District Conference= Hastening the work, even with some local monkeys

April 26 2014 letter

We had our district conference this past week in Ipoh. I love going to Ipoh. The members there are awesome!!! I went on exchanges with the elders there and met some of the members and I just want to let you all know that the faith here of the members is tremendous!!! I can't believe the faith that they have, it makes me consider and think about my own faith and how I can match theirs. They are always so happy to be a member of this true church and it's great to see the gospel working in their lives. In Ipoh on Saturday and Sunday, the topic of the conference was Hastening the Work. There is something definitely happening in the world today that requires the work of every available hand to step up and pitch in. We cannot stand idly near by and cheer others on as they indulge in the joy of this work.

Being in Malaysia and seeing the small quantity of members here, it is made clear to me that we need more souls saved now than ever before and the demand for member missionaries is steadily increasing. You do not have to talk to everyone that you meet and share the gospel with them right on the spot like us regular missionaries do everyday. Missionaries are full-time teachers and that is our calling. However, members have a full-time calling as full-time finders. Imagine if every member tried to find one person a week or even a month for the rest of the year? The church would most definitely double by the end of the year. I think it's a great idea that M. Russell Ballard shared this past General Conference, to set a date, prayerfully, and then go about trying to reach that goal; you will reach it. 

Want to hear about some bible bashing? So a while ago we knocked on an Indian man's door and he welcomed us in on the spot and asked us what our message was. We were surprised at this man's directness and very excited about teaching him. This past week we visited him for the third time. This man is a Jehovah's Witness and his intent in meeting with us is to show us the flaws of the church and convert us to his beliefs. We spent an entire hour talking and, not quite, arguing about the scriptures in the Bible. It was hard for me to just bear my testimony because he just wouldn't listen and just interrupt. There are two main points that he is having a hard time accepting to help him understand that Joseph Smith is a prophet; polygamy and our church before having a militia. According to Jesus Christ's words in the New Testament, both the concept of taking multiple wives and taking up arms is a sin and cannot be in the true church of God. It's hard to proove to him that polygamy was once acceptable in our church and no longer is because we believe in revelation from God. It's a little easier to explain the taking up arms. But the bottom line is that he has had a book of Mormon for a while, but just won't read it. He has read many histories and other things from his own church's website, but he won't read the Book of Mormon. He told us to come back to his house next week and show him the relationship between the Book of Mormon and the Bible. So okay, we are going this Friday and we are just going to focus on him reading the Book of Mormon. 

I would like to know about what you all think about these two principles that he has brought up. What do you think? 

I am glad that we are meeting with him though, because he always shares these scriptures with us that he hopes will tear down my faith, but it actually continues to build it up! I love it! 

Our brightest investigator,  A____, is looking good for baptism this next month, May 10th and we are so excited for them.  They passed their interview Yesterday and we will begin the preparations immediately, okay maybe not that fast. but still. This has been a great area to work in with the great Ipoh district and it's fantastic members, and the wonderful Sitiawan branch with it's miracles happening weekly. We are receiving some referrals from investigators and members all around and we are kind of confused on who we should go for because there's so many and it's hard to meet. 

I'll explain some of the pictures from the past two weeks.

M____, the first person I have ever baptized left for Kuching this past week so I will probably never see her again. We went over to her Aunt's place, Sister L____, and had a delicious dinner and shared the importance of enduring to the end. Her younger brother, K____, has given us a referral so we have one more Ibon to teach the gospel to! We are hoping to build the Ibon Kingdom here in Sitiawan! But I gave M____ a picture of her baptism, a CTR ring and wished her good luck because that's about all I can do. She is going to do great though.

Last week, an investigator, A ____, brought us to Pangkor Island, a tropical gettaway in Malaysia. It was a beautiful sight and we have a potential investigator from A____ to start teaching soon. No, I'm not talking about the monkeys we met while we were there although I'm pretty sure the chief  monkey mentioned baptism or something? I don't know, haha -   I'll have to go follow up with their Book of Mormon reading.

On Easter Sunday we had all the youth of the Branch come over to our place and we cooked dinner for them. We had a great time, ate Japanese noodles and cookies. Delicious!

