Hello you old wonderful! (I got the new watch, it's beautiful).

This week has been an inspirational one, and an incredibly blessed one. It also came with some of the weirdest compilation of random trials I have ever seen or imagined possible in on week. Our Branch President was in bed with an eye infection (he lives 3 hours away from the church), our second Counselor's car was totaled in an accident, our primary president is having husband issues, our recent convert family disappeared off the face of the map, our Branch Mission Leader's wife is apparently having struggles and randomly left her husband and kids to go to her kampung yesterday morning, and the list continues.

HOWEVER! We did successfully complete the baptismal interviews for the family of 6 that will be baptized this weekend! Merang's family continues to do great and is on track for their baptism this weekend! We weren't able to follow up with Charity or Manggie yet, but they said we can meet this week.

It was a pretty humdrum week other wise. Tuesday was Zone Meeting again, which was awesome. Elder Jackson had misspelled 'white handbook' in a sms, so the entire zone now calls them their 'white hamdannk's'. Elder Shorts (from Mukah) and I figured out what a Hamdannk was though, it's just a pork Pau (white, ham, dank). We will start a fast food chain when we return called "Hamdannke's", a German owned chinese food company. Brilliant. 

We met again with Jerry, who continues to do well. We focused on the Apostasy this week, and watched the film 'The Great Apostasy' which Elder and Sister Bodell brought, the story of Wilford Woodruff and Robert Mason. If he doesn't change this week though, we might have to drop him as he has shown no desire to change.

General Conference was amazing! We had all showings at the church, so it took a large chunk of our time from Saturday and Sunday. Elder and Sister Bodell were amazing though, feeding us both lunch and dinner on Sunday.

The week ended with an amazing miracle. We had text-ed everyone on our phone telling about the General Conference showings, and some random people we had never heard about called us and said they would come to Priesthood Session. They did, and it turned out to be a former investigator from forever ago. Her name was Ju, and she brought a friend named Amil. They were apparently church-hopping per say, seeing what the differences were in all Christian churches. They watched part of 

Priesthood Session and we then taught them the Restoration in the front foyer. They were very intrigued and said they could come next week to normal Sacrament.

Elder Baer and I went on splits this last Friday, as we had a Chinese potential investigator. He was a man that Elder Beliang and I found as we were riding by a house near Merang's neighborhood. The little voice spoke, and we knocked on the gate at 8 at night. The 20 year old guy came out and told us we could come back. Quite literally, he was the most prepared person I have ever met. He said how a minister had helped him pray when he got sick after a operation, but the minister forgot about him. He felt he was healed because he believed in Christ. He recognized the face of Joseph Smith, and said whenever people talk about Jesus he feels like people are laying their hands on his head. He described it exactly as the picture of Peter, James, and John giving Joseph Smith the priesthood.

NEVER

DOUBT

IN

MIRACLES

The Spirit is just the coolest, isn't He?

Love you so much!

-Elder Christensen

Hello everyone! This week was a good one, don't worry, but it was a long one in deed. Lots of things going on, lots of good things happening!

Elder Beliang is amazing, he had received very complete instruction in a mission prep class. All I do for training is point to a concept in P.M.G. and he acts on it immediately. He's seen a long history of disobedient Elders in his home town, and in his first couple days he professed a desire to never follow their examples, as they never succeeded. Needless to say we have had no problems getting along.

This last Tuesday for District Meeting we made a District Vision following pg.146 in P.M.G. and raw Spiritual inspiration (how edgy is that?). It was amazing, and we received a lot of guidance.

Brother Merang's family is continuing to do very well. They're on date for Oct. 18, the week after we show General Conference here in Malaysia. Last Saturday we taught them how do do a Family Night by doing a family night with them and teaching Tithing. We used an example Elder Jackson had explained, where you give the person 100 sen (cent), ask for ten back, then grab everything in your reach and put in their hand to show them the blessings that they they cannot hold. It was also Carista's birthday, so we had a great birthday dinner afterwards.

Brother Jerry has been slowly stagnating, he understands and professes he believes in everything we teach, but he does not truly follow it. We are praying to know what to do for him.

We found a new family this week, a certain Brother Manggi and his wife and two kids. We only met them once this last Sunday, but we taught them the Restoration. We asked Brother Manggie what he felt about our message, he thought for a second, and he simply said 'bagus!' which being translated means, good, wonderful, awesome, amazing, etc. We committed them to be baptized once they knew it was true on the spot. That has never happened in my mission before. They were prepared.

We also had a powerful experience following the Spirit. We were trying to follow up with a contact we had, and we were both prompted to leave from a place that felt very dangerous. We left, and instead taught Brother Kanyan's family about the Roh Khudus (Holy Ghost) using the experience as an example.

I love you so much! This Gospel is TRUE!

-Elder Christensen

Sad Goodbye to Elder Sutherland! Welcome Elder Beliang!

Hello family!

This week was indeed pretty crazy, so much so that my letter writing will be very specific this week! Need to get the best stuff in!

It was a very sad couple days letting go of Elder Sutherland. It was full of member visits, packing, hugs and tears (mostly by me), until he was gone. Elder Smith also came to replace Elder Misa, he seems like a great guy so far. However, my greenie didn't come in until the next day late afternoon, and I did not go to Singapore to pick him up as there was a major immigration problem with Sabah this last transfer. I don't want to go into too much detail, but Elder Sutherland's assignment was changed from K.K., Sabah to Bintulu, Sarawak and there might be another transfer this week. 

Elder Beliang arrived safely though! I must be either the luckiest trainer or the worst trainer in the world because he was incredibly prepared. He is an amazing Elder from Kuching, and has been in the church about 9 years. He's 21, and has been doing a lot of work with the Elders before, so the only things that he needed to really learn was the goal concept and the missionary schedule. Elder Beliang is in a special situation though, as he hasn't yet gone to the M.T.C. He will be leaving Oct 22nd to go there for two weeks in the Philippines, and I don't know what I'll be doing for those two weeks.

We have been having a great couple days though, Merang's family has been doing great. Their Baptismal date was moved to the 18th as before it was the same week as General Conference. Things continue to be going well though for them all.

We had a cool sequence of events occur. We were biking home, I felt impressed to stop by the David's door and drop by only for a second. We knocked, nobody was home. We continued, only to have my back tire randomly go flat in the middle of an intersection. We walked for a bit to see a car  that had driven off the road, with a nice looking Chinese family standing next to it. We stopped to see if there was anything we could do to help. The dad didn't give us the time of day, but talking to the mother the Spirit discerned for us that she had heard lies about us at church. I said that we were as much a Christian church as anyone else, and she was surprised to hear we worshiped Jesus. I gave her a card with the Chinese Elder's number, and told her to call if she had any questions.

We finally met again with David this week. They are doing good, we reviewed the Joseph Smith story and focused on Priesthood, and David asked us to come back this Wednesday and bless his wife, Siti. We asked Brother Entalai, a less active that lives a few doors down to help us, and he said that he could. Accordingly, he came to church the next day!

Speaking of Church, Kelvinson and Ignatius were able to come! On a random thought, I asked Merang if they could simply sit in the back of his truck while they drove to church (they live within easy walking distance). He said they could, and also that they could come every week if they so wished! It was so great, they have been so eager to come for such a long time.

Now it's today! Love you all so much!

-Elder Christensen