Beautiful City, Beautiful People

Apa khabar kawan,

My Malay is about to get real good. I just want to say Kuala Lumpur is BEAUTIFUL. I hope you like the pictures. It's also full of the most beautiful women I've ever seen, especially because they're all Muslim, Indian, or middle-eastern. Sister Parcell is amazing, but you already knew that because she's been in every area of my mission for the last 7 months, haha. It's cool to see how much we've both grown as missionaries since the last time we saw each other. She's amazing at talking to people on buses and the LRT. She makes everyone feel so comfortable, loved, and beautiful.

Well I rolled off the plane from Kuching with Elder Egbert last Thursday, looking fly. We dusted off the kampung dirt from our shoulders and bought KLIA passes (the express train that takes you from the airport to the center of the city) and impressed everyone at the airport with our Malay. Ironically, I feel like people here are more impressed that I speak Malay than people were in Sarawak haha. The Malay here is really pretty, I had a hard time understanding people at first because all of the verbs were actually conjugated haha and there's a different accent here. I also taught a couple lessons in Indonesian which is a whole other ballgame.

I got to meet my new district Friday morning, because we had a service project where we repainted at a women's shelter. I LOVE them. Remember Elder Ferguson, from the MTC? He's my new district leader, and he's still a diva. There's Elder Robbins, who I served with in Singapore, and then Elders Rasmussen and Beckstrand (who I also served with in Singapore). They're the KL Zone Leaders and also in our branch. Elder Rasmussen and I taught a couple lessons in Indon and he said it was really nice to have another bahasa speaker around.

District conference was this week, so we got to see President and Sister Mains. The Saturday night session was centered on member missionary work. You all hear that? Go thrash the nations. There are a lot of Americans in my branch because our area includes the U.S. Embassy, so yesterday, a couple families had us over for Sunday dinner and we ate Hawaiian haystacks. I almost shed a tear, I've missed homecooked American food. I told them all last week I ate biawak and gutterfish haha.

I had an interesting experience Saturday before conference. Sister Parcell and I made a goal to have more faith. We need our missionaries to have more faith. We told our leaders if no other missionary had faith in our zone, we'll find all the investigators if we needed to (jokingly of course). We're not working with a lot of people right now, so we've been calling endless lists of numbers of potential investigators and former investigators. A lot of sisters who served in our branch before told Sister Parcell "That person has been called a million times already," or "They're always busy, it's not worth your time," but we just shrugged and called them all again. And we stacked our week with appointments! Sister Parcell said a lot of those people she's never been able to meet with.

I called a former who was saved into our phone, and you could tell he has read The Book of Mormon but also has access to Google. Initially, the conversation was civil, but then he trashed me and kept asking questions full of guile but didn't really allow me to respond...I kept trying to tie it back into Jesus Christ. He said, "I bet your parents indoctrinated you."
"No, my mom is actually a Buddhist."
"Oh...well I bet you grew up in some Mormon bubble,"
"Actually, I grew up in Maryland, Oregon and Japan. Hey, so earlier you said you were lacking faith, do you still have your Book of Mormon? Can you read Alma 32 for me?"
"Alma 32? Please, every missionary gives me that chapter, you'll have to do better than that."
"Okay, what about Ether 12 or 2 Nephi 31?"

As this young man trashed my testimony, saying it was recycled and indoctrinated, I closed my eyes and prayed to love him. He asked something like, "Well what do you take to be a belief?"
I told him what I believed. I called him by name and said, "I KNOW, with all the conviction that I have, that Jesus is the Christ. He is my Savior and Redeemer. I know I have been personally saved by Jesus Christ. That's why I'm here calling you and everyone else. I want everyone to know they have a Savior, a big brother, and friend."
"Oh, it looks like we have something in common."
I expressed love for him, told him God loves him, and if there was anything I or another church member said or did that offended him, that I was sorry.
He hung up.

I looked at Sister Parcell. My hands were shaking. "What just happened?" She asked.
I cried for the first time on my mission and said, "Sis, this church is true." I cried and we laughed and then I asked if the Book of Mormon missionaries ever cried after giving a powerful testimony. Then we drew a picture of Samuel the Lamanite crying on the wall. We laughed so hard.

Jumpa lagi <3

Sister Wynn