
our lesson with Nanda and Som was not going well. Nanda was not being very
helpful and was refusing to translate. Finally we figured out that Nanda
was very upset. He broke out and demanded to know who translated the Book
of Mormon into Hindi because whoever it was, did a terrible job - so he
says- and he wanted to speak with him. Nanda told us he has given the Book
of Mormon to 30 other men he lives with and they say it has a lot of things
wrong with it. I guess he has been teaching them from the English version
while they follow along in the Hindi version and the verses don't say the
same things at all. He is so frustrated. Plus it is Hindi, it's not even
in Nepali. If only we still had the Urim and Thummim... Plus, it never
crossed Nanda's mind that some people just wouldn't believe the Book of
Mormon, even when taught plainly to them. People always have a choice.
When we told him that sometimes people read the entire book and still don't
believe, he calmed down a bit. He was so upset that everyone wasn't
believing him. I also explained that we teach some people who can't even
read, at all, but the Spirit still teaches them that the Book of Mormon is
true, and that this is God's church. I think that gave him hope. Even
though the Hindi Book of Mormon may not be perfect, people can still come to
know this church is true. Luckily the Spirit has no language barrier. We
are planning a time to go with Nanda to meet all these people. Hopefully we
can sit down with them and explain some things.
We were teaching with Nanda last week and he kept yelling out "I WAN TO
SHARE SISTERS!" The lesson was on missionary work and bearing testimony.
He got pretty pumped. Kiran, our other Nepali who helps us teach bore his
testimony on Sunday and it was the cutest thing I have ever listened to.
His English makes me laugh and he was so nervous. But he did a beautiful
job. He tells me "Sister! I want to testimony again and again!" We asked
Kiran to help us teach yesterday and it was raining really hard. I felt bad
but he said he wanted to even though we told him it was raining and he
didn't have to come. He showed up in a white shirt and tie with his slacks
rolled up to his knees soaking wet. He likes to dress like an Elder when he
helps us. It is too cute.
Nanda also told us he gets online and teaches five friends of his in
Thailand everday and all his brothers in Nepal everyday. He wants some
copies of the Book of Mormon to mail to them. We will have to get their
names and send the Thailand missionaries over. He rocks. Im nervous about
mailing BOMs to Nepal but Nanda 100% guaranteed me that if he mailed them
under his name no one would bother them.
I'm grateful for our recent converts who are willing to help us teach.
We have quite a few we can call to help us. I want them to be called as
branch missionaries. Right now we are teaching all young single men, and
all our branch missionaries are chinese women in their 50s. They don't
connect well. So we will push for our recent converts to get that calling
also. They need a calling!
Lisa asked some questions. She asked if we here the [Muslim] call to prayer
everyday. Yes we do. It is eerie sounding. When we go to this one
investigator's house to teach it always goes off in the middle of our
lesson. And the speaker it sounds from is right outside their door so it is
so loud. We can't hear ourselves speak. Every night. It is very pretty
sounding though when we aren't teaching. It is hard for me to enjoy hearing
it like Lisa though because every time I do it reminds me how much our work
is being hindered.
The vegetation is very green and tropical looking. There isn't much in
KL though. Every now and then you run into a road where it looks like you
stepped into a rainforest. Those are on the outskirts of town. In KL is
all cement and buildings with a few plants here and there. But when you get
out into the suburbs it is beautiful. I'll have to send pictures.
Yes all the Muslim women wear the traditional Sarongs and hoods. It
makes me so hot just looking at them. I often am the most immodestly
dressed girl on the bus or train. Their dress goes to the floor and to the
wrists and all the way up to the neck. And then they wear the hood on top
of that. And then there is me scantily clad, with my calves and arms
showing, and my hair and neck exposed. I rarely see immodest dress here.
It is so nice. Even if they don't wear the traditional dress, everyone
dresses really modestly. The only people that don't are the European
tourists.
We shop at a regular shopping center. Except to buy fruit. There is a
fruit stand on the street by our apartment and it is awesome. This old
couple run it and we love em. I wish you could try the fruit here, whoa it
is good. Last week Mr Kong gave us some Dragon Fruit. It is beautiful! It
is pink and yellow on the outside and white and black polka dot on the
inside. It's tastes kind of like a Kiwi. It rocks.
I didn't know Bryson was doing wrestling. Awesome.
Macsen! congrats on getting the job!!!!!!!! I MISS SNOW SO BAD.
Ya, we go to an internet cafe to email home and we get on for about an hour.
We hit the cafe only once and don't have time to go back until next week so
i'll just look for the long letter then. No worries about not getting it
sent. Life goes on.
This week has been busy busy. Mr Kong rocks. The other day he brought us
some very strange looking chips. They looked like styrofoam and smelled
like a gutter with fish remains dumped into it. I'm not kidding it was a
horrible stench. Sister Mccurdy was excited and told me they were
delicious, Mr. Kong was watching me closely, so I had to try one. They
weren't good but they didn't taste that bad actually, kind of like a fishy
chip. But after Mr. Kong left Sister Mccurdy told me what they were and I
almost threw up. They are fried fish fat. Sick. I can't believe I ate it.
Right now Mr. Kong is working in JB for a couple weeks and we miss him. But
he is so awesome. He called us to get the number of the missionaries
serving in JB so he could go to church with them. He also took the Elders
out to dinner down there and told them he wanted them to come with him to
teach his cousin about the gospel. I love it when these investigators make
our lives easy.
We are excited also to be teaching Nanda's friends Som, Purna, Kisa, and
Janak. Som and Janak are getting baptized in January and are excited. Som
told us the other day he called his family in Nepal and told them he was
going to be Christian. I wish he would have run by us this idea first
because we could have told him what their reaction was going to be. They
flipped. Som is no longer welcome in his home. These guys sacrifice so
much. Som is so awesome. He loves reading the scriptures. And Som is way
hott, haha ya I said it... he's a cutie.
