hari raya

hey dad. i'm sorry youve been sick. i hope you are feeling better now. i was also not feeling to good the past
couple of weeks. i guess those bugs just find their way around the world. how are the classes doing? any giving
you trouble? so how did they solve that issue with the permanent substitute who didnt speak french? i'm sorry
this letter is so short. i sent quite a few pics so it ate up most of my time. please refer to the emails that i
wrote to mom to get a scoop on my week and see the pics. it was hari raya here in malaysia, celebrating the end
of the month of fasting. so people were pretty excited. like i wrote to mom, we got to meet and take pictures
with the governor of malaysia. lots of food! anyways, i gotta get going. love you dad.
love, zac

Zachary Royden Hill
to me

show details 9:17 PM (58 minutes ago)


wee! it was hari raya this week. you know, like that big party they have where they eat a bunch after the month
of fasting? that one. it was pretty fun, and made for an exciting week.we got invited to a few open houses where
it was expected that we just eat as much as we could. everyone was excited to have the white guys over, and needles
s to say, wanted pictures. anyways, i sent a pic of me and my companion, elder wheelwright, standing with a pretty
old malaysian man. that is the governor of the malaysian state of sarawak. we managed to snag an invite to his
open house to celebrate hari raya and got a pic with him. pretty sweet, huh? the big white building is his
house/palace. anyways, the picture of the lighted city at night is singapore when i was the 3 weeks ago. they had
some youth olympics thing going on, so it was a pretty crazy time to be there. lots of fire works. the picture of
4 missionaries is myself and the rest of my district outside of the governors palace. all the baptism pics are
from my last baptism in sibu jaya yet. still working on a kuching baptism. we'll see how things go.

i still dont have too much to talk about. we did lots of contacting this week so far, but have yet to do the
follow up appointments with anyone new that we got. there's potential but not much to say about it right now.
well, i guess i'll talk about a few people. so a recent convert gave us a referral- this lady whose husband just
died, which is a pretty intimidating circumstance to go contact someone under. we went one day to bring the member
over to the ladies house, but the member had already left. we still felt like we should go see the referral. i'll
refer to her as norina from now on. when we went over there, there was still some sort of get together going on
after the funeral and the lady told us to come back in a week. so on tuesday was the day we went back. now we've
just been having lots of trainings on asking "inspired questions" which are questions that open up the heart and
mind to give place for a witness of the holy ghost. so we've really been working on asking better questions. so we
went to the house and norina came. the first thing she said was "i'm not ready yet. maybe in two months you can
try again" i can't even remember what we asked her, but after like two minutes of us talking, she asked us out of
no where to come in and sit down. so we did and she just opened up about what had been happening in her life. so
we just listened. and we just started talking to her. i really cant remember the way the conversation went, just
the results of it. multiple times during our discussion she turned to her father who was sitting near by and told
him that she felt really good talking to us. and then when the time came to leave, she told us that we could come
back to her house every day to teach her if we wanted. even twice a day, she said. i just couldnt believe the
change that occurred. it went from i'm not ready to come every day. it was a pretty cool experience.

then we met this other lady who is actually learning in the jehova's witnesses church. the rest of her family are
members, but she isnt yet. so we went there and talked with her before she left for work. we just really asked
about what she wants in life and out of religion. it was crazy how she just opened up to us. i was reallly
expecting her to really be opposed to us coming. she told us how she feels like lots of things are bad in the
world and wonders why God lets them happen. i dont know why, but after that we started talking about prophets and
why we have them and she said she believed there should be a prophet today to lead us. then she said she believed
that joseph smith's story could be true and she had a desire to follow the restored church. i guess her husband
is a non-christian and is uneasy about her learning about christianity, so we'll have to see how it goes.
i'm excited for it tho. i just really learned this week how much better things go when you focus teaching on
asking questions and getting the investigator to do much more talking. ibans and malaysians are pretty timid,
especially around two white guys, so they dont like to talk a lot. it takes a lot of work, but really is worth it
to get them to talk more.

anyways, i'm having lots of fun and things are going well around here in kuching. success is on the way. anyways,
all the pics took my time away so i'm gonna have to go. love you mom.
love, zac