Miracles are happening! Transfers are happening!

April 19 2015

The work here in Miri is going forth and I am so happy to be here in Miri! Yes, it is transfer news this week but we will see if I can stay here one more transfer -  It would be so fun if I could because a lot will happen in the next six weeks! 

Our zone leaders gave us a goal last zone meeting to find and baptize 4 investigators per companionship by the beginning of June. That would be a big feat for us here in the Miri zone and also for the Miri Chinese district.We currently have 3 investigators on date for May and hope to get one more by the beginning of June. So we are pretty excited to hopefully,  achieve our goal given to us by our zone leaders! 

Our investigators are very much progressing and we are continuing to find more investigators. We are working with so many people - it's such a miracle to be here in Mir! One other cool miracle this past week has to do with referrals. 

We received word from a senior sister that there was a church referral in communication with her asking about our church, place, time, etc. We were so looking forward to meeting this man and when Sunday finally came around,  there he was standing in the church lobby! He joined us in sacrament meeting and seemed to enjoy the meeting. After the meeting was over,  another car pulled up with three of his friends!  Have I mentioned that these 4 people are living in Brunei? Brunei is like an hour to two hour drive away from the church, so what a cool exercise of faith we saw in these people! Well, continuing on, these 4 referrals,  now in the church, only had an hour so we decided to give them a tour of the church building and answer any questions. They had many great questions about missionary work and the church. At one point one of the girls that was part of the church tour commented, "You guys have a very nice church here. There is a very nice ambiance here-  it's really comfortable." (When she said that I was like, "Have a nice WHAT?" but I just said, "Thank you." haha! ) We were able to share with them a message of the Restoration and the Spirit was felt. Upon leaving the church one of them asked for materials to study during the week. We gave him a copy of Gospel Principles and he wants to come back. So cool! 

I love being a missionary. When I find myself in times of peace and quiet,  I ponder the blessings of serving a mission and the feelings I have are indescribable. I can't believe I am here, serving a mission all the way in Malaysia. I love it! I am cherishing my time here and I love every person I meet, every minute I have speaking and talking in the name of Jesus Christ with these wonderful people, and I love the continual building of my testimony.

                            

Love you all,

Elder Hanks

And the result of the transfer news is.....

I'm really excited!! I'm really excited for my new area and my new companion, Elder Baer has the BEST Chinese in the mission so I'm looking forward to learning more chinese and how to be a better missionary from him!  He is a great missionary!  I'm really looking forward to this transfer. I will miss Miri though... a lot. I'm also now a Zone Leader in JB  (Johor Bahru) 

 West Malaysia with Elder Baer.

Conference & great happenings in Miri !

What a great opportunity we had to gather as a body of Saints and listen to our Prophet & Apostles! I felt the Spirit so strong & was enlightened so much by the Spirit from the messages! I wish we could do that every day as there is so much we can learn from this gospel & all of the mysteries of God. we are so fortunate to be in the world helping others to come unto repentance. From conference my faith in the principle of family has grown! It was made apparent to me how much the family matters when it come to living in pure joy. The quality & level of happiness in a family is a major indicator of how great the need is for the gospel. I feel so grateful for the perspective I have now. Listening to all the messages in conference about family also brings to mind the dangers that family  and the idea of family is under right now.  
When Elder Cook stated that the "Church has never been stronger" I thought of our members that we are working with and was grateful for the opportunity it is to work with them in this great work of the Lord. 

I watched Conference in English this time, will probably download it in Chinese
so we can listen to it again later.

Miracle this week is the amount of people we have on date for baptism this week. We taught one of our investigators at a members house with his friend there and we shared with him the Restoration that he heard once before, but this time we showed him the movie of the restoration. After watching it we discussed his previously shared desires to be baptized and we asked him, "Are your desires to be baptized still the same?" He replied, "Um yeah. There are still there, but the only question I have is when am I getting baptized. You know?" We were both so happy at his response and we helped him get on date for May 9th! What a great lesson that was. 