Nanda helps us teach Som because his English is not very good. Yesterday
our lesson with Nanda and Som was not going well. Nanda was not being very
helpful and was refusing to translate. Finally we figured out that Nanda
was very upset. He broke out and demanded to know who translated the Book
of Mormon into Hindi because whoever it was, did a terrible job - so he
says- and he wanted to speak with him. Nanda told us he has given the Book
of Mormon to 30 other men he lives with and they say it has a lot of things
wrong with it. I guess he has been teaching them from the English version
while they follow along in the Hindi version and the verses don't say the
same things at all. He is so frustrated. Plus it is Hindi, it's not even
in Nepali. If only we still had the Urim and Thummim... Plus, it never
crossed Nanda's mind that some people just wouldn't believe the Book of
Mormon, even when taught plainly to them. People always have a choice.
When we told him that sometimes people read the entire book and still don't
believe, he calmed down a bit. He was so upset that everyone wasn't
believing him. I also explained that we teach some people who can't even
read, at all, but the Spirit still teaches them that the Book of Mormon is
true, and that this is God's church. I think that gave him hope. Even
though the Hindi Book of Mormon may not be perfect, people can still come to
know this church is true. Luckily the Spirit has no language barrier. We
are planning a time to go with Nanda to meet all these people. Hopefully we
can sit down with them and explain some things.
We were teaching with Nanda last week and he kept yelling out "I WAN TO
SHARE SISTERS!" The lesson was on missionary work and bearing testimony.
He got pretty pumped. Kiran, our other Nepali who helps us teach bore his
testimony on Sunday and it was the cutest thing I have ever listened to.
His English makes me laugh and he was so nervous. But he did a beautiful
job. He tells me "Sister! I want to testimony again and again!" We asked
Kiran to help us teach yesterday and it was raining really hard. I felt bad
but he said he wanted to even though we told him it was raining and he
didn't have to come. He showed up in a white shirt and tie with his slacks
rolled up to his knees soaking wet. He likes to dress like an Elder when he
helps us. It is too cute.
Nanda also told us he gets online and teaches five friends of his in
Thailand everday and all his brothers in Nepal everyday. He wants some
copies of the Book of Mormon to mail to them. We will have to get their
names and send the Thailand missionaries over. He rocks. Im nervous about
mailing BOMs to Nepal but Nanda 100% guaranteed me that if he mailed them
under his name no one would bother them.
I'm grateful for our recent converts who are willing to help us teach.
We have quite a few we can call to help us. I want them to be called as
branch missionaries. Right now we are teaching all young single men, and
all our branch missionaries are chinese women in their 50s. They don't
connect well. So we will push for our recent converts to get that calling
also. They need a calling!
Lisa asked some questions. She asked if we here the [Muslim] call to prayer
everyday. Yes we do. It is eerie sounding. When we go to this one
investigator's house to teach it always goes off in the middle of our
lesson. And the speaker it sounds from is right outside their door so it is
so loud. We can't hear ourselves speak. Every night. It is very pretty
sounding though when we aren't teaching. It is hard for me to enjoy hearing
it like Lisa though because every time I do it reminds me how much our work
is being hindered.
The vegetation is very green and tropical looking. There isn't much in
KL though. Every now and then you run into a road where it looks like you
stepped into a rainforest. Those are on the outskirts of town. In KL is
all cement and buildings with a few plants here and there. But when you get
out into the suburbs it is beautiful. I'll have to send pictures.
Yes all the Muslim women wear the traditional Sarongs and hoods. It
makes me so hot just looking at them. I often am the most immodestly
dressed girl on the bus or train. Their dress goes to the floor and to the
wrists and all the way up to the neck. And then they wear the hood on top
of that. And then there is me scantily clad, with my calves and arms
showing, and my hair and neck exposed. I rarely see immodest dress here.
It is so nice. Even if they don't wear the traditional dress, everyone
dresses really modestly. The only people that don't are the European
tourists.
We shop at a regular shopping center. Except to buy fruit. There is a
fruit stand on the street by our apartment and it is awesome. This old
couple run it and we love em. I wish you could try the fruit here, whoa it
is good. Last week Mr Kong gave us some Dragon Fruit. It is beautiful! It
is pink and yellow on the outside and white and black polka dot on the
inside. It's tastes kind of like a Kiwi. It rocks.
I didn't know Bryson was doing wrestling. Awesome.
Macsen! congrats on getting the job!!!!!!!! I MISS SNOW SO BAD.
Dec. 8, 2009
Hey fam bam.
So good to see your emails pop up. This computer is so slow though! It's
been 20 minutes and not one of them has popped up yet. so i'm writing this
on word while I wait.
This week was super. Zone Conference was awesome. They have some really
talented AP elders here that gave great training, as did president and his
wife. Actually all his wife did was talk about acne and that everyone
should be wearing sun screen and bug spray, but nobody does. Nobody listens
to her haha. It's too much of a hassle. She's a nurse though so I guess
she feels like it's her duty. Our Zone conference was actually one of the
AP last day. After the conference ended his parents showed up at the church
house to pick him up. It was kind of weird to see his mom run in screaming
and hugging him. That is forever and a life time away. It was fun to talk
to them though.
Let's see what else happened this week. Mr. Kong has accepted our
invitation to be baptized Jan 2. I'm so happy! I taught him about faith,
repentance, baptism, holy ghost etc. this week and at the end asked if he
wanted to prepare himself to be baptized on that date. He thought for a
minute and said "well, I may be out of town that day so maybe we can plan
for Feb around chinese new year?" No way am I going to let him put this off
a month. I told him, we will plan for Jan 2 and if you are out of town we
can do it either the day before or the day after. He said that would work
haha. I'm excited! I wish you all could meet Mr. Kong, he's crazy. He is
so awkward but so friendly and socially skilled at the same time. I don"t
know what it is. We have taken him over to some ex-pats in our branch a
couple times and he loves them. They are the Sanders from Utah. He is
retired and she works at the US embassy here. Mr Kong calls him Mr Scott.
Im not sure what his deal us but he always calls people by Mr. or Ms. He
has introduced us to his friends and we call all of them by their first
name but we still have to call mr. Kong, "Mr Kong". It's funny. We've
tried asking him what his name that he goes by with his friends and family
but he just says "Mr. Kong". So that's what we'll stick to. IM SO HAPPY HE
IS GETTING BAPTIZED!!!!!!
