My dad is right, I had a blast in Singapore. A lot of last's, last good-byes, last testimony. But tenang hati aku. We flew out Monday and like always, had good dalam conversations with my friends on the plane rides. Made new friends. Caught up with old ones. We met up with Kota Kinabalu zone in Kuala Lumpur and I'm starting to get what Ammon went though when he was reunited with the sons of Mosiah in Alma 27.
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| Final Zone Conference: soon to be departing missionaries. |
Miri Zone (and part of Bintulu Zone) are Xscape room champions. Except we all failed. The sisters did the Harry Potter room and we were so close to escaping, we were on the last step yelling out spell names and we ran out of time...but after that I sherpa-ed for the sisters and took them for good eats and shopping at Little India. It's funny how after serving there a couple times, you learn all the shortcuts with the buses and get to places a LOT faster.
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| Xscape champs. |
That night for the zone activity, we made candy leis for service and put together Christmas bags for orphans. I'm sure there's pictures floating around somewhere of me, Elder Ferguson, and Elder Jackson absolutely failing at making them. Seriously boys are stupid. But there were a couple times they made me laugh so hard I cried. I love those young men. It's like reliving the MTC all over again.
I got to catch up with so many people and there wasn't enough time to really tell everyone how much I love them, but I'm so blessed with incredible friends who are missionaries as well as the people I'm serving all over Malaysia and Singapore. So, so blessed.
The actual zone conference left me feeling a little unfulfilled because President Mains only talked to us for a couple minutes, and I think I along with all the other missionaries were thinking "Talk more! Tell us what to do better!" But it's okay.
I gave my departing testimony along with the elders from Sister LeBaron's group. All of the testimonies were so good. So humble and repentant. I said something along the lines of how as departing missionaries, we all want to say something profound and meaningful, but I hope I just invite the spirit with a humble testimony. One thing I thought about reflecting back on my mission was how I've been blessed to meet so many people from all over the world and teach them the gospel, and meet so many missionaries who are an example to me. And how the Lord has blessed me with the capacity to love so many people so much. I talked about how in my inadequacies, my prayers have turned into pleas for help, and how Heavenly Father qualifies us in our weaknesses. We are always a child of God. That knowledge is what's carried me through my life and through my mission. I know God lives.
I didn't know who Jesus Christ was until I read The Book of Mormon.
And that's really all I said. It was short and sweet and anticlimactic. (A couple of my friends have a recording of it somewhere so I'll track it down sometime.)
We had a nice Christmas program and afterwards, our zone activity was to go caroling at a mall. We were all apprehensive about it at first, but we got there (laughing all along the way) and it was the same mall I caroled at last year. I went to the front desk to tell them we were there, and when I got back, the elders had lari-ed to get some food. Go figure. So me and the other sisters started singing off the balcony. "Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o'er the plains." The elders slowly wandered back and joined us one by one, and it was the prettiest as the chorus got louder and louder. As we sang hymns and popular Christmas songs, a lot of people stopped to listen to the random white kids. We made so many people smile. It was nice to feel the spirit and have other people feel it too.
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| Zone Activity: Caroling at the mall. |
We got back and I said my good-byes. All throughout the zone conference, everyone teased me. "Wow Sister Wynn, you're dead!" I didn't mind. Throughout the zone conference, I just felt God's love. And I got tons of pictures with all the missionaries from Malaysia because they're my favorite. The church is going to be just fine here because of incredible people like them. Future branch presidents, and later bishops. There were a lot of zones that had a layover in Kuching, so we split off from there. My goodbyes were unceremonious, and mostly in passing as we went through security and immigration. But I didn't mind because I'm more of a see-you-later type of person anyway.
We landed, got home and got back to the grind. I love stepping off planes in this mission, putting my tag back on, and immediately doing missionary work again. It makes me feel like a fancy, very important business exec or something. This week was good. Tough, but good. One of our investigators who we dropped because he's pulling knives on our other members randomly had this change of heart, stopped drinking and smoking and hanging out with his sketchy friends, and came to church. He told us he still wants to be baptized, so we're working with him. God works in mysterious ways, and sometimes He converts people through Alma-the-Younger experiences. I shouldn't talk, my conversion sometimes seemed like a huge slap in the face, because I needed it.
I went on ghetto splits with Sister Fonbuena yesterday because Sister Pitts and Sister Pullicar were sakit and it was like good old times. The primary did their Christmas program in church and I kept tearing up because they were so cute. One of my investigators didn't want to meet with us and said, "No. I'm not going to ikut. I'm Anglican!"
"I don't care. And God doesn't care. You're a child of God before you're an Anglican or an Iban or a Dayak." He still didn't want to ikut but we'll get him back.
We then went to Sister Fonbuena's area to Pujut 8, and I got to see Satam and Rungi and ALL the saudara mara and they were happy to see me too. They've since rebuilt their janky kampung house and now they have this nice house with straight edges and a tall ceiling and a beautiful porch for the kids to play on. This is what the gospel does, it elevates us above where we're at.
Last Sunday, the night before we left for Singapore, I had the best, and hardest fast of my life. I won't go into too many details here but I testify that God qualifies us in our weaknesses. Again, my prayers have turned into pleas for help. Help to find the right door to knock on, and help to say what we are supposed to say to soften the hearts of the people we speak to.
Mana ada dead.
Here's to the best 6 weeks of my mission coming up.
xo Sister Wynn
P.S. TRANSFER NEWS: Everyone in Miri is staying! :) Which is awesome because these missionaries and I make a pretty good team :) Looks like I was born here and will die here! <3
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