To continue the miracles we met with two young men who had met the missionaries once before a long time ago but haven't seen or talked to them in a while. We met with them in a member's home and we also shared with them the message of the Restoration. It was a powerful message in which we talked about the Book of Mormon, baptism, the Restoration of the true church, etc. At the end of the lesson they turned to me and said, "Hey, if we are going to be baptized it's going to be in your church. When can we get baptized?" We also put them on date for next month. What a great month it will be for our branch next month. So excited! 

Check out those British Flags! 

Pictures for this week was bowling, the circus was in town and it's from Britain so I'm just using this as a shout out to my brother who will be going to that great country to serve the Lord!  It's great! 

We had our cook make us patayas and he made it with a lot of love! 

I got a very good looking shirt from the great Sitiawan members! Thanks my friends in SITIAWAN! 

General Conference was amazing and I learned so much about the family. The family is the best!!! 

I love my family! 

Love Elder Hanks

Last weeks Easter email: 

This is a glorious day! It's Easter today and this day we received the great news that Thailand is getting a temple! We missionaries along with our Malaysian members,  and pretty much all of South East Asian members,  are rejoicing in the news of the Bangkok, Thailand temple announcement. The first I heard of the Thailand temple was this morning from a text from our senior couple sister and the joy I had from such an announcement is indescribable-  It's about time! 

Some fun things that happened this week was it was Good Friday. I never really understood Good Friday was celebrated by really anybody, but when Good Friday came around turns out it is a public holiday and everyone we talked to that day asked us what we were doing to celebrate. I constantly looked at my companion with a look of, "What's the big deal about Good Friday? Don't they know Christ still lives? That He is risen!?" 

We even had someone ask us, "Don't you Christians don't eat meat on Good Friday?" That one surprised me a little bit. 

In other news we felt a great measure of the Spirit of Elijiah in our work as we had a senior couple visit from Kuching. They are family history missionaries and so they came to do some family history with us. In preparation for their coming we went to a Chinese cemetery(pictures are attached)where they have these little slabs for all those who were cremated. The tomb stones for those not cremated are just incredible and just beautiful. Well, we tried to talk to the grounds keeper about allowing us to do some preservation work of the cemetery's records because they have almost none!!!! He was a little uncooperative and wouldn't really help us, So we called the boss over the whole cemetery, and she came over. We talked to her and you could tell the Spirit touched her heart. We then were so happy when we heard the news that we could begin to work in preserving information for now and hopefully,eventually take the names of those buried in the cemetery to the temple. We'll see -



Perhaps the Thailand temple ;). There are thousands of people in this cemetery and so what a joy it is to help them get even closer to their ordinances being done.

Easter weekend was such a wonderful time to be serving the Lord. Yeah, we have not yet watched General Conference(this weekend!) but the Spirit and reality of the Savior's resurrection was felt. We missionaries hosted an Easter Devotional Saturday night where we prepared scriptures, Bible videos, testimonies, musical numbers, and showed the new church video, "Because He Lives." A great spirit was felt. The missionaries sang a number called, "Because He Lives" in the devotional and also in all three branches sacrament meeting and it was a great way to bring the Spirit to our beloved members on this Easter week.

Another trip to the Crocodile farm

Last P-Day we went to the crocodile farm in Miri. I had been before,  but I went with all the new missionaries who have never been there before. It was a great day - it was really fun to hold a bear, a snake, and feed the crocodiles. We all somewhat realized how crazy crocodiles are and how scary they are! We all had fun feeding them chickens, but man we cringed whenever we thought about the chicken possibly being us! I got to hold a chicken over the water on a pole and string and it's so scary to see how fast the crocodiles can jump out of the water and you can't even see them! You have no idea they are sitting right below and then think about how much that can relate to our lives when it comes to sin, etc. We sometimes don't see the bad in some activities or lifestyles, until it's too late, then we see it. So be careful of those temptations because they will 'eat' you!

