Tawau is Awesome

Tawau is doing awesome! It's definitely been a tougher week this week, but things are looking pretty promising for having a good turnout of investigators at church, which is something we really need. Elder Stewart and I are starting to try some things that are a little bit new. Working on spending lots of time focusing on specific areas that look promising, where we have members willing to do missionary work, and also trying out some new areas that don't really seem like they've had missionaries before. So things are looking really promising with that so far.

Again, we're still just running into miracle people who just seem born ready to accept the gospel. This last week, one super awesome recent convert brought *another* friend to church (Our recent convert has been a member for about a month and has already brought something like six new people to church. She's awesome). At some point during church, I guess our recent convert asked her friend how she was enjoying it. Her friend said it was great. Encouraged, our recent convert asked if she thought she'd like to be baptized into this church, to which her friend said yes! Awesome! Sometimes it makes you feel a little foolish. We spend all this time struggling and working and striving to get people to keep commitments and to learn about the church and to improve their lives, and then Heavenly Father just drops one totally prepared right in your lap without any intervention on your part. Sometimes I almost feel like he's just showing us how much better at this work He is than we are. When you work so hard at something I think to start to try and ascribe any success you have to your own efforts, but it's things like this that show me it was really Heavenly Father all the way. We can't really do anything without Him, but he could do everything without us! I think He just loves me enough to let me come along for the ride and try to learn something while he does His own work!

So, things are going well. We're in the Lord's hands, and he knows how to do His work. We're still working hard to do the best we can! Learning more and growing more everyday.

On a quick side note, it turns out the wildlife here in Tawau is actually pretty cool. In most of the mission you don't get to see a whole lot, and even here you usually have to get a little farther from town to see much, but we've managed to spot some pretty cool stuff. One highlight we spotted one day outside the church. The church is actually right on a small beach, and one day while looking out over the beach, Elder Stewart shouted to me "Elder, come here!" I went slowly thinking he was pulling some kind of trick on me, and even stopped for a few seconds until he shouted "No really, come here!" I finally walked over to spot with him a five to six foot monitor lizard ("biawak" in Malay) crawling its way across the beach. It was awesome!

Yesterday we were out looking for a new "kampung" we hadn't ever visited when elder stewart noticed something moving around in the leaves by the road. He said it was a snake so I came over to try and get a look. (Don't worry, we were still a reasonable distance away. We were being careful. :D ) So, we looked down in the gutter but couldn't see anything at first, until I saw a nearly perfectly camoflauged insect moving around! It looked like a stick bug to me at first, but it was perfectly green and was shaped to look like blades of grass. I threw a rock down to try and get it to move so we could get a better look, but accidently hit it! Stunned, it just sort of laid there for a little bit, when all of the sudden this crazy, slimy looking, brown, 10-inch lizard came out of the grass and started to gobble it up (The lizard was what Elder Stewart first thought was a snake)! It was wild! Super fun though.

So, Tawau is awesome. I'm having a great time here!

Anyway, I love you all so much. I'm working hard to do the Lord's work the best I know how. Thanks for all your support!

Love,

Elder Blissett