fever and then death cough

hey dad

i havent yet been able to listen to conference. because of the time difference, they show conference during church like 2 weeks after it is normally aired. so i think on the 17th i'll be able to watch it. i'm pretty excited. unfortunately there arent any good ice cream places to go to around here. well, i guess i do know where to get some mean corn and yam flavored ice creams! but i'll pass. now when i watch conference and i hear an accent and can guess the speaker comes from malaysia, that'll be a cool day.

hey that's pretty cool you guys watched saints and soldiers for your french class. in my mission, there's actually a list of movies that are approved, and it changes every 3 months. so every 3 months we get to watch 5 different movies. and the movie list that just went out of date had saints and soldiers on it.

i am pretty jealous of the delicious food you get to eat. i dont know how to make many things, so my cooking gets pretty broing. but we have been experimenting with curry at the house here, and things are looking good. pretty delicious. so maybe i'll be able to cook a few dishes when i get back.

so what's the ward like back home? any new people move in since i've been gone? any people move out? any new missionaries get their calls? i guess whatever you have to tell me i'd like to hear.

we had a pretty interesting lesson last night with some recent converts where we taught them about missionary work. we have been receiving a good amount of trainings about following the spirit and really preparing for a lesson before it happens. so in preparation for this lesson we thought of an expample they would be able to relate to. her sometimes the police do road blocks to catch people who dont have licenses. so we used that example and related it to baptism and how they need to warn their friends. kind of silly example but we felt good about the lesson. anyways, so we get to the house, and they already had someone there who wasnt a member! so we taught this person and they seem fairly interested in learning. it was pretty cool. the non member there also seemed to enjoy our lesson that we had prepared, so we had a lot of fun. there's also some more potential for investigators we have that have yet to be met with again. church just moved to a more accessable area, so hopefully we'll be getting more people at church soon. we do have a baptism coming up this weekend, the younger brother of a recent convert, which is pretty exciting. and in other news, my current companion goes home at the end of october. pretty crazy, huh? we also have a conference for all the missionaries that will take place in sibu on the 17th, so we have that to look forward to. i'm hoping to be able to find my way back to sibu jaya to see my recent converts.that'll be cool. i don't know if you remember me talking about a man named clement we baptized back in sibu jaya, but he's going to get the melchizedek priesthood next week or the week after, so that's pretty awesome. it's cool to see recent converts keep progressing in the church.

anyways, that's all i have. talk to you next week. take care and have a good week.
love, zac

mom

it's funny that you threw in that last little bit about menot getting sick again. because unfortuantely all last week i was pretty sick. fever and then death cough. but you know, you just keep going out and you get better eventually. things are doing much better now, although i am still tempted to sleep in a few minutes after that alarm goes off. sickness has it's own way of making you lazy. of yeah, so pretty crazy news. the entire time up to this point in the mission we have been keeping our suits in singapore in storage because it's really hot and humid in malaysia. so it's been over a year since i've seen my suit. anyways, the area presidency just enforced this rule i guess that all of us missionaries have to wear our suits to church on sunday. pretty nuts huh? last sunday was my first sunday, but my pants got lost in transit so i had to embarrass myself by wearing my plain black suitcoat with blue pin striped pants. but luckily the pants were found, so i'[m looking forward to this sunday being better. i thought malaysians thought the white guy was handsome normally, but what i found out is malaysians think a white guy is really handsome in a suitcoat. everyone commented at seeing the four of us elders who go to the one building in suits. it was fun.

but yeah, so i dont exactly remember who i talked about last week.. but we had a good week this week. we taught norina some more. she really like's having us over. she seems to understand things pretty well, and is pretty excited to get baptized. we had a pretty funny experience teaching her about the word of wisdom. she heard about it in testimony meeting (for some reason all malaysians like to testify about the word of wisdom) and so norina asked us what the word of wisdom was all about. she was so confused at why someone would testify about not drinking alkohol. so we just explained about the normal things we explained about and listed the things outlined as not good in the word of wisdom. i cant really describe it, but you shouldve seen the look on her face when we said coffee and tea. but she didnt complain or ask why, she just accepted that it came from God, because she already has a big testimony of joseph smith. but after seeing how surprised she was i had to try hard to keep myself from laughing. she's a really funny lady, and is going on good track to get baptized.

there's also this other family, the father of whose name is mulin. they are doing really well. they are all really excited for baptism and talk about it every time we go over there. i just feel like all the training's we've received have helped us to do a good job in teaching his family as well as norina. they just really seem to feel like this message is personal to them and love having us over. it wasnt really anything that we did, but luckily they were open enough to receive the witness of the holy ghost. we've been asked by our mission president to sing at every appointment, and mulin's family especially enjoy's it. they always ask us to sing at the end, and they always say "wow, that's a really good song" teaching these families have been a lot of fun.

so we met the family for a second time of that kid we flagged down that one day. they are all friends with this one family who got baptised a few months agao, and they are pretty funny. i enjoy going over there. they seem pretty excited about the message. the mom kept saying how she felt like we were angels sent from god to tell them about this message. that was pretty cool. the dad of the family is just hilarious. i dont even know how to describe it, but i love talking to the guy. so funny.

oh yes.. so i've realized a few things over the past few weeks. well, i never thought about it like this, but it really doesn't matter what we say as missionaries if we follow the spirit, because he will testify to our investigators exactly what they need. i really dont know how to describe what i mean, but i'll try. we were talking with norina about joseph smith and the restoration. and i just started talking about the apostacy and how joseph smith was called as a prophet. all of a sudden norina's face lit up and she was like "joseph smith's story is like my story!" but this realization helped her to have a testimony. just whatever she felt let her know that the story is true. and it also helped her to feel happy in her time of trial. she kept saying that if joseph smith could do something hard like restore the church if god asked him to, that she should be able to get through her time of trouble. it was pretty cool.

anyways, that's what i got for the week. sorry i dont have any pictures. take care and talk to you next week.
love, zac