This Saturday Emmanuel is getting baptized. He is from Cameroon and his
English is horrible. We use one of our recent converts Pascal, from Togo,
to translate for us into French. Turns out we didn't really need him.
Yesterday we met with Emmanuel and Pascal couldn't come. So we went on with
the lesson and he said he understood everything. He just has a hard time
talking back. I love Emmanuel, it is fun to hear this beautiful French
language come out of such a big person and such a deep harsh voice. He is
intense. I'm excited for him to get baptized this weekend. Sister Mccurdy
has been teaching him for quite some time. He kept putting his date off
because he wanted to make sure he understood everything first, with the
language barrier and all.
I think this mission is an extremely high baptizing mission. It sure keeps
things moving. Since there are so many baptisms they really focus on
teaching the recent converts all the missionary lessons over again after
they are baptized. I wish when people were baptized they would stick with
it, unfortunately retention rate is always an issue.
And Nanda. I could go on and on and on about Nanda. I love Nanda so so so
so much. We are teaching four of his friends right now and three have
already asked if they can be baptized. There is something about these
Nepali people. They are eating this gospel up. Sometimes I wish I could
have served my mission in Nepal. I LOVE EM. Just kidding I love it here.
Yesterday after we taught Nanda and his friend Janak, Nanda started telling
us about his Tai-kwan-do skills (however you spell that). Apparently he
knows on move where you flick someones ear in a certain way it will make
them pass out for two hours....what? He told us a story once when he was
in Nepal. It was during election time and he was being chased through the
airport by a bunch of men. One man jumped on his back and Nanda did one
single little move and paralyzed the man's entire left side of the body. I
do not want to get on Nanda's bad side. He said he is going to teach us one
move so we will feel safe walking the streets of KL. I'm pretty pumped
about this. He said he also knows a move that can kill someone, but him and
his instructor made a promise to God when he learned it to only use it for
good. I'm not kidding Nanda is the MAN. If you find a triple combination
in the Nepali language please let me know. I don't think any scripture
exists in that language; I hope they get working on it soon. These Nepali
people are ready baby.
No word from Marilyn. We had District Conference this weekend and invited
her to the meeting on Saturday and the meetings on Sunday but she didn't
show. She says she will come if we come get her but we just don't have
time. I think she is scared to go out by herself because she fears getting
arrested. I feel for her but we have a lot of people we are meeting at
church meetings and just can't travel all the way out to pick her up each
Sunday. We'll see if she comes this Sunday. Right now Im just praying she
gets her papers figured out.
Shannon - you are crazy. It makes me so happy to hear about all the weird
things you do, ya nutter. Keep being a bad girl.
Nattles! - The time I got your last letter was at 1:00am I think. You guys
are about 14 hours behind me here. Whoa crazy right! Sounds like you had a
nice relaxful Sunday morning watching planet earth. Awesome. Let me know
how your stocking turns out ya?
Britt- thanks for you email last week sorry I didn't respond. I can't
believe Minnesota is an option for you guys!! That is awesome. Kara loves
you guys! She would be so happy. Kara thinks Brent is hilarious. As do I.
I can't believe Jason is talking. whoa. Hold up a picture of me every now
and then could ya? Don 't want him to forget who his favorite aunt is
Macsen you da best. I love the letters. Sounds like you have had a pretty
good week. Show O-chem who's boss.
Danielle - track sounds awesome. calculus doesn't sound so awesome. Time is
flying isn't it. Live up this year, it's not as good as college...but it's
still fun. :-)
Bryson - stay hott.
Love you all!!! thanks for the letters
sister v
So good to see your emails pop up. This computer is so slow though! It's
been 20 minutes and not one of them has popped up yet. so i'm writing this
on word while I wait.
This week was super. Zone Conference was awesome. They have some really
talented AP elders here that gave great training, as did president and his
wife. Actually all his wife did was talk about acne and that everyone
should be wearing sun screen and bug spray, but nobody does. Nobody listens
to her haha. It's too much of a hassle. She's a nurse though so I guess
she feels like it's her duty. Our Zone conference was actually one of the
AP last day. After the conference ended his parents showed up at the church
house to pick him up. It was kind of weird to see his mom run in screaming
and hugging him. That is forever and a life time away. It was fun to talk
to them though.
Let's see what else happened this week. Mr. Kong has accepted our
invitation to be baptized Jan 2. I'm so happy! I taught him about faith,
repentance, baptism, holy ghost etc. this week and at the end asked if he
wanted to prepare himself to be baptized on that date. He thought for a
minute and said "well, I may be out of town that day so maybe we can plan
for Feb around chinese new year?" No way am I going to let him put this off
a month. I told him, we will plan for Jan 2 and if you are out of town we
can do it either the day before or the day after. He said that would work
haha. I'm excited! I wish you all could meet Mr. Kong, he's crazy. He is
so awkward but so friendly and socially skilled at the same time. I don"t
know what it is. We have taken him over to some ex-pats in our branch a
couple times and he loves them. They are the Sanders from Utah. He is
retired and she works at the US embassy here. Mr Kong calls him Mr Scott.
Im not sure what his deal us but he always calls people by Mr. or Ms. He
has introduced us to his friends and we call all of them by their first
name but we still have to call mr. Kong, "Mr Kong". It's funny. We've
tried asking him what his name that he goes by with his friends and family
but he just says "Mr. Kong". So that's what we'll stick to. IM SO HAPPY HE
IS GETTING BAPTIZED!!!!!!
This Saturday Emmanuel is getting baptized. He is from Cameroon and his
English is horrible. We use one of our recent converts Pascal, from Togo,
to translate for us into French. Turns out we didn't really need him.
Yesterday we met with Emmanuel and Pascal couldn't come. So we went on with
the lesson and he said he understood everything. He just has a hard time
talking back. I love Emmanuel, it is fun to hear this beautiful French
language come out of such a big person and such a deep harsh voice. He is
intense. I'm excited for him to get baptized this weekend. Sister Mccurdy
has been teaching him for quite some time. He kept putting his date off
because he wanted to make sure he understood everything first, with the
language barrier and all.
