Joshua's Song of Singapore: Week 25: Butterworth, Malaysia

The Ballad of Butterworth

Hello everyone! I hope that you are all doing super well! This week was really good...well it was a pretty tough week but that meant that there were a lot of chances to grow, which was good!

The week started off really well...we met with lots of cool people and they all seemed really excited to learn more and to come to church. On Tuesday, we had District Council, and it was so fun to have the Petersons (senior couple) back with us. We role played inviting someone how to pray and Elder Peterson pretended to be this cranky old guy, it was so funny! On Thursday, we met with a woman named Chitra who was being taught by the missionaries before. We taught her (kinda in Malay, kinda in English, and a little Tamil) and then she and her whole family seemed really excited to come to church!

And then, things took a little turn haha. First, on Saturday, we went to a mall here in Butterworth because it is a really good place to talk to people and teach them. But, we ended up having to change our plans, and then it started raining like crazy! It was fun, but it is also tough when everything that you were planning to do falls through.

So, we went to another mall (the one where the cockroach crawled up my leg), but it didn't really have anybody there. We were a little bit down, and when we sat down to call everyone and remind them about church, EVERYONE cancelled! Ugh, it was pretty rough. But, what I am slowly realizing is that the hardest times (the times when things DON'T go to plan) is when we really learn to find peace in sources other than having life go smoothly. It is easy to be happy when life is perfect, but when things are not perfect, that is when we turn to the Savior. So, it was a hard week, but I felt like I grew a lot :)

I love you all SO SO much! I hope that you had a great week and I hope that you are PUMPED for Christmas! It is going to be so amazing, I cannot wait. Take plenty of time to relax and focus on the beauty of life, and the beauty of everything around us. I can't wait to hear from y'all! I am so grateful for your enduring love and support, I can feel it so much!

Please enjoy the snow for me!

Yee haw!

Spiritual Experiences

This week, I have been thinking a lot about why hard times are part of God's plan for each one of us. There is a talk by Elder Holland, and in it he says something along the lines of "why isn't the only hard part of missionary work the fear of catching pneumonia from standing in a baptismal font all day?" Sometimes I wonder that as well, and this week it really started to hit me; our hardest moments are our best teachers. When life is smooth, we aren't forced out of our comfort zone. So, when we have hard times, of course in the moment they will be really tough, but we can remember that those moments will allow us to grow, and to become the people that God wants us to be.

Reconciling ourselves to God is something that I am also working on for sure. Sometimes it is hard for me to reconcile myself to God for big things, like the struggles Rob has to go through or people that have passed away so early, and sometimes it is hard for me to reconcile myself to God for small things, like "I worked so hard this week, why did no one end up coming to church?" It is easy for us to pull away from God, but I think that eventually we come to the point where we try our best to come back to Him, and He is always there waiting with open arms. Trials are REALLY difficult in the moment, but they really can help lead us to grow and to reconcile ourselves with God.

I love 1st and 2nd Nephi too, Nephi is such an amazing example! I especially love how you said they are so plain to understand...they are so spiritual, and yet so simple. It is the perfect combination! I especially love 2 Nephi 4, right after Lehi passes away and Nephi talks about all of the things that easily beset him, and yet despite all that he knows in whom he has trusted. He is such a great man!

I love you all so much!

Answers to questions:

This week, we are trying to work lots with some returning members. The district president and mission president have been trying to find a new branch president for a pretty long time, but (1) there are so few priesthood holders and (2) the ones who are at church have all denied the calling, and so we are desperately trying to bring people back that could fulfill the calling. If not, I'm not sure what will happen to Butterworth.

1. Yes, we have branch council every 1st and 3rd sunday. We don't really have any part, it is just the branch president running things.

2. President Rowley definitely has his inspiring moments, and he seems more practical, too (from his lawyer days I can imagine). He likes to say lots of cute little comments like "Jesus Christ is the reason for the season" and "keep your lines in the water (talking about always looking for people to teach)" and stuff like that, which the missionaries like to quote a lot. he is a great guy! It is crazy that he is almost halfway done with being our mission president!

3. He actually does significantly longer interviews with some of the elders and not with others, and so I did not get an interview with his this Zone Conference.

4. Two missionaries in my zone did not get back into Malaysia, so we had some emergency transfers. Both Elder Duzett and Sister Eliason are in Singapore now, and Elder Taylor (from the Singapore Chinese ward) is our new Zone Leader, and there is a Sister Glenn from Hawaii who came to Penang. Pretty crazy, huh?