Hello wonderful family! Wonderful weeks remind me of you! 

Surprisingly, this week was wonderful somehow, because today was the dreaded day of Gawai. Sorry I'm late, the Przybyla's drove us out to kampung this morning and we visited a ton of houses. It was fun, lots of food and driving and rain, but we got to see gawai as it really is without the drinking, which is the american equivalent of Thanksgiving. Cool stuff.

This week was seemingly going to be more empty then most, but still many miracles and things happened. 

We met an Indian Hindu family that invited us back to meet today, which is a miracle because that is literally the only kind of people we could have met or taught this last week. All of our members and investigators were back at kampung except Jihap's family. By the way, they passed their interviews and Jihap, his wife Magi, and their daughters Caroline and Rachel are going to be baptized this Friday. Kevin and Augustine still need to quit smoking, and will be the last week before Elder Lundquist goes home on July 1st (he lives next to the Bountiful Temple and wants to play Munchkin and Revolution and Monopoly). We don't know yet what will happen after that, but we will find out later!

I had great exchanges with the famed Elder Gara (Lawren) of Sibu this last Wednesday. He was amazing, we are so grateful for his confidence and diligence in missionary work. We taught Jihap's family together, then met with President Sulai, our branch and District president. He holds a lot of weight on his shoulders, and needs your prayers, he has asked us to strengthen the less actives and Priesthood so that he can replace himself as Branch President. He had to conduct 2 branches on Sunday because all the Priesthood wasn't there.

Other then that, we contacted a lot of Chinese people. Very prepared, but Chinese. One cool miracle was Sunday morning. It was the loudest and longest storm I've seen in a very long time all night long. All the members were gone. The last week had been hard. We got a text that Elder Perry passed away as we got in a member's car to drive to church. But I realized in that instant that, in this entire week, we have seen many disappointments  but never have we felt discouraged or disheartened. God is good, and that never changes. 

Love you all!

-Elder Christensen

Love you all so much!

This week has been crazy and a half. With everything that has been going on, it seems so little and so much has happened at the same time, kind of a life time in a small moment. Here we go.

Transfers were bitter-sweet. Elder David left for Miri (my old area!) and Elder Call came to replace him. That means though, I only get three sweet more weeks with Elder Lundquist before he will balik kampung. I will miss him dearly, he is definitely one of the thE best companions I've had.

We did get stuck at a drink kedai for two hours on Tuesday due to a thunderstorm, that was fun. We saw a lot of miracles contacting this last week, all with Chinese people though. All the Dayaks were still away for Gawai. We met one lady named Alfreda who was the most American Chinese lady I've ever met. She told us she would be more then happy to meet again, but she was currently busy preparing dinner as a 'full time mother'. She was amazing.

Another was last night. Sister Willis had met a man on the plane from Zone Conference, who she handed off to Elder Stowell because he lived in Batu Kawa. He ended up in our area, so we went to visit him. His name was Freddy, and he lives with his sister Sylvia and two nieces and his mother. They were all extremely friendly and receptive. Speaking English in a lesson was weird, but we learned that Freddy loved charity work, to the point that that was what he did with his life. They asked us to return the next Sunday, so we plan to bring the Chinese Elders with us.

We had exchanges with the Assistants on Friday, which was a crazy day. It started with our Kuching Leadership Counsel at the church, with all the District Leaders and the Sister Training Leaders, where we prepared for Zone Meeting, then Elder Allen and I went to do proselyting work whilst Elders Lundquist and Parritt stayed at the church to get ready for Jihap's baptism that night. We went and had great less active lessons, ate at a janky Indian Restaurant, and barely got back in time. They had asked Elder Lundquist to baptize Jihap and Carolina, Elder McCown did Magi, and President Sulai did Rachel.  I got to give a talk on Baptism :-)

The Baptism was incredibly sweet, Elder Lundquist said when Jihap came out of the water he was trying to find words to explain what he felt, and he could only say 'light' and 'my heart is open like a book'.

Then, we prepared for our fantastic Zone Meeting tomorrow. It's going to take a lot of work, but it will be well worth it. I'm very excited for a lot of reasons, you'll find out more next week.

Congratulations Nate! The pictures of the wedding look amazing.Love you all!

-Elder Christensen