Something I want to mention is that the door on our church is awesome, the key hole is. Whenever I open it I feel like Harry Potter in the first book with that ancient key. Just wanted to show you what I feel like whenever I unlock the Church.

With all these things going on lately, I've realized how COOL the gospel is. No other church, no other gospel, has the absolute astounding things that this gospel has that we can give to others. Just thinking about prophets, priesthood, new scripture, revelations, direct communication with God, a Savior, it's just all so amazing to me. Love it all! 

You are all so amazing and I can feel your prayers. Just know that they are being answered, I know they are.

Elder Hanks

Conference is the BEST!

General Conference was the best!!!! We watched it on Saturday and Sunday and the Spirit was filling my soul, even though only a few people actually showed up to watch. I learned so much from all the wonderful talks given and I can't wait until next Sunday where our Branch will come to watch the Priesthood Session together! Two more wonderful hours of the spirit to look forward to!!! So on Saturday, we didn't have a lot of people come to watch, only like five people to the english, two or three to the Chinese, and none to the Malay; the Ibon members had some problems and had to go away to Ipoh for the weekend so they will come and watch it next week. On Sunday, our Branch all showed up to watch the morning Session and they seemed to enjoy it ( ._ .) and it was a good first Session. We had our family history director from Ipoh visiting us at that time and she taught us A LOT about family history regardless of how experienced we were in family history. yep.  When the Sunday afternoon session started, people slowly started to leave until there were only a few left in the building. This picture of my companion and I, that's where everyone who speaks English goes to watch conference. It's okay though, because as you can tell we are excited to be there!

After going about doing other things after conference had ended, we had english class later in the evening. We got started and had in attendance, 2 members, 3 little kids, and a new person who was a friend of one of the members. We got started and I took the lead in teaching the kids English while Elder Lee taught the new kid. It was fun teaching them because we practiced reading out of the Hymn book on the song, "I Am a Child of God." they seemed to really like it and as we continued to read, I listened over to Elder Lee and heard him start to talk about the gospel to this new student. My only thoughts were of a little prayer, "Go Elder Lee!" and asking for the Spirit to touch this new kids heart. I continued to work with the kids and we had a lot of fun. I gave them a 'homework' assignment to borrow the hymn book and review the words to the song so that next week we can sing it. They all looked pretty excited about it and said they would come back. As I was wrapping up the lesson with them, I listened again to Elder Lee and this new boy talk. The boy had an interesting look on his face as he continued to listen to Elder Lee talk and invite him to keep coming to learn English and the gospel, he seemed almost like he wanted to say something. The next chance he had to speak, he said, "Actually, I wanted to just come and see how it was just for today." My heart sunk to his words, but I kept listening as he then said, "But I think I want to keep coming now every week. I really like this." My heart did a 180 and turned into joy. We finished English class with 3 happy kids studying a hymn and a new investigator for next week. Awesome.

But this day doesn't stop there. We had planned earlier in the week to plan and teach a lesson to a member family whose oldest daughter is leaving this week into the mission heading to Boston, Massachusetts. We wanted to give her a 'missionary experience' before she got to the MTC. We had planned on talking about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon and the blessings it brings. We started out sharing 2 Nephi 31:20 and as we kind of expected from this family, some jokes were tossed around and they didn't really focus on the Spirit that was trying to come into the room. But we kept trying to focus and we directed them to the Spirit that comes from having a missionary in the home and more importantly, the blessings and knowledge that come from the Book of Mormon. The Spirit began to enter the room and I felt impressed to share my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I spoke about how they will soon have a missionary in their family and the diligent work she will be doing in studying the words of the Lord everyday. I spoke about how much I love it when I get an email or a letter from a friend or family member in which they share some of the things that they have been studying in the Book of Mormon, because they teach and share with me what they have learned. At this moment, the thought of my two wonderful younger brothers, Hunter and Max, came into my mind and a silent prayer entered my heart of, "I hope they are reading the Book of Mormon daily." As I thought about them and how much they mean to me, the gosh dang tears came to my eyes and started to blind me. I couldn't really see what was going on in front of me or what everyone was doing, but I kept going and finished with a smile on my face expressing the love I have for the Book of Mormon. 

