Joshua's Song of Singapore: Week 14: Butterworth, Malaysia

The Ballad of Butterworth Week 10

Hello everyone! Sorry that this email is so late, I hope that everyone is having a splendid sleep!

As usual, it has been a crazy long and short week full of highs and lows and all sorts of crazy stuff.

On Tuesday, we biked to Penang for District Council like we generally do. There used to be a senior couple who stayed in Penang and who joined us for District Council, but they ran into some immigration problems, so they are in Singapore, so now it is just us and the Penang sisters.

On Friday, we met with a really nice man named Peter who had been to church a while ago, and who we got back in contact with because of the Lantern Festival last week. We started to teach him, and then we also started teaching his two university-aged children! It was really fun, but it was a new experience; we mostly just teach young Chinese bucks, so teaching a family was exciting!

On Saturday, we biked to Penang for a baptismal interview. It was fun, but it was so hot! It was about two hours of biking during the intense heat of the noon-day Malaysian sun, and so when we got back to Butterworth we were both pretty dead. But, we drank some water and then got back to work haha.

On Sunday, I ended up giving a talk, and then we had a potluck after church, which was really exciting. And then this morning, Elder Pack and I woke up at 3AM to take a train to KL for exchanges. When we got here, we met the Zone Leaders, went shopping in all these fancy stores (Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Versace) in KL (but didn't buy anything of course, one tie was around RM4000) and then did an escape room with some recent converts here. KL is super cool, it is a totally different world than Butterworth.

This week, we weren't able to contact Brother Kau for a really long time, but we finally saw him at church on Sunday! He has been having some struggles at work, but he is still progressing towards Baptism! The other people we are teaching are all doing super well!

Next week will be transfer news, so I may have some exciting news about what is going to be the next few weeks of my life. Will the Ballad of Butterworth continue, or will a new chapter be opened?

I love you all so much! I hope you are having a fantastic week, and I hope you can feel my love from Malaysia. It feels like it has been so long since I have seen you all, but I also know that you guys are still my loving family and that will never change. Thank you so much for all of the support! You guys are my whole world!

Best,

Elder Weatherford

Spiritual Experiences

This week had some really cool miracles!

On Monday night, our preparation day ends at 6:30PM, so that is when we go out and contact people. But this week, right as we headed out, we realized my bike tire was super flat. So, by the time we got it fixed, a lot of our time for the night had been used up, and I just felt kinda bad about how much time we needed to fix it. But then, we went to a Hawker center nearby, and we met a man named Nicholas, and we were able to teach him the Restoration. It was so cool to see how God used my bike to guide us to Nicholas. The Lord really can use imperfect things like bicycles or people to do awesome stuff.

This week, I really liked the scripture James 1:2-3. I don't have the direct quote, but it pretty much talks about rejoicing when we have temptation and affliction. I don't know about you, but when I have challenges, the first thing that I do is NOT rejoice. But, what the scripture points out is that we can rejoice because we know that God is letting us grow. When we have hard things, we can get stronger, even though it is not fun in the moment. It is something that I am still learning, but I think that it is important for us to see trials as moments for growth, and not moments of being beaten down.

I love you all so much!