Halo Keluargaku,
Well, it's been another great week down here in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. Yesterday we had a Mission Leadership training and the day before we had a Zone Leader Council, so now we've finally gotten all the companionship issues and the trainings and the travel and everything out of the way and we can finally just focus on doing missionary work in our area (at least for a little bit :D). We're very blessed to have had some good things happen here though regardless of how little time we've been able to spend actually doing regular work in our area, so thanks for your prayers. It makes a difference!
Well, I think some of the most exciting news I have to report is that we confirmed that Elder Bednar will be holding a missionary meeting with us when he comes next month. Exciting, huh? He'll be here on May 23 and he'll be holding a meeting with all the missionaries in West Malaysia and Singapore, so there's some real advantages to being in KL right now. It would definitely be cool to get to meet with two apostles on my mission, so we'll just have to cross our fingers that I'm still around when he gets here!
Our investigators are doing well. We just put one of our Pakistani investigators named *** on date for next month, so that's really exciting. It's funny, almost all the Pakistanis here are Muslim, but somehow we've actually managed to find a few of the Christian ones as we've gone about, so that's a lot of fun. *** actually contacted us. His brother is a member of the church in Pakistan (His brother actually served a mission there), and so when he decided to change his life he just gave us a call. Really exciting.
Unfortunately our friend from Myanmar's father is sick again. I guess he had to be readmitted to the hospital this week. If I remember right, they said he had myloma in his brain? I don't really know what that is, but apparently it needs to be treated with Chemotherapy. We'll keep on praying for them and hope that you will too! Our investigator is holding up really well though. It's awesome to see how well she takes care of her father.
So, the work moves on. Elder Lang and I are actually getting along really well. We've got some good plans to help out the zone and we'll hopefully be able to be an influence for some real good out here. It's awesome to be a misisonary and have your whole responsibility helping other people. It's been the best experience of my life so far, and I think there's still a lot of awesome experiences ahead of me. The gospel is 100% true, and it's such a blessing to be able to spend two years sharing that full-time with others.
I feel so grateful to be in a church with living apostles and prophets. It was awesome to hear what they said at conference (isn't it funny how every conference kind of feels like the best one you've ever heard?). I can't wait to dive into it and make some changes. They mark the path to real happiness!
I love you so much. Thanks for your support that allows me to come out here and do this awesome job. It's the best, and I wouldn't trade it for anything!
I love you!
Elder Blissett
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Pakistani Investigators
Halo Keluargaku,
Well, Elder Lang and I have had a week of hard work! It feels like we were doing more knocking this week with some less than encouraging results than I've done for a long time, but our spirits are actaully still pretty high. Elder Lang is a lot of fun and it wasn't really very burdensome at all to get out there and put on some miles. It's funny, I've thought for a while that knocking is a little bit like magic. Your teaching pool will be running low, you go out and knock for a few hours, and then all of a sudden you have people to teach! Sometimes you just have to get out there and put on the grind. :D
There's actually a lot of good things that happened too though. One of the highlights is that our Pakistani investigator is doing awesome! We've been teaching a lot of the commandmants this week that we really anticipated having trouble with, things that would require a big lifestyle change, but he's taken it all like a champ! He already identifies the church as his church pretty strongly and he's looking really solid for baptism on May 15th. He's even quitting smoking. He went from smoking 20 sticks a day about a week ago to just one every two days when we last checked. He's doing awesome. He says he doesn't really think that he was ever really addicted to smoking, that he just did it as a style thing. Looks like that might be the case!
Some of the best news though is that one of his friends is also progressing really well, is promising to bring more family members to church this week, and he wants to introduce us to another one of his friends this week! I really believe that one of the best indicators of conversion is when people start to share what they've learned with others, and *** is doing a great job of that. So we should be seeing a lot of good things come out of all of this in the near future. Blessings for sure.
Other than that, we went on exchanges with some of the other elders here in KL on Monday, gave a training to everyone in KL city on Tuesday, and are planning to go on exchanges again on Thursday. President Clark talked to us about doing exchanges more often, so we're taking that advice to heart. It keeps us really busy, but it's pretty fun and productive too, so we're excited to do it.
Elder Lang and I are planning to go to the Orang Asli museum today. Orang Asli (or "original people") are kind of like the real original native people here in Malaysia, but now they've mostly disappeared. There's just a few scattered "kampung" (villages) here and there now, so I'm really interested to see if I can learn what happened to them all. Should be a lot of fun!
Well, that's pretty much the news from KL. We're getting a lot of rain lately. It's funny, you always know if it's going to rain in KL if the afternoon is really, really hot. I don't really know what the connection there is, but we've been having a lot of hot afternoons and rainy storms. I guess it's just the season (although I've come to believe that there aren't really any distinct seasons here!).
