The National Zoo and a Baptism

Halo Keluargaku,

This week was a great week! For starters, we just got back from the National Zoo, and let me tell you, it was a blast (if not a little bit hot)! So, so far here in KL we've been going out and having adventures on P-Day, which has been really nice actually. So, for the next few weeks we're looking at doing the National Museum and this thing called something like the Shah Alam Jungle Walk, which is this huge rope bridge kind of thing you can cross to walk in the tree tops of the jungle. Sounds like fun!

Buuut the best news by far is that **** was baptized this last week! Woohoo! And it was a close call too! On Friday we went to the church to start to fill up the font for a child who was being baptized the next day only to find out that, surprise, surprise, the ceiling above the font had collapsed into the font because of a broken pipe, water had filled the font completely, and the relief society room was soaked with about a centimeter of standing water throughout. What a mess! Well, anyway, we figured out how to get the water off as quickly as we could, cleaned up a little and then left it to some Malaysian contractors to take care of the rest. We were definitely nervous, but they actually did a great job and the baptism the next day went great aaand on Sunday **** was baptized as well. Man, he's doing awesome. We actually went by his house the next day and walked in on him having kind of a get together with his work buddies. We were really nervous to see that there were some people drinking and smoking since **** just barely overcame a Word of Wisdom problem, but we were really proud to see that he hadn't had anything. Awesome!

So, for a flashback to the Zoo, it was really fun, but the very best part was to see that a lot of the animals there were really pretty local. There were even some things we saw there that I'd seen in the wild (Including the mudskipper fish)! It brought a special pride though everytime we saw Malaysian hornbills, or sunbears, or elephants, or any of that kind of thing though knowing that they were from our own backyard. It was kind of fun to see that even if an animal wasn't from Malaysia, I still had a pretty good idea where the country they were from was. It's crazy that we just don't ever learn anything about Asia, but it's true, I think before I got here I couldn't have found Myanmar or Cambodia on a map. So, super fun!

As kind of a side note, last night I stayed with some of the other elders here in KL since Elder Peterson and I both had to go places to do baptismal interviews, and we ended up getting to spend some time talking with the Senior Couple there who is the Senior Couple in charge of family history here in Malaysia (what an intimidating job)! Anyway, that reminded me that I'd heard family search has had a lot of changes lately, so I just checked it out and it's really cool now! I guess the genealogies for a lot of the members of the church are already on the website because of church records, and they automatically sign up all the missionaries with family search accounts, so I've just gotten to browse our family history a little bit! It's pretty cool. Anyway, if you get a chance, you should check it out! It's funny, it actually says that a lot of Gandmama's brother's work is "In Progress," but not yet complete. Do you know anything about that? Gandmama's sealing to her parents actually says it's just reserved, but not yet complete too. Strange...

Welp, other than that, we're having kind of a same-old same-old week here in KL. We're teaching another member of the family of the three Ibans that we just baptized, and she's really excited, so we should be seeing a lot of progress with her in the next few weeks. Thanks so much for all of your prayers for our investigators, it makes a huge difference and we can really see the Lord's hand blessing them.

It's so awesome to hear from you all! I love you all so much! Talk to you soon!

Love,
Elder Blissett