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

Hello beautiful Children of God!

This last week was insane for a number of reasons, but far from un-enjoyable!

Monday was a weird day of transfer preparation mostly, especially as both Elders Hobbs and Tan were leaving from our household. That night though we went to Alim and Ani's house, who informed us that they had just brought back their daughter from the hospital. She's had some sort of fever, and they asked us to sembayang for her (worship). We ended up explaining a little about Priesthood blessings before we administered to her, I anointed and Elder Poppleton blessed.

Tuesday, literally the entire day after District Meeting, was involved in helping the Sisters move from their old apartment to their new one. It was a lot of fun though, and we got really sweaty and dirty. Elders Bester, Poppleton, and I were assigned to bring everything from the old apartment to the parking lot.

Wednesday was the bitter-sweet day of saying good bye to Elders Hobbs and Tan as they left for the airport. We helped them out in the morning, Elder Hobbs was up until early finishing packing. That night we met with one of the potentials we had, a friend of a member named Suni. His name was Laman (Lah-man, not LAMAN), and we were welcomed by him and his friend Thomas. It was kind of a weird lesson though, as Thomas kept asking us about immigration to America while Laman was genuinely interested. We haven't had a follow up lesson yet with them.

Thursday we were waiting for the new Elders to arrive, until we found out that they were delayed until Friday. So we did Weekly Planning. We also had a great opportunity to correlate with the Sisters that replaced Elders Hobbs and Tan, Sister Anderson and Sister Willis, This is Sister Anderson's last transfer in the mission, which means that the end of this transfer the Sisters of our group will go home. Sad day!

Friday we welcomed the new Elders into our house! Elder Stenquist has been out for 4 transfers, and Elder Tessers is fresh from the M.T.C. It's been a lot of fun to have them there, and we have all gotten along very well. 

Saturday we followed up with a former from Elder Hobbs's area book who let us in, his name being Bah. He's a very nice man, loves learning about Jesus, but reminds me a lot of Jerry from Sibu. We talked for a while, but what seemed to interest him the most was the concept of Prophets and Gospel Dispensations. Also, I had a written letter in my bag to send home, and it might have fallen out in his house. I'll need to get it back.

Sunday was very spiritual, a lot of less actives who hadn't come all came at once, but sadly none of our investigators. One sister bore powerful testimony of how the Savior had helped her to overcome her husband cheating on her, and now, a year later, she was strong enough to endure everything. Last night, after finding a less active, we were prompted by the spirit to leave as we didn't feel safe. Elder Poppleton was slightly disappointed as he has always wanted to beat up some thieves. We had a delicious break-fast Sunday dinner of spaghetti though.

Love you all so much! The work is picking up, and this transfer will be miraculous!

-Elder Christensen

Hello everyone! Things have been great so far for this week, very long and crazy, miracles and trials intermingled throughout!

So, Monday due to the sickness of last week, the 4 Elders in our house skipped out on the Zone Activity with the possibility of Hospitalization. Since it didn't happen and we are all fine, Elder Hobbs and I did another Escape room. This one was a Murder Investigation theme, and it was way fun. We barely finished it with a minute to spare.

Tuesday, Elder Hobbs gave a great training based on the idea of putting your heart in the work, so that you want to follow the commandments more then feel regulated by them.

To be honest, I can only remember those events in relation to knowing specifically when they happened. We have been finishing up a massive project that we have been doing for about 3 weeks when we found 3 old area books and have been following up with every former and less active record in them. Part of why we did this was to try and break out of a certain part of our area that the missionaries have been working in for years, where, as Elder Poppleton was telling me he observed from a year ago serving in Kuching, that all the members that are active now as compared to then are different except the Branch President. We finished all we had to do in that area, as with all that work only 2 kingdom builder families have been found. We hope no to explore all our area this next week to find some more non-Chinese neighbourhoods.

Also, the Teachings of President Heber J. Grant is an amazing book that I relate to incredibly for some reason.

We had two miracles come from the follow up though. One was that the parents of a recent convert 12 year old boy, Augustine, have suddenly become very receptive. We taught them the Restoration, and his mom seemed to really enjoy it. She's a little more educated, and helped translate for the father, but anyone could have understood the spirit in that room. They invited us back and live within walking distance of the church. The names are Ali and Ani (dad and mom).

The other was a less active follow up. The Mother, Sister Sai, has been coming back to activity with some friends, and we have started teaching her 17 year old son Jimmy. We hope to have him on date and at church this week.

Now, the one big trial was that we had an instance of straight up rejection. That Chinese iban mix man that we found last week decided that we were decievers and fools after 3 minutes in his house this time around, and I spent Personal this morning figuring out why it says we feel joy and happiness because of that in D&C 75. It's good though, because it means that this church is true. We even used that experience almost immediately after to help a family of struggling eternal investigators.

Anyway, last night after an emotionally draining week Elder Poppleton and I found a great stress relief in creating fictional quotes from a man named Elder Rhineberg, an apostle of the FLDS church in 1970. It was hilarious. We get along too well, it's almost scary. Another 6 weeks together, and now he's my District Leader!

Love you all so much!

-Elder Christensen