Hello Wonderful Family!

This week, I can finally say, every hard week has payed off.

Here we go.

Monday night we had a great lesson with a less active, when our branch president invited us to attend a family night at his house. It was with Bro. Mandoh and Sis. Santi, who have been struggling for a while, but we found that the entire night was for them. President Changgai just taught a lesson about how great the Gospel is and asked Elder Poppleton to testify. He is such a great Branch President, he's been working so hard just on his own.

Tuesday, Elder Poppleton gave a great training on the differences between Stimulation and True Happiness. Part of our mission focus right now is finding Joy through Diligence and being worthy for daily miracles, and it's been working great so far. The biggest thing I learned from this week came later though, keep reading!

Wednesday, the great missionary work-halter of Chinese New Year began with a bang. Literally. huge fireworks until 4 A.M. Most of our members went back to Kampung for the next two weeks, and also some investigators. We also had exchanges with Elders Jensen and Stole. They apparently have been struggling for a while, but it was great just to talk with Elder Jensen that day. We went out to explore an area our Branch President suggested, which we found was completely Islam and Chinese. We did contact a very intelligent Chinese man in town for the season who teaches English to Ibans.

Then my tire went flat (2nd time that week actually), heavy rain came down, and every bike shop is closed until tomorrow. I've been riding a rental from Elder Pryzbyla, but I'll need some money in my account soon.

Thursday was a great weekly planning, before we started exchanges with the Zone Leaders. The town was desolated, as if a Zombie Apocalypse had happened a year ago. We visited the Governmental Administration building for fun.

The Next day, while I was with Elder O'Bryent, an amazing thing happened.

We had basically contacting planned the entire day, but E. O'Bryent had a brilliant idea to try something neither of us had done before. We started with prayer after lunch, they step-by-step planned exactly where to go by planning bit by bit what to do all day. We ended up deciding on three locations. We went out and acted on our plan, and although it might have seemed fruitless, we felt confident that we were where we needed to be in God's wisdom.

Saturday, Elder Poppleton and I did 'The Thing' again, and it was one of the most glorious days of my mission. We went back to a street we had seen before, to find many more Chinese houses then we remembered. Then we saw a man working on his car, and contacted Musiem, a Bidayu Christian that was very friendly and open. We talked for a while before leaving him a Kitab Mormon and setting up a day to call and meet again.

Then we had an appointment with Dion and his family, who would have been baptized in December last year except for not having a marriage certificate and having a difficult work schedule. President Changgai followed, and explained Self Reliance, a church program to help with the work schedule, and had a paper to help them get a marriage certificate. They then pulled out a completely valid marriage certificate from Indonesia, apparently they had thought they needed a certificate from Malaysia. Now they are working with President to obtain a better work schedule to attend church again.

Then we had a lesson with Jimmy, son of a less active, who brought a friend named Fidelis. He was really smart, really opened, and enjoyed learning about Jesus Christ. He asked us to meet him next week Saturday.

Sunday, our attendance actually increased because a lot of less actives came with work off due to the holiday. The District president attended, and praised the branch from the pulpit for having the first reverent, Spirit-filled sacrament meeting he had ever attended.

After praying for guidance that night when a less active lesson fell through, we were led to a man named Jeffrey wearing his father's old fedora. He talked to us for a half hour, telling us about visions he had which correlated to the spirit world. Everyone else thought he was crazy, but we just pulled out a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and explained that our church had restored truth that verified what he had seen.

Needless to say, life is great.

This work is the Lord's work, and the closer that we work with him the the more he will lead us.

Love you all!

-Elder Christensen

Hello Wonderful Family! 

Probably a shorter letter today, I have a lot of emails to respond to from last week. But that's a great problem to have!

Zone meeting was great this last Tuesday. The mission focus right now is trying to always be sensitive to the spirit, so that we could always be ready to take every opportunity to share the gospel. Door contacting is getting less and less prevalent or effective, but President believes that, when we are worthy, we will be able to see such opportunities come every day. 

