There & back again in time to Party...!

June 29, 2014

This week was our Zone Conference held in Singapore, so we had a great vacation trip to Singapore to go and listen to our President speak to us on repentance. But before we left to Singapore we had planned on having a youth activity on Saturday for all of the youth to invite their friends to the church for a non-pressured activity- just to come to the church. We planned a little bit with the members about this activity and then we came up with the idea for a dance. We felt bad though because we had to leave for Singapore and then come back- leaving the members to do most of the work until we got back from Zone Conference!

(picture from Sis. Liew- the amazing missionary mom that takes such great care of our missionaries over there!) 

The Zone Conference itself was really great and I was able to run into so many great missionaries that I cannot possibly attach all of the pictures I got with them! This is also a sad conference because many great 'legendary' missionaries are leaving this transfer for home; it's crazy! We are losing a lot this transfer and then again in the next transfer as well. I don't know what we are going to do, but as for me and transfer news: I'm staying in sweet little Sitiawan for another transfer with my great companion Elder Kong. It'll be a great next transfer because of some things that are recently happening in our area. 

But finishing talking about the Zone Conference: things in the mission have been going pretty slow, but our President exhorted us to repent and get back on course in order to fulfill our mission's goal for 2014: 545 Baptisms. Right now we are at 147... We have work to do. 

Now I'm really excited about the area of Sitiawan - especially because of our activity we held on Saturday, the dance. The members and us worked really hard to prepare and decorate the church for the dance and it looked really good. We told all of the youth in our branch to invite at least one friend to the dance and for the most part they did.A few didn't bring any friends while others brought more than one to the activity so it worked out great!  It was super fun as we had a spiritual lesson to start off, food right after to eat, than the dancing started with some members and us missionaries doing an pre-practiced dance. 

We have been trying to get a members oldest daughter, trying to get her talking with us and investigating the church. We knew that she liked Korean stuff and dancing so we invited her to the activity to teach us a dance. We practiced it in the afternoon and performed it at the activity that night. It was a great activity and a success for us missionaries!

We had set up a photo booth with props and costumes the youth could put on and wear, we then told them we would take their picture and later would deliver them to those who wants it. We got four contacts

and one of them even came to church the next day!!! So we got one new investigator this past week and hoping for two more this next week and they are looking like investigators with real potential!!! 

I'm excited for this next transfer that we have. This is going to be an interesting one because Elder Kong is returning home at the end of this transfer so I may be here a REALLY long time (to stay & train someone new in this area), but that's okay, it's sweet here.

This morning we went hiking up Sitiawan's tallest mountain and that was pretty hard, but really good to have that kind of exercise. I haven't worked out really well these past 6 weeks so I'm hoping to get into shape soon this transfer. Don't know how-  but I need to lose some weight! 

The best part of the week was the dance, definitely, super fun. One last thing I have to say about the dance-  is that my companion can sure look like Psy from Gangam Style when he wears ray bans--just saying!

(posted this one before- reposting to see Elder Kong & his  Psy likeness) 

Love you all

Elder Hanks

25 scoops & I finally got wet

I was really loving this past week for many reasons that included General Conference, my dad and Sister's birthday, one of my best friends birthday, Zone Conference in Singapore, and most of all a baptism! 

With General Conference, because we are ahead of America when it comes to time, we have to wait a week until we can watch it at the church as a Branch. It's going to be a party and they are going to be showing it in Chinese, English and Malay. We have just a few members who only speak Malay and when it was announced that they were only going to have Chinese and English, I later asked why we didn't have Malay. He explained that they didn't have another tv or video player. I thought, "Hey! We have one at our house and these members deserve to hear our prophet speak to them!" So I offered to bring our missionary tv and video player to the church this weekend so the members can come and watch. I learned that Sitiawan before actually had 2 groups! A Malay group and a Chinese group. But after a while, the Malay-speaking people just stopped coming so the Chinese group became a branch and now we only have one branch.

We had our Zone Conference this past week in Singapore and I just want to say that Singapore is amazing! The only thing people usually do in Singapore is shopping, touring, or working; that's really it. But once you stick a big group of missionaries in Singapore, it gets pretty fun! There is an ice cream place near the stake center that has a challenge that if you eat 25 scoops of ice cream in 25 minutes, it's free. Two of our elders, Elder Moala and Elder Mayo took on the challenge. It was a very intense to watch, especially since if you fail, the ice cream is like almost $100! Once the challenge started, we learned that the two Elders didn't have any money on them so we pushed them on. Elder Moala is a huge Samoan elder, so he downed this thing and finished in 21 minutes! So intense to watch! So fun!

The Zone Conference itself was inspiring and it's so strengthening to see so many missionaries all gathered together with the same purpose to bring others closer to Christ and to hear of their ideas that they have coming up with. I love Zone conference! 

