Well family, it's been highly unusual this week,  so that means a lot to say! Here we go!

After Monday's adventure, the Assistants flew in from Singapore to stay with us on exchanges for two days until we would all fly back for M.L.C later that week. It was great, I was with Elder Lundquist from Bountiful Utah for the time they were there. 

We had a great couple days together, we were able to meet Sis. Dari again and confirm that she had the car insurance that she needed to get to church (and she did come!). Also we had some other less actives attend this week which was a big miracle, especially since Elder O'Bryant and I were thinking we'll need to drop a lot of our investigators soon.

Elders O'Bryant and Allen had a much bigger adventure though, they biked out to a little place called Bau (the Malay word for 'smell' or colloquially 'smelly') where we had a person call us from the week before. His name was Jahib, the father of an investigator in West Malaysia, and told us he is looking for a church and wanted us to teach them. They went out there on Wednesday and went to far, biking over 2 hours until they were within 2 kilometers of the Indonesian border. They did find their way there though, and taught a large family that is extremely prepared, they are just far from church. It's interesting though, because apparently there are other members that have moved there and before there were people trying to start a group out there. Hmmmmmmm :-)

Thursday and Friday were flying to Singapore, having an amazing M.L.C., and flying back. M.L.C. was a very cool experience, besides the longest time I've ever been in the presence of President Mains. We discussed a lot of great things (my favorite that it's approved to go overtime on phone calls home :-) more on that in my written letter.

Then when we got home I became bed ridden. A day or two before I noticed pimple things, one under my thigh and another under my arm, when we got home they started hurting. Saturday we went to the Hospital with Elder and Sister Pryzbyla, confirmed some sort of bug bite, probably from Fairy cave, last couple days took medicine and rested easy (read from the book of Job), today going back to have the follow up and already feeling better (please don't worry mom, thank you for the prayers).

Love you so much! Zone meeting is tomorrow, so exciting, more updates later!

-Elder Christensen

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