This week has been a good one!

Hello Everyone!

This week has been a good one, many miracles and such, it's a real pleasure to work with Elder O'Bryant and to be Zone Leader here.  Here we go!

SO, Elder McCown is now my District leader and he's been doing a great job so far. We had a good District meeting based on Hope and how we were able to really represent Jesus Christ. It also was cool because we have all seen some amazing miracles this week, here's one of them.

Monday night we were visiting a family that has had some troubles progressing, their names were Vistor and Nona. As we sat down, a man from across the hall stuck his head in and asked if he could come worship with us. His name was Johnathan, and he was a very prepared man that had been Christian before but never baptized. He really wanted to repent and change,He asked us to come back on Saturday, and we did so. He had read the Book of Mormon introduction, prayed about it, and pondered, and wanted baptism. His job is only a little sketchy, so we hope to help him attend church before he needs to move, maybe at the end of this month.

Last Wednesday we had Exchanges with Elder Jackson and McCown in Stampin. I was with Elder Jackson, and it was so good to be back there for a day. Elekson whom Elder Poppleton and I had worked with is now on date for April 11th, and the missionaries there are doing great with him so far. Please keep him in your prayers.

We also met with a man named Bro. Bangga Saturday night. His wife is a long time active member, she was baptized many years ago, and Bro. Bangga is a very nice man that has never shown too much interest. He was very friendly, and as we started talking we discussed when we had felt the most happy. He said he had always felt happy following Jesus Christ before, then randomly expressed a desire to follow his wife to church. Of course we were happy to help him, but he didn't want to be baptized until after Gawai so that he could drink before hand. We'll have to work with the pure intent with him a little.

Elder O'Bryant and I have been getting along very well, and we had been having a lot of great discussion and revelation as we really looked into helping the Zone. A lot of the strengths we identified with the Assistants this morning were optimism and faith, but we are struggling a little as we follow the spirit. It will be good to further counsel with the District Leaders as we continue improving, but the Zone is doing incredibly well right now.

Well, Love you so much! The internet is being choppy so I hope you get this! Love you!

-Elder Christensen

(P.S.  Mckay's call is sitting on our table waiting for him to get home from China! He will open it on Saturday night at 9:15!  You're all invited! 

Well

A lot of what i would say is in my letter to president, so I'll be inserting that in here somewhere.

Monday and Tuesday were busy and full of giving pictures and things to members before Elder Poppleton went to be DL in Sibu in my old area! He'll love it there. Wednesday morning he flew out before I drove down the road to Batu Kawa.

Here it is:

Dear President

Thank you so much for the opportunity to serve in the capacity as a zone leader with Elder O'Bryant. He is extremely methodical, intelligent, and efficient, and I have so much to learn from him. It's been so good so far that we've jokingly hoped to both stay in this area until we leave the mission field, but obviously you have the right to that revelation :-) Your questions should cover our week pretty well.

What am I doing to increase my faith?

Honestly, the transfer itself increased my faith. Batu Kawa is a much nicer area then Stampin and the member base is so much more founded. Elder O'Bryant and I spent a while doing nothing but getting all parts of our daily schedule to be the most efficient possible. It was an intensive process, but we maximized our nightly planning, weekly planning, reporting, lesson planning, scheduling, and basically everything else. Even how to make Sacrament a more holy experience.

What miracles am I seeing?

Since we have been doing that, we have been finding potentials every day and all the formerly stagnating investigators have picked up in their progress. Elder O'Bryant put it best last night when he said that the biggest miracle is that we have literally been experiencing the Spirit in every part of our work. We even received a referral last night from a family, Bro. Ifan and Sister Mariana, that we have been teaching in the form of a relative that is living with them for work. His name was Anthony, and he has already read 3rd Ne. 11.

What ways am I encouraging the members to participate in missionary work?

We have been doing a lot.

-Nightly we sms our branch mission leader, telling him about our lessons and asking any questions.