I wiped the tears from my eyes to see the father of the home, who is usually cracking a joke and always smiling, with a face of tenderness and spiritual peace. I didn't think I would ever see the look that he had on his face, but he looked like the Spirit was in his heart and was intune with its promptings. We invited the parents to begin to read the Book of Mormon together everyday and we are hoping to go back on Wednesday and see how they are doing. They have a great family and I love them all very much! 

One other last story I want to share. We were contacting around an area we have never been before and stopped at a little drink booth to get some drinks to cool off. We started talking with the girl behind the table when an elderly man walked behind her to get around the booth when he looked up and saw my companion and I standing there. He looked a little taken aback and said, "Are you the Mormons?" We paused and I said with a little boldness in my voice, "Yes sir we are." He man then exclaimed, "I don't believe in Mormonism." I only said then asked, "I'm sorry. What have you heard about us? Anything good or bad?" He then said, "I don't believe in Mormonism because you believe in two Gods. I believe in Jesus Christ and God." He then turned to walk away as I cried out, "Sir, we also believe in Jesus Christ and God. We only believe in one God and I don't know who told you that about our church but that is false." He looked a little surprised at what I said, but then exercising the Malaysian stubbornness that is so abundant here, he just turned to walk away and didn't bother to look back. 

This experience really saddens me because people here really don't understand who we are or what we really believe in. They don't know the truth when it is placed before them. I look back on that experience and with the teachings given my M. Russell Ballard in this past General Conference, I now know that, although I wasn't necessarily wrong in admitting we were mormons, it would have been better to declare ourselves as the formal and right name given to us by our Savior himself, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Althought this is a sad experience that shows how little people understand here, I am grateful to get an idea of what we need to do to help people understand. 

I am learning a lot everyday and with this recent General Conference I am excited to use what I have learned until in six months we will all receive further counsel. 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

We're finding investigators!

(No pictures this week) 

This week has been a very uplifting week with new investigators including some teenagers, a maybe Jehovah's Witness, and a Buddhist referral.

We were contacting one day not sure of what to do and we were going from house to house being rejected by mostly Buddhists. It's really amusing to hear what they say for rejection; they'll say, "I" or "We worship God." and shut the door. I just want to call out, "Hey no way! We do too! Can we talk about him with you and your family?" But the door is already closed or they look at you funny and slowly walk away. 

As we continued to knock on doors, we came to a house, knocked and an Indian man showed up at the door and said, "Would you like to come in?" We were both taken back a little to the immediate and warm invitation, but we accepted his offer and entered his home. We met his kids and looked over to see him on the couch looking at us with ready eyes; we sat down to join him. He asked us for our names and we for his and the first thing he said was, "What is the message you have to share with me?" Now both my companion and I are just like, "Whaaaatttt!!!" Haha - this is so great!

 I've never had an experience that has gone as smooth as this experience was going so I started to share about the importance of family to God and so on. Then at one point he asked, because we were talking about eternities and such, "Where will we live when we live for eternity?" or in other words, "Where will this place be?" I was kind of confused by the question because I didn't know if he wanted a simple answer or a deep answer. So I said with our Heavenly Father, but he asked the question again and I just plainly said, "Here on Earth after the Savior comes again." Which is the most basic answer I could give to such an interesting and profound question. He then beamed and said, "Yes! That's what I believe!" He then pulled out his Bible and talked about all the doctrine of Christ and the truthfulness of the Bible comparing bible translations and he agrees that the King James Bible is the most correct and really enjoyed what was in it. He also expressed that he had already met the missionaries before and actually had a Book of Mormon.

 I just want to thank any past missionaries who served here; you did a great job.  We continued to talk and he asked one of the greatest questions a missionary wants to hear, "What is the need for another book?" I understood that this man was a man who would follow doctrine given to him, so I shared Ephesians 37 showing him the reason and actual mention of the Book of Mormon found in the Bible. He was so intrigued by this, especially because the missionaries before had not shared this with him before, so he promised to find out and do research. At one point he actually said that he didn't give his all to find out the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon; that to me says that he realizes that this is a big deal worth pursuing. The only down side is we think he is a Jehovah's Witness, but we are working on seeing how to show him in a loving way the truth of Jehovah, and that is being Jesus Christ. Leaving his home he invited us to come back and gave us his phone number saying, "Just give me a tinkle." I can't wait to give him a 'tinkle.' So funny, I think he meant "jingle" ! Awesome guy anyway! So awesome! 

