Hello Everybody!
Thank you so much for the uplifting
and encouraging emails you sent me last week. I'm always so glad to have
time to email, because hearing from you really is a source of strength to me,
and helps me remember that there are sane people out there somewhere. :)
Well, this last week started off
just the same as the week before had ended. We had blank pages in our
planners, and nothing to fill them with except contacting. We spent all
day Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday looking for people. I'm
surprised the security people in the malls downtown haven't caught on
yet. The malls have seen too much of missionaries lately. We
contact at malls a lot because those are the places with the most available
people during our daytime hours. Occasionally, we'll also walk down the
sidewalks outside of long shop lots, trying to contact shop owners or their
customers, but neither of those options seemed to work very well for us this
week. Oh, and each of those days, it poured buckets outside. The
English Elders (McCarthy and Harr) were soaked every day on their bikes.
Elder Fabiano and I stood at the bus stops, where the little covering overhead
ensured that our hair was not wet, but from our nametags down we were almost swimming.
Anyway, the demoralizing part of the
week over, Thursday (Mom's Birthday!) rolled around, and
we finally had a meeting with an investigator, who we'll call Rosie. She
invited us and the branch president to her apartment, where we discussed the
book of Mormon with her. She can only read Indonesian, so we brought her
our last Indonesian copy, and she began reading it. She had come to
English class several times already, and she said that when she took the short
tour of the church she felt very comfortable and she wanted to come back to
Church for a Sunday meeting! That was last week, March 16. This Thursday,
when she met with us, she confided that she's had to withstand a lot of
anti-church sentiment from her close friends, but that she still believes there
is something good in the Church and that she wants to find out from us instead
of believe her friends' outside opinions. When she came to Church again
yesterday, she said she felt very peaceful, and that she wants us to meet
tomorrow to teach her young son with her! She is doing very well under a
lot of peer pressure, and I'm so proud of her! I feel very fortunate to
have met Rosie and I know that she is prepared to hear the message of the
restoration. She is so willing to learn, and she has already invited her
friends to church and English class. She came to the relief society
anniversary party where she made new friends on Saturday, and if she meets with
us today as planned, then it will have been 5 consecutive days. That's
how people really progress!
I have been able to see the Holy
Ghost at work in Rosie's life this week, even to the point that she said she
wants to stop drinking tea! She just SMS-ed (texted) us out of the blue
and said she wants to quit! I know the gospel has real converting power,
and that when we begin to exercise a particle of faith, the Holy Ghost can
connect with the deep-rooted desire to be good and loving within us and testify
that Christ's Church is restored in full!
"... And I cannot write a
hundredth-part of the dealings of Johor Bahru missionary experiences this week,
but what I have written sufficeth me."
Until next week, lots of Love,
Brennan
My rabbit-meat burger. Wow.
Elder Fabiano, out of the rain,
calling potentials on our dinner break, at the Ramley Burger stand, a Chinese
temple in the background, with a Soursop bought for us unexpectedly by a nice
Singaporean couple we contacted.
Elder Harr and Elder McCarthy in a
very long line for buying groceries.
Elders Harr, Fabiano, and McCarthy,
practicing the Mauri Hakka. Hhuaagh! Elder McCarthy is from New
Zealand, so he is teaching us the words and actions in traditional Mauri!
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