I think this mission is an extremely high baptizing mission. It sure keeps
things moving. Since there are so many baptisms they really focus on
teaching the recent converts all the missionary lessons over again after
they are baptized. I wish when people were baptized they would stick with
it, unfortunately retention rate is always an issue.
And Nanda. I could go on and on and on about Nanda. I love Nanda so so so
so much. We are teaching four of his friends right now and three have
already asked if they can be baptized. There is something about these
Nepali people. They are eating this gospel up. Sometimes I wish I could
have served my mission in Nepal. I LOVE EM. Just kidding I love it here.
Yesterday after we taught Nanda and his friend Janak, Nanda started telling
us about his Tai-kwan-do skills (however you spell that). Apparently he
knows on move where you flick someones ear in a certain way it will make
them pass out for two hours....what? He told us a story once when he was
in Nepal. It was during election time and he was being chased through the
airport by a bunch of men. One man jumped on his back and Nanda did one
single little move and paralyzed the man's entire left side of the body. I
do not want to get on Nanda's bad side. He said he is going to teach us one
move so we will feel safe walking the streets of KL. I'm pretty pumped
about this. He said he also knows a move that can kill someone, but him and
his instructor made a promise to God when he learned it to only use it for
good. I'm not kidding Nanda is the MAN. If you find a triple combination
in the Nepali language please let me know. I don't think any scripture
exists in that language; I hope they get working on it soon. These Nepali
people are ready baby.
No word from Marilyn. We had District Conference this weekend and invited
her to the meeting on Saturday and the meetings on Sunday but she didn't
show. She says she will come if we come get her but we just don't have
time. I think she is scared to go out by herself because she fears getting
arrested. I feel for her but we have a lot of people we are meeting at
church meetings and just can't travel all the way out to pick her up each
Sunday. We'll see if she comes this Sunday. Right now Im just praying she
gets her papers figured out.
Shannon - you are crazy. It makes me so happy to hear about all the weird
things you do, ya nutter. Keep being a bad girl.
Nattles! - The time I got your last letter was at 1:00am I think. You guys
are about 14 hours behind me here. Whoa crazy right! Sounds like you had a
nice relaxful Sunday morning watching planet earth. Awesome. Let me know
how your stocking turns out ya?
Britt- thanks for you email last week sorry I didn't respond. I can't
believe Minnesota is an option for you guys!! That is awesome. Kara loves
you guys! She would be so happy. Kara thinks Brent is hilarious. As do I.
I can't believe Jason is talking. whoa. Hold up a picture of me every now
and then could ya? Don 't want him to forget who his favorite aunt is
Macsen you da best. I love the letters. Sounds like you have had a pretty
good week. Show O-chem who's boss.
Danielle - track sounds awesome. calculus doesn't sound so awesome. Time is
flying isn't it. Live up this year, it's not as good as college...but it's
still fun. :-)
Bryson - stay hott.
Love you all!!! thanks for the letters
sister v
Dec. 2, 2009
Subject: ai yo ada hujan banyak!
Oh my gosh there is a lot of rain! (the subject line)
I didn't write yesterday because we have zone conference this week. Wed was
a normal day and today, thurs, we have a full day Pday. We are meeting with
the mission pres and APs and all that fun stuff today.
Oh how thanksgiving sounds so wonderful in your letters. I'm glad you got
to watch so much football daddy, sounds relaxing. And I'm sure the food was
amazing. Much to my surprise and happiness, the food for thanksgiving was
amazing here also. I was sad because I knew was missing out on Deb's sweet
potatoes this year, those are my favorite. But the couple in the area south
of us put together an amazing dinner and she did in fact have sweet
potatoes. AND THEY WERE PURPLE. Ya, i know. It was all the same goodness
and purple in color. Never have I ever been so happy.
It's good to hear about the BYU UT game, never a dull game between those
two. It is so weird to celebrate holidays here. It's kind of nice, I don't
really think about it. The only Christmas decor I see is in the shopping
centers here. The KL mall had some pretty intense decor which surprises me
because they don't celebrate Christmas in this Muslim country. It's all
done for the commercial aspect I guess. For me, it is still so hot the last
thing I think about is Christmas.
So let's see, here are the updates. Nanda got baptized on saturday and it
was awesome. He was so happy. And ever since he has been the best little
missionary. He has set up appointments for us to meet with his friends
everyday this week so far. And they are all just like him. We met his
roommate Som last week, gave him a Book of Mormon, and found out yesterday
that he had already finished reading it. Holy cow. It's something about
these Nepali men; probably because they all work night guard shifts and have
nothing else to do. I'm not going to complain though. We gave Nanda a copy
of Gospel Principles in Napali for him to study and two days later he came
back with about 10 copies of the entire book. I had to laugh, there aren't
any copyright laws here that's for sure. He says he is going to hand them
out to all his friends. Awesome.
Nanda told us yesterday the Nepali embassy called him in and made him give
them his passport. He doesn't know why. This worries me very much. Nanda
says they probably just want money, but given his circumstances I still get
worried. Embassies are so corrupt here. I am so glad to be an american!
The US passport is so respected, you can do anything.
Speaking of passport and legality issues. My heart is broken. Remember
Marilyn, my marilyn that I talked to on the bus and then saw on the train?
We taught her and she pretty much told us her entire life story. I don't
know what it is about us that makes her feel like she could spill it all but
she told us things she has never told anyone. She has had the hardest life
I have ever heard of; everything from rape, visa problems, to prostitution.
There are very evil agencies here who get people from other countries to pay
them a lot of money and give them their passports to come here and work. I
guess they tell these poor people they will set everything up for them when
they arrive but then they steal their passport and make them work without
pay. Anyway she came to church with us on Sunday. She loved it. She cried
through the whole sacrament meeting. She told us she was so happy to
finally find a church she felt good at and felt was true.
But we found out she was illegal because this agency stole her passport.