I love you all so much. It's always so good to read a letter from home. Hope everything is going great and I'll talk to you soon! (Like in three weeks :D)
Love you!
Elder Blissett
Well, Elder Lang and I have had a week of hard work! It feels like we were doing more knocking this week with some less than encouraging results than I've done for a long time, but our spirits are actaully still pretty high. Elder Lang is a lot of fun and it wasn't really very burdensome at all to get out there and put on some miles. It's funny, I've thought for a while that knocking is a little bit like magic. Your teaching pool will be running low, you go out and knock for a few hours, and then all of a sudden you have people to teach! Sometimes you just have to get out there and put on the grind. :D
There's actually a lot of good things that happened too though. One of the highlights is that our Pakistani investigator is doing awesome! We've been teaching a lot of the commandmants this week that we really anticipated having trouble with, things that would require a big lifestyle change, but he's taken it all like a champ! He already identifies the church as his church pretty strongly and he's looking really solid for baptism on May 15th. He's even quitting smoking. He went from smoking 20 sticks a day about a week ago to just one every two days when we last checked. He's doing awesome. He says he doesn't really think that he was ever really addicted to smoking, that he just did it as a style thing. Looks like that might be the case!
Some of the best news though is that one of his friends is also progressing really well, is promising to bring more family members to church this week, and he wants to introduce us to another one of his friends this week! I really believe that one of the best indicators of conversion is when people start to share what they've learned with others, and *** is doing a great job of that. So we should be seeing a lot of good things come out of all of this in the near future. Blessings for sure.
Other than that, we went on exchanges with some of the other elders here in KL on Monday, gave a training to everyone in KL city on Tuesday, and are planning to go on exchanges again on Thursday. President Clark talked to us about doing exchanges more often, so we're taking that advice to heart. It keeps us really busy, but it's pretty fun and productive too, so we're excited to do it.
Elder Lang and I are planning to go to the Orang Asli museum today. Orang Asli (or "original people") are kind of like the real original native people here in Malaysia, but now they've mostly disappeared. There's just a few scattered "kampung" (villages) here and there now, so I'm really interested to see if I can learn what happened to them all. Should be a lot of fun!
Well, that's pretty much the news from KL. We're getting a lot of rain lately. It's funny, you always know if it's going to rain in KL if the afternoon is really, really hot. I don't really know what the connection there is, but we've been having a lot of hot afternoons and rainy storms. I guess it's just the season (although I've come to believe that there aren't really any distinct seasons here!).
I love you all so much. It's always so good to read a letter from home. Hope everything is going great and I'll talk to you soon! (Like in three weeks :D)
Love you!
Elder Blissett
Thursday, April 7, 2011
A New (Old) Companion
Well, this week was kind of crazy, but to make a long story short, I'm getting another new companion. Kind of... Elder Gott is stuck in Singapore now with some visa issues, and so now they're going to send Elder Lang to be my new companion in KL. I don't know if you'll remember or not, but Elder Lang was actually my companion in the MTC, so it's kind of fun to have a companionship part 2. I'm really excited to get to work with him, it's gonna be awesome. So, being on exchanges waiting to get a companion has meant that in the last week I was only actually able to spend about 2 hours in my area. I couldn't even go to church in my own branch since I was on exchanges in Melaka. Definitely a crazy part of my mission. I have some great news though. We've definitely seen the power of prayer and the priesthood in our area this last week. You'll remember ***'s father who was so sick in the hospital last week, couldn't talk, couldn't walk, couldn't do anything. Well, today he's going back home apparently completely recovered. I haven't met him yet, but one of our investigators called to say that he's back to normal, walking and talking and the whole works. What a miracle! It's funny, the blessing that we gave him kind of suggested that he would get better so that he'd be able to return to his duties as a father, but I have to admit, I think my faith was a little bit weak to see such a miraculous result. It's really awesome. Thanks so much for your prayers too, I know that that's made a big difference. Well, hopefully we'll be watching conference this weekend, but I heard that it's delayed in at least some parts of Malaysia because the DVDs haven't arrived yet. Hopefully they get to KL, I'm really excited to hear what everyone has to say. It's true, Conference is a little bit like Christmas on your mission. Other than that, there's not a lot going on! All the elders in the zone are doing well. We played a few hours of badminton today (which surprisingly enough is like the national sport of Malaysia) and had a lot of fun. Turns out badminton is one of my favorite sports, so who would have guessed, huh? Thanks again so much for all your prayers. We'll need them for the next couple of weeks building the area back up with a new companionship, but I think things are going to go really well. I love you all! I'll talk to you soon! Love you! Elder Blissett
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