Joshua's Song of Singapore: Week 13: Butterworth, Malaysia

The Ballad of Butterworth Week Nine

Hello! It turns out exchanges in KL are next week (silly Elder Weatherford), so it won't be on a train until a week from today. Oh well, that means that I get plenty of time to write to you beautiful people!

This week was really great; I think it was one of my happiest weeks as a missionary! Elder Pack and I really pushed ourselves, and we found a lot of happiness in working hard.

On Tuesday, we first had our District Council in Butterworth (we switch one week in Penang, one week in Butterworth), and then we had some teaching appointments. On Wednesday, we went to a place called Chai Leng Park, and a really nice Indian uncle convinced us to try some of his chicken curry, and it was SOOOO spicy, it destroyed Elder Pack and I. I don't want to go into too much detail (for the childrens' sake), but let's just say I did not sleep particularly well that night ;) On Thursday, we had a really busy day, but we had the opportunity to teach a man the Restoration on the spot in a cafe. During the lesson, his friends kept coming and joining him, but we persisted, and at the end of the lesson he prayed in front of all of his friends! It was a really cool experience! On Friday, we taught our English Class, and then on Saturday we had a Lantern Festival at the church! It was so cool; we ate lots of food (including TONS of moon cake, which is special to Lantern Festival and is so delicious), we made lanterns and then lit candles and put them inside so they would shine and then went outside in the dark, and we played some fun games. It was a great time! On Sunday, Teh (the man who was baptized last week) was sustained to his callings and got conferred the Aaronic Priesthood. He is still progressing so quickly, it is amazing.

Moses was able to accept a baptismal date this week (even though he was baptized before), and Emy and Moong Kau are both planned to be baptized next month. The work is progressing really well here, and even though it is discouraging at times, it is great to see the progress Butterworth is making.

So far, today has been really good! Elder Pack and I cleaned the apartment, played some ping pong, went and bought 5kg of peanut butter (we have tried to buy another tub the past two Mondays but they were both public holidays so we didn't get it until today...missionaries are persistent!), and also got some really good Indian food. I wish you guys could try all of the food here, it is so delicious! I will try my best to make it for you when I get home.

Overall this week was really great! The weeks are starting to absolutely fly by, I don't understand at all how I have been out on my mission for as long as I have. This week, I will be hitting my 3 month mark. The MTC feels like it was a week ago, but it also feels like it was years ago. It is a weird feeling, but overall it is going quite quickly.

I love you all so much! Thank you so much for all of your inspiring and loving emails, and I hope that you know how much I love hearing from you! You are all in my prayers, and I hope that everything goes smoothly this week. I love you more than I can describe...even more than 5kg of peanut butter, which for this Elder, is saying quite a lot! Talk to you next week!

Best,

Elder Weatherford (I am running out of creative names for myself)

Yeah, I would guess that I will stay in Butterworth, and I may even train a new missionary. Who knows? I bet that I will find out more when I am with the Zone Leaders next week. And yes, one of them was originally called English speaking but was switched to Mandarin (he also speaks really good Malay, Cantonese, and Tamil) who is from Australia, and one of them is Malay speaking from the missionary factory (Utah). I am really excited to go to KL. KL has five areas total (Puchong, CC, PJ, Cheras, and Subang), and the place where the Zone Leaders stay sounds really nice, so I am excited to see it. Last time for zone conference, I stayed in Puchong.

Yes, the place where we stayed is really close to the mission home. There is a mission home, a chapel, and also the Bukit Timah house that are all really close by, and then there are two other chapels scattered throughout Singapore. And yeah, the baptism was amazing! I didn't think that there would be a lot of baptisms either, but there have actually been quite a few throughout the mission. It is great to be able to meet people everyday, and I feel a lot of peace after a day of hard work, even if no one ends up being interested.

We do not have any "scheduled" service time throughout the week (other than English Class I guess), but Elder Pack and I try to look for opportunities when we can. For example, yesterday we saw someone whose car stopped in the middle of the road, so we helped him push it to safety. I think that service is something I am going to ask mission president about in my next interview, because I wish we had more time. And I only read emails and send emails on Monday. Sometimes I have to open my email to sync the "area book planner" application that we use to record all of the people's teaching records and I catch a glimpse of who emailed me, but we are not allowed to read them except for Monday.

Spiritual Experiences

As usual, this week was full of very cool miracles and spiritual experiences.

First, Elder Pack and I were able to get Moses to accept a baptismal date. He had been baptized in KL a few years ago when he converted to Christianity, and so the first three times we asked him to be baptized (yes three!) he kept saying "Do not need". But then, he said that his arm was hurting, and he asked for a blessing. So, Elder Pack and I gave him a blessing IN CHINESE, and then afterwards, Elder Pack and I felt the spirit really strongly. We decided to ask him one more time about baptism, and this time was really different. He was very quiet for a long time, and finally, he said that he would pray about it and accepted it. It was so cool to see how the blessing opened his heart, and how the spirit was working on him. We are excited to see him continue to grow in the Gospel. He is so cute, he only knows a few words in English, but he calls Elder Pack and I "Brother" and on Sunday he sent us 20 or so pictures of his favorite scriptures. What a cutie patootie.

This week, I have been reading a lot from the book of Acts in the New Testament. We read through it in Family Home Evening recently, and so it has been fun to reread the stories that I love so much. I particularly love the book of Acts now, because so much of it is about missionaries right after Jesus Christ died, teaching in areas that were largely not Christian. I really connect to the book, and it gives me a lot of hope. At times, I feel discouraged about how new Christianity and the church is in Malaysia, but when I look at the examples of people like Paul, Peter, and others, I am filled with hope. I hope that you all are able to find a way that you can connect to the scriptures, and find a way to fill your lives with hope from them, because I really know that that is what the scriptures are meant to do; they are meant to give us hope.

I love you all so much! I am so grateful for you! I am so grateful for our Savior, who is there walking with us every step of the way. He is the one to turn to when we are discouraged; He is the one to turn to when we want to change. I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Weatherford