Drenched!

I went on exchanges this past week with our zone leader, Elder Lambert. What a cool guy! We had some great lessons and missionary experiences. We got poured on at one point in the afternoon and we both looked at each other as it poured on us and said, "Perfect time to get into someone's house." or so we thought!  It took about 5 rejections to finally find someone who let us hide under their porch roof thing. The best lesson was later that night. We were meeting with a less active and some investigators. It was all in Malay so I didn't understand much, unless my companion translated, but it was such a cool experience as we entered this little brick house with candles lit to let us learn the gospel by "candle-light." I loved it and felt such a powerful spirit with these humble people. Missionary work is true! 

One thing that Elder South and I are doing this week is first,  helping Elder South recover from a little fever he had, then working with the members some more. We want more of our members wanting to help in the Lord's work and we want to be their partner in this work. We have already felt a strong spirit from trying to work with some members and have them reach out to those we are already teaching. Things seem to building up and I can't wait to see where it all goes. 

Elder Hanks

Awesome District Youth Conference & another Elder Hanks speaking mandarin!

We have some great goals we are striving to achieve this next week and that includes working more with members. This past week we were able to do a district young men mini-mission  to allow the young men of the district to come on missions with us. We had one of our four young men in the branch come with us. He put in a great effort and it made his family pretty happy to see him come with us on a mission. We stopped by another young man's home on that day and because  he saw the other young man coming with us, he and his aunt he stays with,  have decided to try and come with us to go on a mini-mission once a week. We are very much willing and excited about this hoping this will inspire more of our young men to serve a mission. 

We are making more plans to work with members,  as we are very anxious to begin to move some of the investigators we have already begun to teach further down the progression funnel. If all goes as we planned and hope for,  we will be seeing great miracles happening in Miri as we involve our members more.

We were contacting this past week when we saw a young man standing outside of his home early in the afternoon. We said hello and introduced ourselves and what we do. He took a proselyting card and we asked him if his parents were home which they were unfortunately were not. However, he was a smart young man who invited us back to his home later that night! We did and his entire family was there where we shared the message of the Restoration. They accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and committed to read it and pray about it. Before we left we asked if there was anything we could help them with. The father replied, "You already have." We are looking forward to teaching them next week.

My faith has grown as I have studied the idea and motivation to be more obedient and all I can say is that I have found my motivation to be obedient solely in the principle that I love my Heavenly Father.

I am loving the work of the Lord and it will continue to move forward.

Also, a big shout out to my younger brother who has been called to serve in the Leeds, England Mission speaking Mandarin Chinese. It's the best place I know for him and he's speaking the language of the Celestial Kingdom! What a great experience for him and I am so happy for him. Things are all about missionary work and how important it is to declare repentance to this world! It's the greatest thing we could ever invest ourselves in. I am so proud of my brother for his decision to serve the Lord.

I am loving the service of the Lord.

Elder Hanks

just my life in pictures!

on exchanges with the Zone Leaders

Elder South's studying

improving my karate skills

Elder South's handle bars broke! Instant magnifying glass! 

Miri Zone! 

Chinese New Year Party

Zone Conference in Singapore

Quick update- Staying in Miri for another transfer! 

I'm a Dancing Lion!

Feb 22, 2015 
Yes! It was Chinese New Year this past week and what a fun experience it was!  There was fireworks, food, red, hong bao's, money, gold, laughter, food, firecrackers, lion dances, greetings, food, music, dancing, explosions, food, gatherings, no stores to buy anything, food(are you seeing a pattern here?) and many other reasons to celebrate! 

Awesome Miri Chinese District!

The Chinese New Year is all about prosperity and good luck. The Chinese people often give oranges out because they are a symbol of good luck and fortune. Other traditions of Chinese New Year is the hong bao(red envelope). In order to help you get a good start to a new year the seniors in the Chinese culture give the youngsters all of these red envelopes with money in it. We have received quite a bit of Hong Bao's so far in the first 4 days; there are 10 more days to go- this is going to be a fun week! Chinese traditions are great! 