We met with Bro. Govin and his family, long time members, and had a great discussion about the branch and its needs. He also had fellow shipped a man named Sultan before, and said he would invite him over to dinner the next week so we could meet him.

-Our new member lesson focus is to do family history work with them, as many of our members we attended the family history fireside recently. After discussing best how to do that, we prayed and felt simply to help them until the spirit of Elijah kicks in.

Needless to say, we are excited and very motivated. Already so many little miracles have been coming, we are very excited to see what this next transfer brings!

We ever pray for you!

-Elder Christensen

2 more cool miracles: We have an investigator named Katrina who is extremely intelligent, she reads the Kitab Mormon and understands it perfectly. Her father had passed away when she was young, but we promised she could meet him again through the plan of salvation. We have a member following to her next lesson, Paul, R.M., son of Govin, and it would be really funny if they got together.

We were biking to an appointment when Elder O'Bryant felt to go check out a neighborhood he'd never visited before. There was nobody there and we didn't feel impressed to go anywhere, so we continued. When we arrived we found a man from our potential sheet that we had called the day before but had no other information. He had only been there for a couple minutes already.

Dear Family

This last week has been really fun and long, but not as much to tell. Here we go!

P-day was a fun game day at the church as a zone. We played a lot of games and brought food in commeration of Sister Anderson going home TOMORROW. That's weird that our Sister in our group is already leaving. It was fun, but I got a massive blood-blister on the bottom of my foot (don't worry I popped it the next morning).

Wednesday was the mission tour with Elder Randy Funke of the 70. It was great to see President Mains two weeks in a row, and also the Sibu Elders flew in to attend it with us in Kuching. We were taught a lot about faith, and also how to teach the Restoration with a renewed focus on testifying.

Some cool miracles: We had two investigators progress a lot this last week. We found from an old teaching record for Jimmy's father that Jimmy had an older brother die in a car accident. We had a lesson purely testifying about the Plan of Salvation. He seemed to be affected by it, and asked a lot of questions about if other churches also had the Power of God.

Elekson was the other one. He is the husband of a less active member, Valorie, who has never had a lot of interest. We hadn't met them for a while, so we taught the Restoration making out testimonies the focus of the lesson, not the doctrine. He couldn't look us in the eye as we spoke, and said that he could feel something trying to enter his heart but every time it did he remembered that the Anglican church had already baptised him. He wanted to come to church, and hoped he would get home from church early enough to do it. We said we could all pray to help him do it, and the next day he brought his entire family to church, although they left for 1 hour.

Saturday and Sunday, the family history specialists from Hong Kong came and did some great trainings and presentations that we helped translate for, but they somehow came to think that Elder Poppleton is fluent in Chinese and a computer genius because he helped them change the keyboard language. They told all the chinese members to talk to him, so it's probably a good thing that he's getting transfered to Sibu, in my old area, as District leader! He's going to do great, and I'm moving on to Z.L. of Kuching! 

(Coy's new companion will be Elder O'Bryan).

Life is great! Love you all!

-Elder Christensen

Hello Everyone!

We are currently sitting at Changi airport after Zone Conference, thought I would write a quick letter for our week until now.

Monday night we started exchanges with Elders Stowell and Elder Jensen. Elder Stowell had served in this area before, so we were able to stop by and say high to a lot of less actives he had met before, it seemed to be a good thing for them.

Tuesday morning was District Meeting, which was actually mostly me. Elder Poppleton had felt to ask me share some insights we had been talking about, especially about how you can be Obedient without really being righteous, like Laman and Lemuel, or the Pharisees. It led to a lot of really good discussion, and turned mostly to Charity by the end.

Lunch at Cheese and Tea was good.

