i guess it means it's time to get rid of max?

hey dad. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! thanks for the letter. no problem about not sending me anything. it's nice because i feel it's been a trend. if one of you guys forgets to write me, at least the other one remembers. so about the toe incident, i guess it means it's time to get rid of max? i see all the malaysian cats and cant help but think of how spoiled he is, and he doesnt even know it. cats here are so abused by kids. but theyre fighters. sucks about mom's experience at the hospital. hope things get better.

when it comes to amanda.. does she not like her missionaries? shame. i dont know much of what the work is like in las vegas, but when i was a ward missionary i remember the missionaries had like no lessons. amanda could be the only "sure" thing they've got. i hope things get better for her and she has a better experience.

when it comes to sibu jaya, things are going pretty well. we just got word that the first presidency approved sibu jaya as it's own branch, which means hopefully soon we'll have more than just concrete walls. that's all after only 6 months of area opening. this area has been blessed a lot. recently we've just been working had at getting referrals and we've been getting them. it really feels like the things you pray for do come. nice. and we've even been lucky enough to have some good people come up to us and start talking. and also it looks like i might be here for another month or so, which is nice. life is going. i hope things are going well for you. have you ever gone to a lesson with amanda to help the missionaries out? it might help her to have someone there that she knows who also has a lot of experience in the church. might be kind of fun as well. anyways, i'm sorry i kind of unloaded all my weeks stories and pictures on mom. i hope you can read those and find something you like. love you dad. hope your b day is going well.
love, zac


alright, ma, so those pics were the baptisms that happened the last few weeks. the pic titled chris is the son of the indonesian lady we baptized. he likes to wrestle and follow us around. he gets real excited when we come and cries when we leave. someday, he'll be a missionary. his mom has been helping us like crazy. apparently, she knows everyone in sibu jaya. everytime we meet someone, she knows them already. the good thing is she's the most knowledgable person we have in the gospel and she's got a really good conversion. and she talks to everyone about church, which is nice. i've never met anyone who thinks about God and church as much as she does, which is kind of sad since i'm around missionaries all day. anyways, she told me last week that she talked to her friend who used to go the the SIB church with her about how she changed churches and told her conversion story and all that. well, the lady she talked to happened to be a dropped investigator from a while back who told us she didnt want to learn all of a sudden. i guess her pastor had told her not to learn anymore. but catherine talked to her and now she wants to learn again. i guess you never know what the influence of a friend can do, eh? also i guess her daughter had a dream where we were climbing up a hill that no one else could climb to get to this building and that we went and fell of the edge of the hill, but we were angels so we flew up to heaven and were saved. her ecplanation was pretty funny, but i guess i'll support anything that makes someone want to learn. we've been getting lots of referrals from that indonesian lady, and life is going well. lots of people wanting to learn. hopefully soon we'll have more baptisms.

also, i talked las week about another kid who had a dream. we met him once, and he seemed really good. unfortunately it rained on sunday, so he didnt quite make it to church. but we have an appointment with him on thursday and we're still hoping to meet his parents. things are looking good with him. he brought another friend when we met him the first time, so we'll how things go with him as well.

on monday we were heading home from a flat and we walked past this guy wearing clothes that normally only muslims wear, so we assumed he was melayu. anyways, he comes up and starts speaking english to us, which happens fairly often as lots of people like to test their english on the white guys. his was pretty good. so we talk to him about his religion and he says he's christian, which surprized us but was good. so we asked him where he lived and he just invited us over for the next day. so we met him and taught him the first lesson. he seemed pretty good and hopefully on saturday we'll meet his wife who was at work. this last week was kind of strange for us because all these investigators just came out of no where.

now that i think about it, we had another awesome investigating family come up to us. it was some guy we saw at a gawai party who said he wanted to come to church but wouldnt give us his phone number or address. so we didnt think much of it at the time and he never showed up to church. but last week we ran into him again out of no where. we talked about church. he's still a "pagan" as the government calls religionless people. anyways, he said he wanted to go to church again, but this time he gave us a phone number. so we called him sunday morning and things were good. then we get to church and he's the first person there, almost an hour early. he brought his mom and two kids. they all seem pretty good. they mentioned how people always tried to bring them to church, but they never had a desire until we talked to them. and they really like church, so pretty sweet.

man ive got so many things i could talk about. this week was awesome. anyways, we made friends with this highschool group of kids that always play soccer that we got off a referral. i talked about them last week i think when i mentioned we were trying to meet all their families. so we were trying to meet with this one kids mom. we called them and they said we could come over, but they said they were at some relatives house and they really wanted us to come. we were thinking it should be pretty sweet to get muliple families at once. but it turned out to be a 1 year old's first birthday party and there were like 30 people crammed into this tiny house. so the reason they were so anxious to have us come over is because malaysians have this church ralated tradition of "sembahyang" or worship. where basically they pay some priest to come over to pray and preach and chant. ive only seem them from the outside and they are pretty crazy. anyways, little did we know that we were expected to be doing that. we get there and they just want us to pray. after the prayer they all looked around and were like "is that it?" it was pretty awkward. then they tried to give us 10 ringgit. but it was a fun experience.
that's crazy that you broke your toe. i always try to tell you to be more careful. tisk. so those doctors made you pay all this money and they didnt even do anything? that's pretty lame. it's why i never got to them. but i've seen plenty of cat's tails here in malaysia that couldve done with some treatment after a broken bone. every single cat has a nasty crumple and or otherwise unstraight tail. but i digress. it's cool that you still got to watch fireworks. we got invited randomly over by recent converts for a barbeque for our 4th of july. america! but yeah, so we had some pig lungs and stomach. they go well with mowed grass. it's good that you were able to share something for relief society. breakin out of that shell. what's next, a talk in sacrament? i hope i'm there to see it. thanks a ton for the recipes. that should be good. we'll be the talk of the town. more so than normal. anyways, i'll have to talk to you later. times a runnin out. have a good week. i hope that toe gets better. love ya ma.
love, zac