Later in the week, we decided to call up a teenage boy we had met before and he invited us to play basketball with him and some friends the next morning and we accepted. That morning we met with him, his cousin, and a friend of his, and others, to play a few games of b-ball. We all had a great time, especially this old guy that was playing with us; he was sinking almost every three he made which was pretty humiliating on my part. But he was a cool old guy. We finished playing and most of the people left besides these three guys, so we invited us over to talk to them a little bit.

They all spoke English fluently, thankfully, so I was able to share with them from my heart the truthfulness of this gospel. They are all about 15 years old so to get started was a little rough to get them engaged with what I was saying, but as we continued to talk and share, I was able to engage them and help them understand by applying the story of Joseph Smith, the Restoration, and all that to them and tried to kind of put them in Joseph's shoes. That helped them understand the importance of the gospel and we were able to give the friend a Book of Mormon and asked them all to read it and think about it. It was really great because I was trying to help them understand what the truthfulness of the book of Mormon could feel like to them, so I said something along the lines of, "Have you guys ever been reading the Bible and something you read just goes BOOM (I made sort of an explosion sound) in your brain and you just think, ' Whoa! That's so cool?' Have you ever had that before?" The teenage boy we met with said, "Yes! I've had that before!" I then pointed out, "This is what the Book of Mormon can feel like when you read it!" They all seemed to really think that was funny but cool. We are really excited to meet with them next week and see if they had any cool experiences with the Book of Mormon. 

By the way, Sister Romney rocketh! (She's looking over my shoulder)

So our last investigator is a referral from a member so that makes it all the better! Sunday afternoon we went with him, his wife, and his son to a small city-town called Pandai Remis. There are about 0 Christians in this small area because they are mostly Buddhists and Hindus; to make it even better, this town is so small that very, very, VERY, few white people ever go there. Side-note, the word for white person in Hokin, a chinese dialect, is Amolan. As I was walking around this town, people were staring at me and saying over and over again, "Amolan." It's even funnier because they don't know that I can understand them which makes you feel really good about yourself. The only bad part about this story is that we had to buy our meal to eat, therefore I broke the Sabbath day. Uhhh-  Who would have known that the first time I break that commandment would be on my mission! It was all for a good cause- finding an investigator!  

But we found his friend and we shared a message about the plan of salvation and the man was so engaged with what we were sharing, he didn't take his eyes off of us. By the end of the hour and a half we spent with this man, he asked some questions that lead so well into the Restoration! We just didn't have time to share that message so we are saving that for next week.

I'm really excited for this upcoming weekend for several reasons which include: A baptism, General Conference, Easter Sunday, need there be anything more? I'll be sure to share all about it after it all happens! We have to wait for an entire week after you guys - until we can hear and watch General Conference, so I really can't wait to watch it! Love you all so much as always!

Also, Happy Birthday this week Amanda and Dad! Hope you have a wonderful day! 

Elder Hanks

It rained, I played the piano & why aren't they flooding to the church?

I have learned a very valuable lesson this week on the power of the Atonement that I would like to share, but before I do I'll share the other things of this week.

A less active we have been working with is having some problems with her testimony. She was baptized a few years ago, but there is one question that I have when I hear her talk about the gospel, "How in the world did she get baptized?" We have often met with her and have shared the message of the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation, but she believes that God does not have a body, therefore, Joseph Smith didn't see Him, and she doesn't have a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true. It testifies to me the importance of starting the process of conversion versus just getting baptized.  So, we showed her evidences in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon that God has a body and she is currently looking within herself and praying about, whether or not God has a body. 

In other things, we have been in a drought a little bit, but we had a couple days of rain fall that have been very enjoyable. I'm just confused about peoples' attitude towards rain. Everyday they say, "It's really hot! Why can't it rain?!" Then when rain comes they are all really happy, but they will not do anything because, "It's raining." I don't get it. They want rain to come, but when it does they run away from it and into their houses! Haha, so funny!