We went back on exchanges to visit that Jehovah's witness. I have found out the reason why he let us in so quickly in the first place: to convert us to the 'truth.' Now, this man is a great man who knows a lot about the Bible, but only the Bible. He doesn't believe that there could possibly be anymore than the Bible. Last time we met with him I shared Ephesians 37 about the stick of Joseph and Judah, and this time he had a paper with him he had printed out from his church's website. He read it with us and some of the things he said were true like how God wants us all to be united together, but he failed to answer our questions or even identify what the sticks were. I asked him and he said, "Maybe the Ephesians took two stick and wrote on it and put them together!" It was kind of a mental face-slap. He then went on to say that the Bible is the only word of God and we are all to be united in one faith under it. My Zone leader who was with me at the time asked a wonderful question, "If we are all to be united under the Bible, how come there are so many churches that have risen up that use only the Bible?" This man was stuck and he escaped by saying, "I'll answer that in a minute." He never answered.... But he still wants us to come back again so we are going to go over one more time with love and see if we can get him progressing at all. Jehovah's Witnesses are great.

So, we had been having great success working with the Malay speaking family in our branch. The mother of the house has had her niece over staying with them until the end of April until she goes back to East Malaysia. For the past few weeks we have been visiting them to do recent convert lessons to her son, K. But her niece has always sat in with our lessons and pretty soon we just started teaching her lessons. We had got her on date this last week for April 5th and after all the reviewing we did and practice interviews, Elder Lee asked her who she would like to baptize her and so my shock and awe she picked me!!! Just a side note, I have not spoken that much at all when we taught because I don't speak Malay; I would just say something in English and then my companion would translate for me, so this was a huge surprise to me!!!!! We got all the preparations ready and on April 5th she was baptized by me. The even cooler part of it was I didn't baptize her in English or Chinese, but I looked out of a Indonesian Doctrine and Covenants at the baptismal prayer(side-note: Indonesian and Malay are very similar. People understand both if you can speak one) and to baptize her I read the prayer and did it all in not even my mission language! It was such a cool experience! Seeing her come out of the water and being a part of it was just magnificent!!! The Spirit was so strong and on the 6th of April, she was confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints! I think that is so cool to see that happen!!! I am so blessed that I was able to be a part of that! I would not have had this opportunity without my companion helping in Malay. 

Me and my companion are going to work super hard these next 6 weeks and see if we can get another one!  This really is the true church and the Restored church of Jesus Christ! 

(Hey another Hill Cumorah Work Crew member?!   -  got to find out who this is...) 

There is not much more to report because that was the highlight of my week! Hope you all enjoyed conference as don't spoil it too much for me! Love you all!

Elder Hanks

Birthday and Zone conference week !

First of all, THANKS to everyone for all the birthday wishes! I even got a lot of cake from many different people here- the great Senior couples serving here, the branch and even a potential investigator! They were all great & so far I love being 19!

So our church attendance has started to go up here but is still not where would would like ti to be! We are working hard & are happy that another less active family is now active again. We also have an older couple who have starting coming to church & they have a lot to share during lessons- which is great!  Now we want to help their daughters get active too! A small miracle this week is that we found out that a new investigator lives right next door to one of the older couples daughters- so we can visit two investigators almost in one visit! haha! It will be great!

So we went to visit an investigator that likes the Elders to come & visit & teach his kids. I haven't really had a lot of experience yet with this investigator but we had just planned on reading out of the Book of Mormon for this visit. We were a little unprepared because of our traveling this week, that is no excuse, so we show up & the kids are all distracted & we really tried to pull a lesson together but it just wasn't flowing or working! So the investigator starts telling us how we lack patience, faith & most of all happiness! WOW ! I was stunned!  I told the investigator that I know I'm not perfect, and impatient and everything else (haha - and they agreed!) but that we knew someone who was & we pulled out a picture of Christ & I shared my testimony the best I could, we prayed & left. We felt pretty beaten up! Thinking back on it, I am grateful for this experience. It has given me a different outlook on how I can become a better person & missionary! We are determined to return next week & show this man, this wonderful man, what kind of missionaries we really are & that we really are happy!

Here's some pictures from our last weeks visit to Kuala Lumpur, East Malaysia and Singapore. We had an awesome Zone Conference with Elder Larry Wilson of the Seventy, who is in the Area Presidency for our mission. We stayed in Singapore for 3 days & I loved Singapore! I think one of my funnest things while I was there was when we were at the aquarium, & I knew my camera was waterproof, so I stuck it right in the water of the 'petting' pool & go some super cool pictures of some fish faces! It's a weird feeling to just stick your nice camera in the water & I also got some funny looks from people!

We all should be glad the country is watching out for robbers!
(Ammon is taking this picture- not in it, that's his companion is on the right) 

In Singapore at the biggest aquarium in the world,- hello Mr Stingray! 

Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur West Malaysia

holding up the Marina Bay Sand Towers!  There's an infinity pool on the top of that hotel!

(internet image so you could see the pool!)