Joshua's Song of Singapore: Week 33: Ipoh, Malaysia

The Illusion of Ipoh

This week was Chinese New Year, a time I have been waiting to experience for a long time, and let me tell you it DESTROYED missionary work here in Ipoh. First off, Chinese New Year is a time to come back and visit your family. So, in Ipoh, 70-80% of the people we talked to were from Kuala Lumpur and were only in town for a couple days. Plus, all of the Chinese food courts were closed, and there Chinese people were very few. That being said, it was still a great week!

On Tuesday, we went to visit some of the members for Chinese New Year. The tradition is you say 恭喜发财 when you walk in the house, and then the older married people give young unmarried people ang pao 红包, little red envelopes full of money. We were not supposed to take them as missionaries, but the people forced them into our hands, so we donated the money into fast offerings. Plus, we ate so many sweets that day, we felt so sick by the end! We went to Subway (which is really expensive here in Malaysia, a sandwich is over RM10) and just ate lots of veggies to feel better.

On Sunday night, Sister Chris made us dinner and invited us over! She made lasagna, which I haven't had in so long, it reminded me of mom :) We also met a lot of great members here, including a really nice woman whose sister really wants to join the church so her son will stop being such a 坏蛋 (rotten egg). She lives in Johor, but we were grateful to teach her the first lesson! The missionary who is serving in Johor is actually from Ipoh, and his family helped us teach, so small world!

I also tried to learn some Cantonese this week. I know how to say "handsome boy", "watermelon", and "three weeks" now, which are all useful words for a missionary work!

Other than that, it was a pretty regular week! Elder Bishop and I are working hard, having fun, and learning lots of Chinese!

I love you all so much! Missions are the best things ever...I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided to go on a mission, but it was the best choice I ever made!

Goodbye! Don't forget to smile!

P.S. According to the Malaysian way of saying age, I am already 20 years old! Woo hoo!

Spiritual Experiences

This week, I deepened my testimony of pushing through hard times to see miracles. We ran into a lot of unique challenges with missionary work this week, but we kept our sights high and pushed through! And sure enough this Sunday we had a lot of really cool miracles, the biggest one being that that guy who is applying to BYU is coming to church next week!

The Lord asks us to sacrifice everything, and He will test us. But, if we keep our eyes up and push through, miracles follow! You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger!

I love you all so much! Let's go see miracles!