We have been teaching an Ibon girl and we have her on date to be baptized on April 5th! She is on her way and there seems to be no problem. Because she is Ibon, she only speaks Malay, which I don't speak, so even though she is getting baptized next week, I don't really know if it counts for a baptism for me or   for me to even say that I taught her, because I couldn't teach her anything!  Just a thought for pondering :) But we are so excited for her baptism- so cross your fingers (and pray) it stays on track!

FHE was a blast to have with the branch. We played the animal game, if any of you have played that, and they absolutely loved it! Everyone was having a great time and enjoyed one another's company. 

Our branch pianist is in Japan this week and next week, so that means that I get to play the piano. I just want to express my greatest appreciation and love to those who encouraged me or taught me to play the piano!  Without you, the wonderful Sitiawan branch would have conducted Sacrament meeting without music to sing to this week! Haha- I didn't make too many mistakes, I have been practicing when I can! Of course, now is when you wish you would have taken piano lesson for more years that you actually did...

So, the power of the Atonement is real and I want to bear testimony of it. We had been trying our best all day to find people to teach and meet, but unfortunately only met with one or two people. Later, at dinner that night, a lady approached us and asked who we were and what we are doing. We explained who we were and our purpose. She seemed to take interest and asked about the church here. She asked, "How long have you been here? How big is your congregation?" I didn't know, so Elder Lee informed me that the church has been here for about 7 years and that we have about 40 active members. This woman looked shocked at the numbers we just shared with her. She then said, "you've been here for 7 years and only have 40 members?" I could see her interest wane and she thanked us and left.

On the bike ride home, I said to my companion, "Elder Lee, why don't people just flood to the gospel? Why don't they want to listen?" He then said, "I have a video to show you." We got home and he pulled out his phone. He then showed me a video called "Missionary Work and the Atonement." If you have not seen this video before, I highly recommend it. In fact, I insist you see it. In it, Elder Eyring and Elder Holland speak of the Atonement and it's connection with missionary work. I don't want to quote the entire video, but I then felt the power of the Atonement in my heart and I lost all feeling of pride, doubt, despair, etc. I just felt the love of the Savior and I felt ashamed to have lost a little faith. I am grateful that Elder Lee showed me that video and we are constantly praying for the guidance of the Holy Ghost to help us become successful missionaries He wants us to become. 

I have learned that a successful missionary isn't one of many baptisms or investigators, but an obedient missionary. 

Love you

Elder Hanks

read the talk: 

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2001/03/missionary-work-and-the-atonement?lang=eng

Dump trucks & Settlers of Catan

I'm beginning to feel the value of a mission - both the good things and the bad, but it's all really good. 

Their apartment-  not sure what kind of sarong/pant thing his companion is wearing...!

My Chinese has picked up and now that I feel better with the language again, both my companion and I will now begin to work on more companion-shared lessons where we both effectively teach and testify in unison and I feel like once we get that down, nothing can stop us in the work. 

I have begun to learn a lot and feel a lot of the power of missionary work in the field. We went contacting one day to try and take up some time until our next appointment. During that time, we had some great rejections from some of the people we tried to talk to, but it's all good. One of the houses we knocked on, a man came out and one of the first things he said was something along the lines of, "Not interested in church and Jesus Christ." I thought that that was our cue to leave, but my great companion just started to talk to him about our message and such. After talking to him for a little bit, he said he wasn't interested again but we kept talking to him. We both shared how important the gospel is and the blessings it contains. We ended up talking to this guy for over 30 minutes about the gospel and he accepted the Book of Mormon and 2 pamphlets we gave him agreeing for us to meet with him again later. Really neat contacting experience. That day we had some good contacts done. 

So, we have been having a drought here in Malaysia lately and  have been feeling the heat every time we go out. To our good fortune though, we had some rain storms this past weekend, the first rain storm had some good sized drops and wind to it, so when it hit we ducked into a local store to get out of the rain. Walking inside, we saw a sign that said, "Free eye test." Elder Lee knew that I had a bad eye, and he wanted to see if we could contact the girl working at the store, so I volunteered to have the test. After the test, she told me I had lazy eye...yea I know...but we talked to her for a while, but didn't get anywhere because she just wanted to sell me glasses for my lazy eye. So we stood up to leave when a big guy across the walkway motioned us to come over. We walked over and started talking to this man. Turns out, he is a member who hasn't been able to come to church because he is always working at the little phone booth he was in. He expressed his deep love for the gospel and he has great faith in obedience to the commandments and such, except coming to church, but near the end of our talk, he offered us a prayer right there in the store. Really cool guy.