After doing The Thing for a while, Elder Stowell and I went to some places for contacting. He is a red head from Utah, and very nerdy about movies and such, so I listened to his rant plesently all day long. He had remembered a potential family that had a talking parrot, but they were all asleep when we arrived at Jalan Kedandi, but their next door neighbor Kevin, a chinese man, Buddhist, was kind enough to give the time of day. We had the common ground of a belief in Heaven, so we gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet with the Chinese Elders number.

Later we had felt to go to a place called Tabuan Laru, where we found that the Sisters in our branch had also went that day! Elder Stowell said that if we had both felt to go there, there was obviously a purpose behind it. We said a prayer and walked two houses down before turning and talking to an old Iban man sitting outside his house named Vincent. He had been given an English B.O.M. by a seniour couple a while before, so we gave him a copy in Malay.

Wednesday we arose, packed, and cleaned the house until the Taxi took us to the Airport for Zone Conference! We flew to Singapore for our annual 90 day visa run and three day stay and conference, but our flight was unusually late due to Chinese New Year. We got to the stake center about 7 P.M. to eat ice cream and see the end of what I'm sure was a good activity about presenting yourself in 30 seconds. We went to the hotel afterwards.

Thursday brerakfast was at Subway, and a glorious day of Spiritual Enlightment followed. The morning session was based on faith and how we build it, with a new mission vision for 2015 and standards of excellence. We have been challenged to do three things, find a new potential every day, two new investigators a week, and have an ultimate goal of baptising weekly as a Zone. It's been so amazing to see how much the mission itself has been building itself up since I've been here, and TODAY is my six month mark.

Lunch was all you could eat pizza with the mission slide show. The only missionaries there were all from East Malaysia, as West and Singapore had their own Zone Conferences earlier in the week.

Then came the Testimony meeting for all the departing missionaries in the next two transfers. Sister Anderson is going home next week, it's strange to see our sisters go from our group.

After Dinner and a zone conference picture, we had a real treat. We FINALLY got to watch Meet the Mormons! It was glorious.

Also, the man from the Spiritual Vertigo mormon message gave a fireside for us about future decision making,

Now it's Friday, going back to Kuching soon, love you all!Hello Family!

Here's to finish off the week!

As we were flying out, we were sitting in the terminal when I saw a man working on some power point on his laptop that featured a bible verse. Every time I go to Singapore, I pray for the chance to find one person that needs a B.O.M. more than anyone, and I hadn't been led to anyone yet. His name was Ivan, and he was a Christian Youth leader for a church in Singapore. He was going to Kuching to visit some friends, and very friendly himself. We talked for a while, and I shared him a verse from the Book of Mormon to introduce it to him. He kindly denied then, but I walked past him after he had taken his seat. I leaned over quickly and told him I knew the book was true and I sincerely wanted him to have it. He took it, and after we landed came up to me and thanked me for giving it to him.

We had a lesson Friday night with a less active, Valorie, and her non-baptized husband, when right after the opening prayer a bunch of her in-laws walked in the door. We don't know why they visited, but we were able to start teaching them all. The lesson we had planned had felt a little weird for the original family, but it went perfectly for the people that walked in the door. We gave them some materials, and the dad even looked up 'Alkitab Mormon' on his tablet as we showed them the book. He asked us to help him, and he now has Gospel Library on his Tablet. They didn't live in our area, but they were prepared. We passed them off to the Sentosa Elders.

Saturday the Chinese Elders called and asked us to go on temporary exchanges with them, as Elder Eggertson was sick. They had a lesson and it was their branches turn to clean the chapel, so I went with Elder Durrant to teach and dust the pews for a couple hours, then that night we attended a baptism for the Batu Kawa branch.

Sunday was present, but every thing fell through, so we went to follow up with some potentials for a while before dinner and Reporting for Elder Poppleton.

At midnight last night a random potential investigator named Nor Din called the Sentosa Elders phone, and scared us all to death until we found out he was probably drunk.

Till next week, this is Sister Anderson's last P-day! Love you all!

-Elder Christensen