This means we cannot teach her. I wanted to teach her anyway and not tell
anyone, just let her be baptized! But sister Mccurdy follows the rules
better than I would and made us go to her home Tuesday and tell her we
couldn't teach her. She bawled. She was so sad because she felt like she
had finally come across something good in her life and was being rejected,
yet again. I cried too, we all cried, we're girls. Right now I'm just
praying really really hard that she can get her papers figured out so we can
teach her. She can still come to church so that's good.
This happens a lot. We had to drop a man from Pakistan who was on baptism
date and everything because we found out he was illegal. I hate it, I hate
this rule.
But life goes on I guess.
MIRACLE: Mr. Kong came to church. He thought he had to work out of town
again this weekend but his Father called him randomly Saturday night and
told him to come back to KL. Which meant he was able to come to church. He
liked it. He likes "learning about jesus". He said he didn't like all the
people around him at church though haha, he hates crowds. We'll have to get
him over that. He also has some friends he wants us to teach. The guy
isn't even baptized and he is a missionary. I love it. Interesting thing
about Mr. Kong: he has no first language. It happens a lot here. He is
chinese-malaysian, but never learned chinese, never learned malay that well,
and his english is not very good either. He really has no native tongue.
It's strange. We love him though, he is one of the happiest guys I've ever
met.
I have realized that I haven't really described the situation here in KL
very well. Malaysia has a Muslim government. That is why we cannot teach
them here. It is a rule specific to this mission. Even in East Malaysia it
isn't as bad because the chinese are more in charge over there. You need a
passport to go from east to west malaysia. We were told about the no muslim
rule in the MTC but for some dumb reason I didn't make the connection that
there would be this many. I was thinking "oh ya, when I run across a muslim
every month or so, I can't teach em, ok got it". Not so, there are a lot.
If they are Malay, they are Muslim, if they are Chinese-malaysian we can
teach them and if they are foreigners that are legal we can teach them.
I live on the ninth floor of a complex. Our place is average. We live very
comfortably. I have the typical entire bathroom as a shower so it's always
a trial not getting the toilet paper wet but other than that, the apartment
is great. There is an AC unit in every room so it doesn't get hot. And we
have a balcony to hang our clothes on outside. We have all normal
appliances so it's not like i'm roughing it in any way. Sister Mccurdy is
from West Jordan, she has been in KL for 10 months and has been out a year
total. She wants to get out of KL but she's a good sport about being here
still. She loves and hates this place at the same time.
KL is big. We cross six lanes of crazy traffic to get to the bus stop each
day. Everything is dirty and smells bad. I don't even know what I'm
smelling but the gutters are RANK. We live right in the city on the main
road called Jalan Ampang. We are pretty close to everything. We spend most
our day traveling on buses and trains though because the city is big.
The church building we meet in used to be the Spanish Embassy. It's kinda
of cool. The church is not a recognized church in Malaysia so we aren't
allowed to have a sign up on the building or anything so it looks kind of
like a house. The bills we get at our apartment all say To: the Malaysian
church of jesus christ of latter day saints, so we don't get in trouble.
They are working on getting the church recognized, it's in progress. In
east malaysia they are allowed to build church buildings but again, that is
because the chinese are mainly in charge not the muslims. People travel
pretty far to come to church. Our branch president lives two hours away.
All the leadership in the Branch are Ex-pats, which is good and bad. I wish
there were more locals involved in leadership but there's not enough I
guess.
When we meet people we don't say we are missionaries. I say we are here
volunteering for our church. I am getting good at recognizing who is malay
and who I can teach. But religion is not a sensitive subject here at all.
If I can't tell I just straight up ask, "so are you christian? buddhist,
muslim?" nobody takes offense.
Hopefully that gives you an idea of what it's like here.
It is always so good to hear from you every week. I WUV IT.
Things are actually going pretty well. My first two weeks here we had two
baptisms. I think I was spoiled... Hopefully we can continue to find more
people. Finding isn't the issue, it's keeping the people once you find
them.
I love you!
sister v
Oh my gosh there is a lot of rain! (the subject line)
I didn't write yesterday because we have zone conference this week. Wed was
a normal day and today, thurs, we have a full day Pday. We are meeting with
the mission pres and APs and all that fun stuff today.
Oh how thanksgiving sounds so wonderful in your letters. I'm glad you got
to watch so much football daddy, sounds relaxing. And I'm sure the food was
amazing. Much to my surprise and happiness, the food for thanksgiving was
amazing here also. I was sad because I knew was missing out on Deb's sweet
potatoes this year, those are my favorite. But the couple in the area south
of us put together an amazing dinner and she did in fact have sweet
potatoes. AND THEY WERE PURPLE. Ya, i know. It was all the same goodness
and purple in color. Never have I ever been so happy.
It's good to hear about the BYU UT game, never a dull game between those
two. It is so weird to celebrate holidays here. It's kind of nice, I don't
really think about it. The only Christmas decor I see is in the shopping
centers here. The KL mall had some pretty intense decor which surprises me
because they don't celebrate Christmas in this Muslim country. It's all
done for the commercial aspect I guess. For me, it is still so hot the last
thing I think about is Christmas.
So let's see, here are the updates. Nanda got baptized on saturday and it
was awesome. He was so happy. And ever since he has been the best little
missionary. He has set up appointments for us to meet with his friends
everyday this week so far. And they are all just like him. We met his
roommate Som last week, gave him a Book of Mormon, and found out yesterday
that he had already finished reading it. Holy cow. It's something about
these Nepali men; probably because they all work night guard shifts and have
nothing else to do. I'm not going to complain though. We gave Nanda a copy
of Gospel Principles in Napali for him to study and two days later he came
back with about 10 copies of the entire book. I had to laugh, there aren't
any copyright laws here that's for sure. He says he is going to hand them
out to all his friends. Awesome.
Nanda told us yesterday the Nepali embassy called him in and made him give
them his passport. He doesn't know why. This worries me very much. Nanda
says they probably just want money, but given his circumstances I still get
worried. Embassies are so corrupt here. I am so glad to be an american!
The US passport is so respected, you can do anything.
Speaking of passport and legality issues. My heart is broken. Remember
Marilyn, my marilyn that I talked to on the bus and then saw on the train?
