Hey, sorry there's no pictures this week, but I'm emailing you from Changi Airport, greatest airport in the world!

Anyway, this last week has been very great, very uplifting, and overall awesome. 

Just some updates on people.

When we met with Ingang, it was a relatively short visit as she had to leave soon to work. It was a good chance though to get to know her husband, Pasil, better, and thank him again for saving our bicycles (see following story). We talked to him about the World Cup, which is huge here (President Mains specifically said yesterday not to watch it, so we'll stop).

Acui is doing great. Kenyang and his family are now working toward a baptisimal date of July 12th, and Acui is helping a ton to make that happen. She's on testmonial fire right now, and she's so excited to help her friends it's almost ridiculous.

Last Monday we had a family night at Bro. Gaadong's house, almost 40 minutes by car from our house. Elder and Sister Beus took me, Elder Sutherland, Elder Bester, and Elder Hobbs all in the back seat of his car out there, as all of us had been invited.

It's also been kind of crazy with Madeline. The long and short of it was that when she was at kampung for Gawai, she had taken Sister Ela's kids and her own daughters to a Bomo (witch doctor) when they all got sick. Sister Ela was not happy and left early, which was why she was able to get to Acui's baptism. Now Sister Madeline's entire family is sick, and her husband might have Dengue Fever. After Church this last Sunday, she asked us for a Priesthood Blessing for her and also her oldest daughter. It was a very spiritual experience, and it mostly just mentioned giving her strength and health for her role as a mother.

Also, I had the pleasure of going on Splits twice this week. Wednesday was with Elders Baranov and Misa, our beloved Zone Leaders. Elder Misa and I had a crazy Miracle happen as we were going to our area. Here's the story:

So we were out in Kampung Seruan Jaya, Ingang's Kampung, and had met several people around town. We walked and talked and had a overly plesant time. As we were walking over the road on the side of a hill, Elder Misa turned to me and said, "Hey, isn't that the tree where our bikes were locked?" We ran down to find nothing but a cut bike lock hanging on the tree, To Elder Misa's benefit, the first thing he said was to pray. We bowed our heads and asked for guidance, then started to mobilize the kampung. We went searching for a while and ran into Sister Floria's kids, who said another prayer with us.

As we were searching near the local Futsol court, one of Sister Floria's kids ran up to tell us that they found one of the bicycles. We ran down the hill to see Pasil standing there with Trek, my fixie. We asked where he found it and he led us back to his house where the other one was. He said that as soon as he had heard that the bikes were stolen, he had went up the local hill next to the kampung where, apparently, the 'kampung mafia' always takes stolen material until the heat blows over.

To be continued, I need to switch computers..The Coolest part of that story was before, when we had gone to visit Ingang. Her youngest daughter had just gotten out of the Hospital from an astma(?), and we asked if she would want a priesthood blessing. She agreed, and also asked for one for herself. Hers said that she, if she endured her current hardships, would be baptised in Jesus's true church one day, and would also be successful in helping her husband start to build an interest in the gospel so that he would join her there. I believe the events later that day were in direct answer to that prayer.

 

ANYWAY, I was also able to go on splits with Elder Berger in their area, which went really well. We spent a lot of the day preparing their new appartment for being moved into, and also visited some cool less actives. The best part though is that anything I've mentioned before has been completely resolved, through the power and grace of God. There were a lot of cool experiences with that being resolved this week.

 

Then, we left for Zone Conference early Monday morning, and are about to fly back to Sibu. I'll write more about the Spiritual parts in my written letter, but I did get a mountain of letters from you guys and a package! Thank you so much, I love you! The topic for Zone Conference was teaching and living Repentance, and there were a lot of awesome Spiritual experiences there. The saddest part is that Elder Wayment goes home next week, but in his dying testimony he told a joke about a monk reading the pure, unadulturated Bible in Heaven and later St. Peter finds him crying because it said 'celebrate', not 'celebate'. It won't be the same without that guy. We did end it last night with an Epic Scriptural Rap Battle that we had to write our selves in 30 minutes, and it was awesome. I got videos of those.

 

I love you so much! It's crazy to me to ponder the significance of 'knowing' the Gospel is true, because I KNOW it is! It is the greatest source of Joy and the greatest gift to mankind, especially the wonderful gift of Repentance. That's why we're told over and over again to preach nothing but Repentance to this people in D&C.

 

I love you! -Elder Christensen