Hey everybody,
First, if I could have all of you read one thing from my emails, it would be about the video "The Atonement, How it Applies to Missionary Work." I quoted it at the bottom, everyone should watch it.
Second, in the MTC, Brother Simon always talked about how he had the craziest stories from his mission, and it's because he was a good, diligent missionary, and honestly, I think because he asked for them. I started praying for crazy stories too (my conversations with God go something like, "If I diligently do my studies, have faith, and act on that faith, can something insanely awesome happen to me today?") I live for those days.
So here's how me and my friends ended up on a rooftop garden with these English businessmen: I met a really cool guy on the MRT, gave him a copy of The Book of Mormon, and testified of Christ and asked if he wanted to learn more about the Gospel. He said of course! He spoke like 5 languages perfectly, including Cantonese, so I told him I had a friend (Elder Pun) who speaks Cantonese and they'd have to meet. I made an appointment with him later that week, and told Elders Hunsaker and Pun we were having a pass-off lesson with this guy. This guy texts me back and says, 'Yeah, just meet me at my work during my lunch hour, I'll order food." I told him okay, thank you, that's really nice. He texts back, "Oh, my bosses want to meet you and join our lunch. Hope that's okay. Oh and we'll be having lunch on our rooftop garden."
I thought "What did this just turn into?" and then kind of shrugged because what can you do?
Anyway, Elder Hunsaker called Wednesday morning and said, "Hey Elder Jackson is in Singapore (picking up his trainee) and he's following us today. You two are friends, right?" I kind of freaked out on the phone and told Elder Hunsaker about how great of a missionary Elder Jackson is and how stoked I was to see him, and how I'm pretty sure I overwhelm him with my personality. Sister Hansen and I met up with the three Elders (Elder Jackson had his ghetto Malaysia backpack, it was perfect) and we headed over to Raffles Place, the business center of Singapore to find these business guys and try to teach them the Gospel. We looked like the weirdest group of kids ever. I love it. I caught up with Elder Jackson, even though I just saw him 2 weeks ago. He's really excited to train and gets more talkative every time I see him.
We found the office (we crammed into an old fashioned elevator and weren't sure if it could handle our combined weight) and found the receptionist, and then waited. It was one of those modern offices with warm lighting and I think all of us felt a little out of place, even though I tried to dress nice. My friend from the MRT met us and took us to his office, where we met his bosses, the two coolest, most laidback guys from the UK. And they had fantastic hair. And said "Brilliant."
They showed us to their garden roof-top and we sat and waited for them to bring us drinks and food...and the five of us tried not to sit there with our jaws hanging open. I turned to Elder Jackson and said, "What just happened to our lives?" We sat down and had lunch, one of the Malay girls who worked there ate with us and she was super impressed with my Malay, even though it's not that good, and I was kind of at their table so we just had a conversation about business, missionary work (I showed them my pictures from Malaysia which they got a kick out of) and I tried testifying of Christ in everything I said. And it worked. Elder Jackson helped, and he rocked it. It was cool to be able to teach a sort-of lesson with him because I never got a chance to in the MTC. He said afterwards I'm a good teacher, which meant a lot coming from him. Anyway, one of the English guys was super interested and gave his card to Elder Hunsaker. We high-fived afterwards.
There were so many good things about that appointment. I was glad Elder Jackson got to be there, he's an old friend in the mission now. I also got to meet his trainee the next day, and Elder Jackson was SO excited and telling him all about JB. I told him I still maintain I'll see him in East Malaysia.
Before Zone Conference, we got TONS of church materials sent to the office, including all of The Book of Mormon copies that were on hold somewhere. A lot of materials are still being held up at the Malaysia border, but we got everything in Singapore. You know how they tell the missionaries to flood the earth with The Book of Mormon? This wasn't a flood, this was a tidal wave. And they went fast. It was so cool to see, but for a couple days, the mission office was a mess of BoM copies and pamphlets in just about every language.
I didn't have time to email about Art and Barbie's wedding last week, it was amazing, Sister Hansen and I ate disgusting amounts of food and we had a fun table of people they went to school with, and we have an appointment with a couple of them tomorrow because they wanted to learn more about what Art is learning. And they're engineers.
Like I said last week, we saw so many miracles! Sister Hansen and I created a game plan called "Operation Find More Priesthood" because 3rd ward, and the church in general, needs more faithful men who can hold the priesthood. So we've been focusing on talking to a lot more men on the MRT and everywhere else, and meeting with the men in our ward that work as engineers, accountants, lawyers, etc. who work with other guys. And it's been working! We had one investigator given to us by the Woodlands sisters, a super cool Filipino guy who builds supercomputers, and it was the day I was on splits with Sister Bishop, so the three of them gave me the lead in the lesson. After I recited the First Vision to him, it was kind of awkward because one missionary is supposed to recite it and the other missionary is supposed to testify. I recited it (it was hard for me to learn in English, by the way) and paused, waiting for any of the three sisters to back me up. After a really long pause, I said, "I know what I just said is true." Haha.
We asked this guy how he felt because he made a weird face, and he said, "I...am SO happy!"
Transfers were last week. Elder Crosland is no longer AP, which he's happy about, but he's sad to leave third ward. He's training in 4th ward now with a kid who's literally twice his size. Our district is exactly the same besides that, except the Chinese Sisters are moving out of the apartment in two weeks, which Sister Hansen and I are so sad about. We had one last hurrah with the APs Monday night, we had a family night with a bunch of families in our ward. Elder Crosland put a fish head on Sister Hansen's plate, and everyone said she had to eat the eye. I kept saying, "Do it if you're real, do it if you're real!" And she was real. She ate it and it was disgusting. Then, she said, "Oh look Sister Wynn, there's another eye, you can eat this one!" and put it on my plate. So I had to eat a fish eye too. We told everyone they have to make all the Sisters who serve in Filipino ward eat a fish eye now. Oh and we're getting Elder Crosland back. He needs to watch out. Like always, we were totally on time getting home from that appointment, because we always get home on time when we have an appointment we go to with the APs...because cab drivers always understand what we're saying and take us to the right street.
It was good to see Elders Jackson and Ferguson and Sister Anderson, they're all training now. Elder Robinson just rolled in from KK and he's the new AP, he's definitely one of those missionaries that looks like he was born to be a missionary. He has the dirtiest West Malaysian accent ever and it's awesome. Sister Hansen and I love him already, in a professional and platonic way. We've been planning a ward activity to help get people excited about missionary work, more on that next week maybe.
I love you all. One of my favorite quotes from The Atonement video is when Elder Holland says, "Now Presidents, if the missionaries can come to love and appreciate it, the Atonement will carry them, perhaps even more important than it will carry their investigators. You let them know when they struggle,
when they are rejected,
when they're spit upon and cast out, and made a hiss and a by-word,
they stand shoulder to shoulder with the best life this world has ever known.
The only pure and perfect missionary that ever lived.
They have every reason to stand tall, and be grateful that the Savior and Redeemer of the world knows all about their sorrows and their afflictions,
and for a moment or two in their lives, they will understand what he went through for them."
I think I'm starting to get it now.
-Sister Wynn
No comments:
Post a Comment