We taught her and she pretty much told us her entire life story. I don't
know what it is about us that makes her feel like she could spill it all but
she told us things she has never told anyone. She has had the hardest life
I have ever heard of; everything from rape, visa problems, to prostitution.
There are very evil agencies here who get people from other countries to pay
them a lot of money and give them their passports to come here and work. I
guess they tell these poor people they will set everything up for them when
they arrive but then they steal their passport and make them work without
pay. Anyway she came to church with us on Sunday. She loved it. She cried
through the whole sacrament meeting. She told us she was so happy to
finally find a church she felt good at and felt was true.
But we found out she was illegal because this agency stole her passport.
This means we cannot teach her. I wanted to teach her anyway and not tell
anyone, just let her be baptized! But sister Mccurdy follows the rules
better than I would and made us go to her home Tuesday and tell her we
couldn't teach her. She bawled. She was so sad because she felt like she
had finally come across something good in her life and was being rejected,
yet again. I cried too, we all cried, we're girls. Right now I'm just
praying really really hard that she can get her papers figured out so we can
teach her. She can still come to church so that's good.
This happens a lot. We had to drop a man from Pakistan who was on baptism
date and everything because we found out he was illegal. I hate it, I hate
this rule.
But life goes on I guess.
MIRACLE: Mr. Kong came to church. He thought he had to work out of town
again this weekend but his Father called him randomly Saturday night and
told him to come back to KL. Which meant he was able to come to church. He
liked it. He likes "learning about jesus". He said he didn't like all the
people around him at church though haha, he hates crowds. We'll have to get
him over that. He also has some friends he wants us to teach. The guy
isn't even baptized and he is a missionary. I love it. Interesting thing
about Mr. Kong: he has no first language. It happens a lot here. He is
chinese-malaysian, but never learned chinese, never learned malay that well,
and his english is not very good either. He really has no native tongue.
It's strange. We love him though, he is one of the happiest guys I've ever
met.
I have realized that I haven't really described the situation here in KL
very well. Malaysia has a Muslim government. That is why we cannot teach
them here. It is a rule specific to this mission. Even in East Malaysia it
isn't as bad because the chinese are more in charge over there. You need a
passport to go from east to west malaysia. We were told about the no muslim
rule in the MTC but for some dumb reason I didn't make the connection that
there would be this many. I was thinking "oh ya, when I run across a muslim
every month or so, I can't teach em, ok got it". Not so, there are a lot.
If they are Malay, they are Muslim, if they are Chinese-malaysian we can
teach them and if they are foreigners that are legal we can teach them.
I live on the ninth floor of a complex. Our place is average. We live very
comfortably. I have the typical entire bathroom as a shower so it's always
a trial not getting the toilet paper wet but other than that, the apartment
is great. There is an AC unit in every room so it doesn't get hot. And we
have a balcony to hang our clothes on outside. We have all normal
appliances so it's not like i'm roughing it in any way. Sister Mccurdy is
from West Jordan, she has been in KL for 10 months and has been out a year
total. She wants to get out of KL but she's a good sport about being here
still. She loves and hates this place at the same time.
KL is big. We cross six lanes of crazy traffic to get to the bus stop each
day. Everything is dirty and smells bad. I don't even know what I'm
smelling but the gutters are RANK. We live right in the city on the main
road called Jalan Ampang. We are pretty close to everything. We spend most
our day traveling on buses and trains though because the city is big.
The church building we meet in used to be the Spanish Embassy. It's kinda
of cool. The church is not a recognized church in Malaysia so we aren't
allowed to have a sign up on the building or anything so it looks kind of
like a house. The bills we get at our apartment all say To: the Malaysian
church of jesus christ of latter day saints, so we don't get in trouble.
They are working on getting the church recognized, it's in progress. In
east malaysia they are allowed to build church buildings but again, that is
because the chinese are mainly in charge not the muslims. People travel
pretty far to come to church. Our branch president lives two hours away.
All the leadership in the Branch are Ex-pats, which is good and bad. I wish
there were more locals involved in leadership but there's not enough I
guess.
When we meet people we don't say we are missionaries. I say we are here
volunteering for our church. I am getting good at recognizing who is malay
and who I can teach. But religion is not a sensitive subject here at all.
If I can't tell I just straight up ask, "so are you christian? buddhist,
muslim?" nobody takes offense.
Hopefully that gives you an idea of what it's like here.
It is always so good to hear from you every week. I WUV IT.
Things are actually going pretty well. My first two weeks here we had two
baptisms. I think I was spoiled... Hopefully we can continue to find more
people. Finding isn't the issue, it's keeping the people once you find
them.
I love you!
sister v
Nov. 24, 2009
Subject: happy thanksgiving errrrbody
RIP Scarlett. I'm so sorry to hear about that. I seriously feel horrible.
If there is one thing i've learned it is bad things happen to good people,
and good dogs. (Scarlett was Steve and Rachel's little tiny dog. Poor thing...)
K lots of questions to answer.
The food here is so good. It's not good. It's like eating at India Garden
every day but BETTER. The naan, oh the naan, it's unreal. I might have to
apologize now for coming home fat...
Want to know a funny story? Yesterday at the store we were buying groceries
and I wanted to purchase some ham for sandwiches. Sister Mccurdy told me I
had to buy it at a separate counter. I remember thinking, "hmmm that's
strange" but it didn't click. After buying the ham I went to the normal
counter to purchase the rest of my goods. I put the bag of ham on the
counter to get out my wallet and the check-out lady freaked. I was so
confused. She was pointing to the ham and waving at me. I picked up the
ham thinking "fine if you want me to hold it i will, ya crazy lady, you're
making this really difficult". It wasn't until after I left the store that
I realized duh, she's muslim. THEY CAN'T TOUCH HAM. hahaha I had a good
laugh and then felt kind of bad for putting her cleanliness at jeopardy.
I have told you before that the Nepali men are my favorite right? Yes I
love them oh so much. Nanda is getting baptized this Saturday and I am so
excited for him. That poor boy is going through some really big trials
right now. He kind of spilled the other day on why it is so difficult for
him to smile these days. Imagine coming from royalty and then getting this
low end night security job, not wanting to tell people your name because you
do they instantly know who you are, and never feeling safe telling people
where you live because you fear for your life. I'm thinking to myself, can
this be real? He officially changed his name the other day on his passport.
