August 4, 2010

Dear dad,

After reading your email, I'm tired. That's horrilbe what happened to the car. I am really sorry. I'm glad the mechanic in Provo, the mechanic with a brain, saved you guys. What a mess.

Right now I am writing you from SINGAPURA. Yep it's that time again. Time for another VISA run. Have I mentioned that the people of Singapore are a beautiful people? They are. We flew in yesterday and I met up with Sister Wing again, now serving in KL, and am her companion for our few days here. You remember her from the MTC days?

Family, I am stressed out of my mind. As I mentioned last time, Sister Whittemore is leaving in two weeks. We got a lovely call from the Assistants the other day saying that I need to find myself a companion for a week and a few days or else they are flying me out of Miri. After Sister Whittemore leaves I have a week alone, and then the week after that I go to Singapore again for a conference of some sort (it is something new in the mission, I'm not quite sure what it is); and I guess after the conference I'll be getting a new companion? maybe? I don't know, they don't tell us anything. They just said they didn't want to have to shut down our area for two weeks so I need to find a companion. This is terrifying. I am going to have to find sisters from the branch here to babysit me. I seriously feel like Im finding myself babysitters. The problem I am facing is, nobody has a car and nobody knows how to ride a bike. They might as well shut the area down because I don't know how I am going to continue working. There is one girl with a moto but she works all day, hopefully I can get her to go out with me at night. At this time, the Senior couple serving in Miri will have already gone home so I can't stay with them. Finding a babysitter isn't the worst part though. I am so worried about how I am going to communicate. I feel like I still only get bits and pieces of what people are saying. And teaching alone is going to be hard, the women in the branch here are shy. When we have asked some to help us teach in the past they come but just sit there afraid to talk or say anything. THEY MIGHT AS WELL FLY ME OUT OF MIRI. I don't know what I am going to do. The Assistants want this all planned out by yesterday( who is going to be with me and when), but they brought me into Singapore so I can't really plan anything. They keep calling saying, "Sister have you found people, we need to know, if not we're taking you outta there". Also, planning ahead with Ibans is nigh impossible. You ask them what they are doing two weeks from now and you might as well ask them what they are doing 20 years from now. They have no idea. And they have no sense of scheduling. We try and schedule appointments and when we show up at the scheduled time they just aren't there. We call them and they say, "oh I went to my friends house or I went shopping" or something like that. One time we stopped by a girls house to ask if we could come back in 30 minutes and teach her. 30 minutes. She said, "I don't know, If I am here sure you can teach, if not, no" I said, "you don't know if you are going to be home in thirty minutes? are you going somewhere?" her reply, "no, but I might, I don't know". I thought, "um well can you plan NOT to go anywhere?" they just don't plan. We went back thirty minutes later, she wasn't home. We're not teaching her anymore. I kid you not we are teaching a guy from Indonesia and we asked him if he would be able to come to church this week (this was on a Monday) no joke this was his reply, "ya if im not sick that day, I might be sick." I asked, "oh do you feel sick now?" His reply, "no". But you may be sick on Sunday?? What kind of an excuse is this. I can just imagine, that week im alone I'll have some sister just not show up to be with me because of some rediculous excuse. Oh well. I hope it all works out. I'm just super stressed about Sister WHittemore leaving because I don't feel like I can handle this area as the senior, and then they throw the "by-myself" ball at me!!

I'm being stretched.

Let me share some funny experiences from the week.

-Brother Essau was driving us to an appointment. It was late and dark. A car coming towards him had its brights on. Brother Essau got a little upset and proceeded to explain that his man with the brights on was an evil man and that he needed to repent. For about twenty minutes brother Essau explained how this man needed to got through the repentance process. He had no faith, his brights were on, now that evil man needs to repent, he needs to pray, etc. I was dying in the back seat, seriously laughing so hard. Brother Essau was dead serious. All for having brights on. It's good to see Brother Essau applying what he has learned, I believe we taught that lesson just last week.

-Sister Tungalim asked us if we eat pork. I said yes of course it is delicious. The next time we went to her house she fed us "pork" I stick my fork in a little piece and realize it is just fat. I put it back trying to find a piece of meat thinking that i had just happened to stab the one piece of all fat. No no. Their pork, the pork they like to eat, it's fat. It's all fat. I don't know if they just don't have money to buy the meat or what, but every single piece of "pork" on that plate was 100% fat. They fried up strips of pork fat and fed it to us. Delicious.

- We are teaching a man named Jantai and he is great. He is really excited to get baptized. We started teaching him awhile ago but he was hesitant because his father (who is Catholic) was not ok with it. He loves the Book of Mormon though. The other week Jantai went back to Kampung (hometown/long house) to speak with his father. He gave his father a Book of Mormon and now his father is reading it. And I guess they had a good conversation because when he came back one of his first questions was, when can I be baptized? The funny part: Jantai told me he is going to name his next daughter Viehweg. He says, "yes Viehweg, a beautiful name for a girl" The whole time he is saying it "bee-wek". I'm thinking, "not really but if you say so..." haha

- Our investigator Jaya wrote us a letter saying he believed everything we taught was true and wanted to follow but couldn't repent right now. It was kind of like an apology letter for not being able to keep the commandments, he has a really big drinking and smoking problem, it is very difficult for him. He addressed the letter "Dear Sister Bi and Mo" Bi is what he hears of Viehweg, and Mo is what he hears of Whittemore. Adorable. He thought he was getting off the hook with this letter business. I think not. We went and saw him the night his friend gave us the letter. He still wants, we are still going to help him. He asked if he could follow us around, he thinks that will help him. Uh ya of course he can!
- I saw the most terrifying lady the otherday. We were knocking some wooden houses on the river and we came across this lady, sitting in her doorway doing some bead work. There is a fruit here that old people chew, it looks like they are gnawing on chewing tobacco when they have it in their mouth, and it is disgusting. It is red, deep red. When they chew on this fruit it literally lookes like blood in their mouth. So there is the insanely old lady, chewing something bloody, can't speak, has missing teeth, and was very excited we came. She stood up and hobbled over to us grinning a horrifying toothless grin with "blood" dripping from her mouth. As she spoke an inaudible language to us (I believe she was Kenyan or Kayahn, two of the other tribes here like Iban) her front teeth wiggled; I saw, she got up in my face, she petted my arm. I was scared. We didn't stay long.

- I never thought I would say this but I miss the 'call to prayer' in KL. Whoever does it in the speakers here in Miri is an amateur. It's like comparing bad kereoke to Celine Dion haha (sounds system included in that comparison).

I just skimmed this letter over, maybe I should have written some more spiritual stuff. Oh well...

Until next week.

Sis v