A fun experience we had was riding in a big construction truck with a member this week. We were riding bikes down the street when a truck next to us honked his horn. We looked over to see one of our members in the driver's seat. He asked us if we wanted to come with him to a work sight and back real fast. Without even thinking, we said "yes." My first thought as soon as we got in the truck was, "What are you doing!"  But then I had the feeling that we should go with him, so I just sat there as we drove away. We went to the work site and back, and as the member was dropping off the massive pile of dirt he picked up, one of his co-workers pulled up next to us. We began talking and he said that he has been to our church before! We were stunned, got his name, number, and we have plans to meet with him later! Pretty cool experience that was both fun and rewarding! 

Ammon's companion

So, we have played settlers of Catan a couple times this week as sort of a lesson type atmosphere. With one of our investigators, we met at the church and set up the game to play. Before we played, however, we asked if we could share a message about the Plan of Salvation. With this investigator we began to teach the Plan of Salvation with him and at one point he said that his father had passed away a few years ago. Now, this investigator has interest in our church but is not so sure about being baptised. We taught him about how he can be with his father again and if he really wanted to, can help his father be baptised as well in the temple. This seemed to click something in his mind and he said he would really like that. We were able to commit him to baptism and he is currently thinking of a date to be baptized on. 

their Church building 

Love you all! 

Elder Hanks

Badminton is a real sport....

Sitiawan is just so hot all the time. I can't go anywhere outside without sweating to death it's just so hot. But I'm loving it here in my new small area. I'm starting to get the great feeling of doing missionary work that is supposed to be felt everyday of the mission. 

I've had some really good experiences lately,  such as an investigator no longer wanted us to teach her. We read with her out of the Book of Mormon last week and invited her to pray about it. When we came back later, she said she had talked to her pastor about the Book of Mormon and he told her it was not a book like the Bible and she should not read it. So she gave us back the Book and we haven't seen her since. But I pray that in the future she will have another chance to hear the gospel.

 A potential investigator we talked to in the past,  agreed to meet with us and we meet up. Elder Lee, being so skilled, mostly talked with him about life, work, and such, but then got into the gospel. This great man has never even heard of Jesus Christ, let alone pray. And as Elder Lee was talking about the gospel, this man was focused right on what Elder Lee was saying and I felt the power of the Spirit so strong walking away from that meeting. 

We have talked to a lot of our investigators about baptism and have helped a lot of them commit to baptism. Some with baptismal dates and some without. But I am happy to see many people wanting to make that next step with the Lord. I am even more impressed with the teenagers here in Sitiawan. They are so intuned with the Spirit that prompts them to learn about the gospel. We have several investigators who are young men, some women, who are being independent of their parents and wanting to learn about the gospel. It is so powerful to see these young people, younger than me, exercise a more independent faith and commitment than what I feel I only started to do as I prepared for my mission. 

So the other day, we were invited by an investigator to go and play some badminton. We agreed and the investigator picked us up. Arriving at the courts, I began to realize that badminton isn't a leisurely sport like my family plays in the back yard of our house; this is truly a sport over here. We played for a long time of intense high chips to hard spikes over the short net. I was sweating and struggling to keep up. But in the long run it was a really enjoyable experience. The investigator who invited us brought his older brother along and after we played until we were all tired and hungry, we sat down and read out of the Book of Mormon in 2 Nephi 31. Talking to them about baptism, we were able to bring the spirit enough to commit both of them to baptism. Just without a date. The investigator came to church for the first time yesterday and really enjoyed it. Elder Lee and I have such great hopes for the area of Sitiawan. 

I'm working hard with Elder Lee to learn Chinese, I'm trying to speak nothing but Chinese with him and it seems to be a big help. 

No pictures this week, trying to figure out the computers here still.

Sincerely, Elder Hanks