in the ZC

hey dad.

things are going well here in kuching. i'm really enjoying being here. we bike a lot more than i did in sibu jaya. i've been riding the bike of the elder i replaced for the last month, but they finally shipped my old one from sibu jaya to kuching. i cant even describe how much better it is. it's like i'm not even riding. it's so smooth and nice. life is good.
we just had zone conference, but we were accompanied by the sibu zone. there were 18 of us elders all together. it was nice to see some old friends. we had lots of fun playing soccer for p day. but we did learn a lot. i feel like there's no end to the amount i can learn about missionary work. i feel like i should be just an awesome missionary by how much i feel like i learn, but every time it comes time for zone conference, i always learn so much more. nuts. but i think it's been working. we are getting more people to teach. we've got a few families that i'm excited about. i wrote more about them to mom if you want to read about them. hopefully things work out with them.

also we kind of had a funny/cool experience yesterday. we were riding trying to find a good area to contact. we kind of just went exploring. we saw these houses but they were pretty much all chinese. so we kept going around scoping the area out. we saw an old run down shack off in the distance and a house with a light on. so we went and checked it out. we trecked through lots of plants and even crossed a chasm. chasm i say. anyways as we got closer we could see it was more than just one house. we had found a kampung that was completely hidden from the main roads. theres a section that is all muslim, but a pretty large part that is all christian. we didnt get much time to contact there, but i'm pretty excited for later. it's so big. i feel like there have to be people there who will get baptized.

also, this weekend we should have a baptism. the wife of a recent convert so were are pretty excited about that. they are really awesome, and indonesian. i love indonesians. the ones ive met have been pretty funny. anyways, that's all i have for the week. i guess i'll talk to you later. have a good week. have fun with your classes.
zac


hey ma.
so dont worry about not having written me. it so happens that it was zone conference this week so our pday was changed to thursday. we had a lot of fun this past week. they actually combined sibu and kuching zones for zone conference so i got to see all the elders from my old zone. we had a really good training. the best of which we learned more effective patterns for committing people to do things like go to church and pray. it was really helpful. we've been using the stuff we've learned in trainings and things are going way better. this past week was pretty cool. for zone conference pday kuching zone played sibu in futsal, which is indoor soccer with a net surrounding the court. it was really fun. we came from behind for the win, and then we just played around after that. but next month i'll be able to see them all again because we have another conference this time in sibu towards the end of october. it's actually the week before my comp goes home. pretty nuts.

anyways, yeah we did actually get to teach that one lady again. we've been to see her a few times since i wrote last. she is doing really well. you can tell the change that has taken place. she is much happier and really has a desire to go to church. and she has a lot of family, so it looks like it will be a big source for referrals. i dont know why we havent asked her for any referrals yet, but we will, and i'm sure things will go well. we were teaching her about baptism and she really understood well. the cool thing about her is that she is so interactive. she asks lots of questions to check for her own understanding and understands well. i'm just not used to not having to push people to talk to us.

anyways, while contacting we got this other good family that we've just seen once, but they seem really good. they are bidayuh. the father of the house was pretty interested in what we had to say. he asked us to just sit and share with him a bit. we were asking all these questions about how to know which church is christ's church, and he was like "you know, that's what i don't know. there are so many churches. maybe some are just made by men. which one is christ's?" i was pretty surprised by that, but it was a good question. it's also a plus that our church is way closer to his house than his old church.

there was also this other family we've been teaching. so the son of this family married into a member family and got baptized. so now we're working on his parents and siblings, which i guess used to not really want to learn. anyways, we were over there and they had also just had a death in the family. so we talked with them about christ and the resurrection. they were really surprised to hear that they would see their grandmother again. they were really excited to learn about how they could all be together forever. we had taught them before, but only the father listened. this last time the entire family came and all said they wanted to learn more. it was pretty cool. they were even about to leave right before we got there, but we asked for just a few minutes to share instead of just letting them go, and we had a really good lesson with them.

we're also teaching a daughter of a member who is jehova's witness. you dont run into too many of those in malaysia. it's been pretty interesting but the woman seems to be open to what we have to say. she asked if we only had the bible as scripture. normally that question comes when people just want to fight and discredit our church because of the book of mormon. that's what i anticipated so i answered based around that assumption. then i asked what she was expecting by learning from us. she said she just wanted to learn more about God and hear more of his words. so i guess she is definitely open to new books, because she feels like she can learn from it. unfortunately at the time, i didn't relate this desire to the fact that we have a living prophet who always receives more of God's words. hopefully things will work out next time.

but yeah we've been contacting and getting new investigators. i'll let you know how the others go as they progress. we are getting busier and things are going well. hopefully we'll have a lot of investigators at church. that's the best. anyways, i think that's all for the week. thanks for the letter mom. i love you. talk to you next week.
love, zac