Our Opportunity came at the end of the week, after a week of exploring, contacting, and 2 flats tires (one each). That might be leading us to the realization that Tabuan Dayak might be the only place that Elders and Sisters have been doing work for a reason. Everywhere else is industrial, Chinese, or private neighbourhoods. Maybe. 

Anyway, last night we met with a less active, Sister Sai, and her 17 year old non member son, Jimmy. We had been wondering about Jimmy before, but he had never really showed much hope. He has a lot of friends from other churches, and seemed a little apprehensive about meeting with us. We were able to sit with him and his mother though, and answered some questions he had about Jesus Christ and what will happen to other churches. The lesson lead into baptism, and he accepted to test Moroni's promise that night, and to be baptised if he knew it was true. It was an awesome miracle, and a great pick me up after a long week.

Saturday was a fun day as well, with a greatly planned Branch Valentines day party. We are so lucky to have President Changgai. He planned it entirely around increasing the love in the family, and Elder and Sister Slider were the keynote speakers. We also sang 'love is spoken here' with the sisters.

Love you all so much! We just got haircuts and have a nice, relaxing p-day planned.

Love you!

-Elder Christensen

Hello Wonder Family!

I won't lie, this week was a very rough one.

BEFORE you stress yourself mother, I am not discouraged about anything except my own weaknesses and imperfections. God has allowed weeks like this to occur before, because it always prepared my companionships to do the work He needed us to, and to have time that he needed us to spend for miracle families.

The problem facing us now is finding those people.

Here's the week in short.

Laman decided to not want to learn as he holds to Agama Lama, or the Iban traditional worship (devil worship, more or less). He is still friends with a member, Brother Sani, and we gave him a Kitab Mormon, and he is definitely prepared. We can only pray for him at this point though, and he does still have interest in the church.

We had a sad story with Alim and Ani. We came over to have a member-present lesson when we found that Ani had taken the children and all of her things before basically moving back in with her parents. She left on Thursday, and we were able to sit down with Alim on Friday and talk about what happened. We were able to testify of the power of 'at-one-ment', and he asked us two questions. 'How can He really know what I feel in my heart', and 'Do you feel in your heart that she will come back to me'. To be honest, I wasn't very confident in answering that second one. We told him simply about agency and promised him the blessings God can give. We went back the next day with Bro. Pelima to find that he also moved out by then.

The one hopeful investigator group we have was Dion. His situation has not changed with his marriage certificate or his job, but we had a great battle planning session with him to overcome his challenges. We are going back with President Changai this week to start getting him a better job to attend church, and he is going back to kampung for Chinese New Year to get the certificate. We fasted for him and everyone else yesterday.

Besides that, we had many fruitless hours of exploring and contacting in our area. Well, fruitless in the way that we did not find any new investigators yet, but we did a lot of good things in finding new parts of our area to find people. We also had 200 Ringgit of bike repairs, but the week ended today with an amazing full day trip to the isle of BAKO! A beautiful island paradise, and I am so sorry that the internet is so slow right now due to the excessive amount of Asian kids playing Dota so late in the evening that pictures cannot be sent. I might be able to send them tomorrow, but remember that I love you all! 
Wednesday we went on Exchanges with the Batu Kawa Elders. I was with Elder Stowell in their area for the day, and it literally rained all day long. Not a heavy rain, more like a fine misty rain. Unusualy. We did see some cool things happen though. At one appointment with a less active we met her relative that lived up in Matang and gave us his name and number to meet the Elders there. That night we were about to get in a car with a sister to go to an appointment with a family on date for the end of this month, but she was going alone. I went and asked the husband to follow, explaining the white handbook rule. He put on his shoes and hat and followed as well! I didn't know it at the time but he has been inactive for years and never followed the missionaries until that night. Have a great day!

-Elder Christensen