Basically all we can do is assure him God knows, and God cares. He has got
so much faith.
Kiran is my other favorite Nepali. He loves to hang out with the
sisters. But we tell him that he is only allowed to hang out with us if he
brings friends we can teach. so he does. Every week we have about 3
referrals from him haha. And most of them don't speak english, so we have
Kiran translate. Who knows what he is actually telling them... I made the
mistake of talking about BYU in front of Kiran and now all he talks about is
"going Bible school in US!!!" he wants to go soooo bad and always asks me
how to go. I really have no idea how international students go, I wish I
could help more.
Here we go through investigators so fast. We find them, we teach them, if
they don't come to church that first week they are immediately put on the
back burner. Our ZL tell us there are 4 million people in this city, there
are too many here to waste time on those who don't want to listen. And
they're right. Mr. Kong loves learning from us, he's reading the Book of
Mormon, but he is just not making coming to church a priority, I fear we may
drop him soon because of it. He is interesting to teach. When we asked if
he knew what a prophet was he started explaining "profit" as in money hahah.
He truly doesn't know anything. I hope he comes to church so we can keep
him.
Oh another miracle: I think it was my third day here. I met a lady on the
bus and just chatted with her. We didn't talk about the gospel or anything,
there wasn't much time. The other day, we were getting off the train and
this little phillapino lady was smiling really big at me and started coming
toward me. I had no idea who she was and quickly asked Sister Mccurdy if we
knew her. Sister M didn't have any idea either. She came up and started
talking to me saying how good it was to see me again. I had to ask her
where we met, I knew I recognized her but I couldn't remember. Turns out
she was the lady I met on the bus my third day here. she was so happy to
see me again. We are going to go teach her on friday and she left us
saying, "maybe I can become mormon ya?" haha anytime you want lady, you
just say the word. It's good to know that some of the people I talk to
remember me.
Sometimes I wish I was an Elder. There are so many creepy men here! I have
now resolved only to contact women, and boys who look to be about my age.
The older men are all crazy. I start talking to them and give them our
church card and then we get all sorts of crazy text saying "hey beautiful,
hey sexy". Or right in the middle of when we are talking to them they say,
"you're cute". Like WHERE DID THAT COME FROM. When they say that I just
walk away. Ugh I hate it. We immediately hand them over to the elders when
that happens.
Aw man I hope your thanksgiving is awesome. The couple in the area south of
us is making our zone of missionaries a thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. It
should be fun, we are bringing a couple investigators. And then on friday
the rich ex-pats invited us and the ZL elders over for their thanksgiving
dinner. yes. The ZL area is KL also. In fact they live two floors above
us. Sometimes we run into them contacting on the train and we have to fight
about who gets that train to contact for the evening. We see them a lot.
It's fun.
I love you guys, I'm grateful to be on a mission. It's good to hear from
you all.
sis v
RIP Scarlett. I'm so sorry to hear about that. I seriously feel horrible.
If there is one thing i've learned it is bad things happen to good people,
and good dogs. (Scarlett was Steve and Rachel's little tiny dog. Poor thing...)
K lots of questions to answer.
The food here is so good. It's not good. It's like eating at India Garden
every day but BETTER. The naan, oh the naan, it's unreal. I might have to
apologize now for coming home fat...
Want to know a funny story? Yesterday at the store we were buying groceries
and I wanted to purchase some ham for sandwiches. Sister Mccurdy told me I
had to buy it at a separate counter. I remember thinking, "hmmm that's
strange" but it didn't click. After buying the ham I went to the normal
counter to purchase the rest of my goods. I put the bag of ham on the
counter to get out my wallet and the check-out lady freaked. I was so
confused. She was pointing to the ham and waving at me. I picked up the
ham thinking "fine if you want me to hold it i will, ya crazy lady, you're
making this really difficult". It wasn't until after I left the store that
I realized duh, she's muslim. THEY CAN'T TOUCH HAM. hahaha I had a good
laugh and then felt kind of bad for putting her cleanliness at jeopardy.
I have told you before that the Nepali men are my favorite right? Yes I
love them oh so much. Nanda is getting baptized this Saturday and I am so
excited for him. That poor boy is going through some really big trials
right now. He kind of spilled the other day on why it is so difficult for
him to smile these days. Imagine coming from royalty and then getting this
low end night security job, not wanting to tell people your name because you
do they instantly know who you are, and never feeling safe telling people
where you live because you fear for your life. I'm thinking to myself, can
this be real? He officially changed his name the other day on his passport.
Basically all we can do is assure him God knows, and God cares. He has got
so much faith.
Kiran is my other favorite Nepali. He loves to hang out with the
sisters. But we tell him that he is only allowed to hang out with us if he
brings friends we can teach. so he does. Every week we have about 3
referrals from him haha. And most of them don't speak english, so we have
Kiran translate. Who knows what he is actually telling them... I made the
mistake of talking about BYU in front of Kiran and now all he talks about is
"going Bible school in US!!!" he wants to go soooo bad and always asks me
how to go. I really have no idea how international students go, I wish I
could help more.
Here we go through investigators so fast. We find them, we teach them, if
they don't come to church that first week they are immediately put on the
back burner. Our ZL tell us there are 4 million people in this city, there
are too many here to waste time on those who don't want to listen. And
they're right. Mr. Kong loves learning from us, he's reading the Book of
Mormon, but he is just not making coming to church a priority, I fear we may
drop him soon because of it. He is interesting to teach. When we asked if
he knew what a prophet was he started explaining "profit" as in money hahah.
He truly doesn't know anything. I hope he comes to church so we can keep
him.
