Apa khabar friends and family,
This week, I got chased by dogs, rode my bike in the pouring rain (Malaysian rain, the kind that goes in every direction, not the American kind), fell on a rusty fence and got a little puncture wound on my knee (thank goodness for tetanus shots right?), almost fell in garbage water but saved myself with my foot, so only my shoe got nasty, and we knocked on an Iban' couple's door but they were on drugs and scared us away but the woman also did a nice Iban dance for us from a distance. My legs are also covered in mosquito bites and I have bruises I don't remember getting.
I know it sounds like I'm complaining, but I am having the time of my life. Missionary work is the hardest, funnest, most rewarding thing I've ever experienced. Everything is so worth it. The trick is to embrace the chaos of it all.
I'm glad no one told me how hard missionary work actually is. Actually, I think everyone tried to tell me, but I was too naive and excited to listen. There's this giant bridge we cross every day from our house to our area, and it's on an incline. It never gets easier to cross in the mornings, but at night, we somehow push through, get up the hill, and coast all the way back to our house. I always say a little prayer of thanks for our selamat jalan on that bridge. Biking on the busy 4-lane highways (they're the equivalent of Commercial street in Salem, but with no hippie bike lanes) is surprisingly safe. Most of the cars slow down or move out of our way and I feel pretty safe. I also learned where all of the bumps, potholes, and gravel spots are in the neighborhoods in our area by now. The only thing I hate about my mission is how much the men cat-call us as we ride our bikes! They're either in their cars and call out the window, or on their mopeds, or on the streets, and every time they do it I feel sick. Ugh. But again, it's worth it to be in this beautiful city.
Last Preparation Day, after I emailed you, we went to Parkson's, a shopping center with a bowling alley, and bowled with the Miri 2nd branch so we could get to know them better. Even though I could barely speak to any of them, I had fun and I laughed with them when we all got gutter balls, and I would high-five them if one of us got a strike. On our way there, that's when it rained, so it took us an hour to get there when it normally would have taken us 30 minutes. That's what you get when you bike through 6 inches of water. We showed up soaking wet, like we had just jumped in a river or something. I looked at the scoreboards and learned the ward member's names as they bowled. Tricky, right? It's so important in missionary work to get the members on your side. If they like you, they will help you find their friends and families who they want to have the gospel. If they don't think you're working hard, and especially if you don't make an effort to learn their names, then of course they aren't going to have you teach their loved ones. One important thing I learned in the MTC is you want the Elders in your district to like you so they take you on jungle adventures, you want the senior missionary couples to like you so they feed you and give you rides to places, and you want the ward members to like you. But you DON'T want your investigators to like you too much. You want them to have a testimony of Christ, not of missionaries. There are a couple women we tried to contact, but they don't want to be taught anymore because a Sister missionary from a couple transfers ago was teaching her and she left. That's frustrating. Sister LeBaron and I are trying really hard to make sure we don't get too close, and that our investigators have good friends at church.
Ngian loves learning from us. She is a tiny Iban woman, and the first couple lessons with her, when she spoke, I kept thinking "Wow, I can't understand any Malay at all!" But it turns out she was speaking Malay mixed with a lot of Iban. She's been teaching us some Iban words. Like the word for food is makai, and the word for drink is mirup. We taught a couple lessons at Sister Tungalim's house (I'll send a picture with a little girl sitting in front of a wooden house, that's her house) and they made us Sarawak food! They made us these little shrimp crackers that were deep fried. We watched them make it in Tungalim's kitchen. It was a scene I'll never forget: this tiny little kitchen where my head almost touches the ceiling, and you can see the lake behind her house and though the cracks between the floorboards, and there was this little skinny orange cat sleeping on their floor. We also had Family Home Evening with them (Malam Keluarga) and since it was at night, we did it by candle light in their sweet little home. Ngian's neighbors harass her for taking the lessons from us though. They leave her broom at the top of her stairs to try and make her trip and fall down the stairs, and they call her a devil worshipper. It makes me so sad and angry. But we remind her that God loves her and will never forget about her, and she is His daughter. She doesn't seem too phased though. Kusnadi is doing well too. We are helping him to stop smoking. He and his sons came to church for all three hours yesterday (instead of just 1 like last week) although he had to leave Sunday school a couple times to smoke. We also visited this one house that was in a state of chaos yesterday. This woman
lives in a housing complex and has one daughter, but she takes care of all of the kids who live there. There are like 20 kids and a million puppies running around, and the guys are always smoking like chimneys and we heard they're always drunk at night. We want to turn it all around. One of the guys, who is 17, took a Book of Mormon from me because I was reading a verse to the woman and he helped me finish reading, and I ended up giving it to him. He seemed pretty interested. It was amazing to see their countenances change when we talked about our message of hope.
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