Well this week was good. Hard, but good. I would be lying if I said there weren't days this week where I wanted to go home. And life wouldn't be bad if I went home. But the mission is good too, I promise. I'm happy that I made it to another P-Day and I don't have to worry about anything for 6 more hours. If anyone wants to talk me down, a nice email or letter would really do me good. How did you guys do it? How did you get through those months where you wanted to go home?
I had a really good heart-to-heart with Elder Trudo yesterday. He's a dear friend from the MTC and now he's my district leader. When he transferred here, he told us "I'm not some robot you report numbers to every week, if you ever need to hash things out, I'll listen." I just told him about our area, it's good but no obvious progression, which is okay, I feel stuck, and all these petty little things are getting to me. He said something along the lines of God doesn't expect us to be happy all the time, He doesn't expect everything to be perfect all the time, but He does expect us to trust Him.
Some way crappy stuff has been happening to some of our members, and I've been crying a little about it lately which is weird because I haven't cried that much since being on a mission. I think a lot of missionaries can relate, we teach a lot of people who don't realize they don't have to be stuck in their circumstances, but I also understand because I've been there. Thank goodness for the Atonement. It allows us to change. But people don't always understand, or don't know that they can get out, and I understand that too. Aduh. There's a kid in our branch who has been having a hard time, and we've found him wandering around every once in a while, so we invite him to follow us to our lessons, which cheers him up. We were sharing Mosiah 24:14 with a family, and I turned to him and told him "I want you to know and I promise you that He visits you in your afflictions." And then I almost started crying but I was able to stop myself, which is good because that probably would have freaked him out. Ha.
We were in another lesson and a girl in our branch took me aside and asked if she and this other kid could ride our bikes for a little bit because he's been having a hard time, and originally I said no because my bike is sketchy (um my brakes may have been failing me lately but anang erau it's in the bike shop now). But she poked her head in the door during our lesson again, and I gave her our lock combination with my hands as discreetly as I could so their parents wouldn't get mad, and then I turned to Sister Callor and said, "We need to stall. Find another scripture!"
So yeah those two kids are probably childhood sweethearts or something, and they don't even know it.
Sister Callor and I have been focusing on finding more people to teach lately because a lot of our investigators haven't been progressing as much as we want, so we're going to give them a little time to process what we've taught. So in the mean time, we've been knocking doors, mana2pun, praying specifically to find families. We've been pretty successful at getting into doors, which is nice. There was a day where all of our plans fell through, and it started raining pretty hard, so I biked up a hill into a secret kampung and saw this sweet old man sitting under his porch. I biked up to him and asked if we could wait under his roof because I didn't want to get kena hujan-ed. I saw that he was blind so I grabbed his hand and introduced myself. His wife came outside and invited us in, and I thought, "Sweet, this is going to be one of those miracle stories." But then I saw the jawi script above their door and thought "Hmm maybe not." This family was so sweet. We met all the daughters and granddaughters and they were all beautiful. The dad was so cool. He said, "I know you can't legally teach me, but it's not about my religion versus your religion, it's about friendship. You have friends here anytime." It was nice to sip hot Milo and not have to worry about anything for a bit, and now if I ever come back to Malaysia I have a place to stay. Luckily, they pointed us to their neighboring kampung which has a lot of Christians, and they said, "Go talk to them, we'll put in a good word for you!"
I almost killed Elders Stowell and Poppleton the other night, but I couldn't because they're so sweet and genuine. They asked us to go see a less active family in their area, in Bintawa, the industrial section of Kuching that's jauh from civilization. They weren't able to go because they had a really important lesson in Sungai Apong, and because we love them, we said we would go. We cancelled a couple of our investigator appointments and organized everything so they could receive a blessing, and biked in the pouring rain in the middle of the night to get out there. We planned to meet the senior couple at the entrance of Bintawa, so we biked over there, took shelter under an isolated building, and waited. They weren't able to find us for a while, so after the third call, I heard Elder Stowell's voice in the background. I hung up and said, "Sister Callor, the Elders are with the senior couple. There's no reason for us to be here. I'm going to kill them."
When they finally found us, we were soaked, and of course, the elders were perfectly dry. Elder Stowell gave me this sheepish look, and I couldn't be mad at him anymore. I love those two. They're amazing missionaries, and the appointment itself was really fun. But man are boys stupid sometimes, haha. Welcome to rainy season, I've never been so cold while biking in the rain.
Anyway, Sister Fonbuena once told me the distance between heaven and hell is the distance between our head and our heart. We go to church, we understand why the gospel is important, but are we always living it? Have we internalized it? While I'm preaching repentance to the people here, am I turning around and speaking guile? Am I forgiving? Am I striving to be like the Savior in every aspect of my life? If I think about it too much, I get overwhelmed and a little sad, but it's a good visual.
All last month, I was telling Elder Capener "I don't know if I can do this for another six months. I don't know if I can make it." But the time does pass, and as I was busy whining about my problems, it suddenly hit me that I have less than five months left here. I don't know if I can give another six months, but I can give the Lord five.
Cheehoo.
-Sister Wynn
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| Zzzzz..... |
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