Oh another miracle: I think it was my third day here. I met a lady on the
bus and just chatted with her. We didn't talk about the gospel or anything,
there wasn't much time. The other day, we were getting off the train and
this little phillapino lady was smiling really big at me and started coming
toward me. I had no idea who she was and quickly asked Sister Mccurdy if we
knew her. Sister M didn't have any idea either. She came up and started
talking to me saying how good it was to see me again. I had to ask her
where we met, I knew I recognized her but I couldn't remember. Turns out
she was the lady I met on the bus my third day here. she was so happy to
see me again. We are going to go teach her on friday and she left us
saying, "maybe I can become mormon ya?" haha anytime you want lady, you
just say the word. It's good to know that some of the people I talk to
remember me.
Sometimes I wish I was an Elder. There are so many creepy men here! I have
now resolved only to contact women, and boys who look to be about my age.
The older men are all crazy. I start talking to them and give them our
church card and then we get all sorts of crazy text saying "hey beautiful,
hey sexy". Or right in the middle of when we are talking to them they say,
"you're cute". Like WHERE DID THAT COME FROM. When they say that I just
walk away. Ugh I hate it. We immediately hand them over to the elders when
that happens.
Aw man I hope your thanksgiving is awesome. The couple in the area south of
us is making our zone of missionaries a thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. It
should be fun, we are bringing a couple investigators. And then on friday
the rich ex-pats invited us and the ZL elders over for their thanksgiving
dinner. yes. The ZL area is KL also. In fact they live two floors above
us. Sometimes we run into them contacting on the train and we have to fight
about who gets that train to contact for the evening. We see them a lot.
It's fun.
I love you guys, I'm grateful to be on a mission. It's good to hear from
you all.
sis v
Nov. 17, 2009
Ok, there is so much. I can't decide where to start.
My legs are covered in mosquito bites. Its horrible. I itch everywhere! Oh wells such is life here. So the greeting here is very strange to me. When ever you meet someone it is polite to ask them if they have already eaten and say "Sudah makan". Why everyone wants to know if you have eaten already is beyond me... And I about died when we walked past burger king the other day. They make all the poor workers wear cowboy hats hahah, trying to make it look more western I guess.
I am falling in love with the little Nepali men here. They are so incredibly wonderful. they "lof to lurrrrn duh gospals ov Jesus Chriz" hahha and they tell us that everyday. One of them, Nanda is getting baptized next week. He has been so easy to teach. Everything we teach him he replies with "ok no problam sistes" He doesn't question anything! He read the entire book of Mormon in about six days, and every chapter he reads three times because it is difficult for him to understand in English. I wish they had a Nepali Book of Mormon. So really he read the BOM three times in one week, incredible.
There are also a bunch of Nepali guards who guard our complex that love to talk to us when we leave and return morning and night. They think I have a Nepali face, probably because I am tan, but it is pretty funny to see them get excited.
So a miracle happened, well a couple did actually. We went knocking last Sunday for about three hours in the middle of the day and it was SO HOT. Usually it rains and cools everything down but not that day. No one really wanted to hear us, in fact almost every door had muslim decorations so we had to pass them by without even attempting. It got kind of frustrating. Finally a chinese man talked to us for a bit. He was Buddhist and wasn't interested but we gave him a Restoration pamphlet and he said he would give it to one of his christian friends. Well, the other day we get a text from him saying he wants to learn more about the BOM, which means he read the pamphlet. We taught him yesterday and he had so many questions he wanted answered. I'm pretty excited to teach him again next week. It is hard though because his chinese accent is SO BAD. I can't understand most of what he says. Sister Mccurdy is a pro at broken english though so we're good.
For people to understand you here you can't conjugate. Which is so hard because I don't realize I’m doing it. If it happened in the past you just start with "last time" and then continue to speak in present tense. It is hilarious.
Miracle Two: About three months ago Sister Mccurdy was teaching a man from India named Naveen. He was going to get baptized and had his baptism interview but during the interview he got really offended and apparently the member here interviewing him was mean to him and accused him of not being legal and stuff. So he left and never came back. Sister Mccurdy was so sad. But yesterday, he texted us and wanted to meet at the train station. She hadn't heard from him in three months so she was pretty excited. He said he wants to come back to church and he still wants to get baptized but didn't know if he still could. We assured him it was totally ok to get baptized still if he comes to church. He said see you Sunday. After he left Sister Mccurdy started bawling. She was really happy. She didn't think she would see him again. It's cool how the gospel gets inside people and changes them for good; it just takes them a while to realize it sometimes.
Let's see what else. I have heard that the KL zone in the past has not been very productive; missionaries are never that excited to come here. But when I came they got new ZL and they are tearing it up. Not that it really matters but KL zone is second in the mission right now. Sister Mccurdy says they have really changed this area around. It has been really cool. We sisters have a pool of about 20 new investigators that we are excited about. The hardest part is that people here work SO MUCH. These Nepali workers get about 2 hours of sleep each day because they are working. Most people here are working and sending their money back to their native countries to their family. It is really sad. We have had a couple people quit and get new jobs so they can come to church though, they have so much faith. That is one good thing about KL, there are thousands of jobs for these people.
A bad thing about KL is the buses and cars. There is no such thing as emissions testing here and I think the exhaust is taking off years of my life every day. I think my eyes are turning yellow! haha
The ex-patriots here are pretty wealthy and they invite us over to eat a lot. It's nice. Last week a family invited all the young single investigators and missionaries over for lunch and their condo was huge! Three stories with a pool on the roof. It was interesting to see the reactions of the people we brought who are working all night and all day for about $2 an hour. Kiran, from Nepal kept leaning over to me saying with so much excitement "I feel like I am in AMERICA!!" They love the US so much.
Everyday I thank heaven we don't have to wear nylons, every day. I think I would die. I love walking around in my mandals, as the elders call them (man sandals).
It has been really great in KL this week. We are in Monsoon season so it rains killer everyday. Nanda gave me his umbrella though so I'm staying fairly dry. I love you family. It was so good to hear from all of you. High school sounds busy and your lives continue to be filled with sports. That's exciting. Don't get too cold over there. I am really enjoying the warmth and humidity, no lotion needed here. Plus it doesn't seem like the holidays so I don't feel homesick for them, that's good.
Have fun
Sister Viehweg
ps. I am known as sister V. It is completely impossible for these Asians to say my name. It's hilarious
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