Celebrating Dumpling day!

This was my first full week of being District Leader in my district area of Sitiawan, it's fun to watch over the two elders in my district and make sure they(we) are being obedient. I would say we are,  and we try and work hard as much as we can. 

This past week for the most part has been event-less which is really sad to think about. I hope that every week would have something new and exciting to talk about. 

We had exchanges this past week with our zone leaders who traveled for four hours to get to our house and go on splits with us. It was great to have them here because of the high number of lessons we had this past week, unfortunately we have been struggling to find new investigators to teach and that's been hard to think about how we have so much to improve on and to do. I was thinking about how we can get new investigators and I knew that the youth here are very interested in these type of things. So I had the idea to hold a monthly activity for all the youth to come to the church and have a lesson, food, and activity afterwards. I talked to some of the members and youth in our branch about this and they all seemed on board. So we are excited to start this sort of activity monthly. 

It's holiday break for the school here right now so there is a lot of time to meet with some of the members and investigators, but at the same time many others are not available because they are out of town for holiday. So it's hard and yet easy to meet with people lately and it's fun to have an Iban companion to go and find Ibans to teach, although often they only speak Malay. 

Today is a fun little holiday called Dumpling Day, it's a little festival where they take things such as meat, beans, peanuts & other stuff, squish rice on it and wrap it in a leaf. You can buy them, take them home, boil or steam them, open up the leaf, then eat. They are soooo goood. I'm going to miss them, but for now I'm going to fully enjoy them! 

I've been reading a lot lately in Alma, the war chapters and there is so much I'm getting from these chapters. I would have to say that on my mission I have learned that Moroni is my Book of Mormon hero. He is just so great in being so boss in fighting, but he doesn't even want to fight in the first place and time and time again he tries all he can to AVOID the battle that others seem anxious and yearning for. 

Anyway, just another hot week here in Sitiawan!

Elder Hanks