(I had to bring a lion head to church, but didn't know how to carry it. So I rode this to the church. We got a lot of attention from everyone. They all loved it.)

There is such a great feeling of being welcomed into homes by so many people over Chinese New Year! Once you are in a home,  other people come in and it's just like being in a house full of all of these potential investigators-  which is exactly what it is! I am grateful for Chinese New year. It's been a great experience for us missionaries to branch out to those around us. 

So this upcoming week we are going to be in Singapore for our zone conference. I am excited for this zone conference because we are going to be able to watch "Meet the Mormons" and I have been looking forward to watching this movie for so long! I hope I will learn something great from this zone conference and my spirit will be lifted by inspiring talks and being with all the other great missionaries! 

We were in a home of a Buddhist friend so I spoke to one of her relatives who was there and who has seen us before. She knew we taught free English class and wished to attend, but was under the impression that we only teach English from the Bible and nothing else. I told her more about what we do in English class and what we as missionaries do. This helped her open up and she said she would be willing to come to English class now! With that concern out of the way she continued on and shared with me that she had a secret interest to read a little from the Bible to learn what it was teaching.  This was a great window for us to share with her about teaching opportunities and how we love sharing what we believe with others. She really appreciated that and I then had to leave. It was a great chance to share with someone our beliefs in a way that she could greatly benefit from.

It has been a great week of Chinese New Year and I look forward to more luck and prosperity.

Elder Hanks

Chinese New Year & putting God first

Feb 15, 2015 
This has been a most interesting week in which I Elder South and I have put a lot of our time and effort into doing the will of the Lord and not seeing too much come out of it. A big factor of this unfortunate turn of events is the Chinese New Year coming up! For all the Chinese people we teach and visit, it becomes hard for them to put God first, but when it is all said and done,  we know God will be the one most important above all.

A great teaching experience we had with this principle was this past week as we have been teaching this investigator for a while and there has been no real progression in him. We were beginning to think we should 'freeze' him until he is ready, when he asked us why he needed to obey the commandment of God. We told him why and he used some excuse like "everybody is different and it's hard to follow God." My amazing companion Elder South then taught and testified that God is one being and He is the only one that matters and he would not command us to do something if he didn't think EVERYONE could do it. That struck our investigator deep and he is now making changes to his job so he can attend church. Awesome!

Elder South is a great missionary and has an amazing insight when it comes to the gospel and he is just really funny! I love the guy! 

(We were practicing an object lesson where you light a tea bag on fire in your hand. You freak out because it looks like it's going to burn down and scorch your hand, but just before it gets to your hand if you have 'faith' the bag flies upward and leaves you unscathed. )

He and I gave a training this past week in zone meeting and it was a really fun and spiritual atmosphere. We emphasized developing the faith to find people to teach by just sharing with people what we love about the gospel. Too many times do we not find those people who are prepared because they don't see any relevance of the gospel to themselves because we don't share our testimony with them. Ever since then many great things have happened.

Some miracles we have witnessed this week include contacting in a place farther away from our usual location. During our finding we talked to a younger woman who is from the Philippines and has actually attended the church there; for 5 years but never got baptized! She accepted the invitation for us to come back. So cool!

The other miracle was yesterday. We finished our Sunday night by visiting a less active and her older brother who is not a member. Near the beginning of our meeting with them a group of the brother's friends  came in and joined in. They asked us what we are doing in Malaysia and Elder South and I hit them hard with what we came to Malaysia and Singapore to share. After a 45 minute discussion with them all 4 of the brother's friends and the brother himself agreed to meet with us next week and talk about the gospel more! We were so excited to come home and report that to our leaders. Good stuff is happening to us here in Miri, we are just afraid of the great business that is coming with Chinese New Year.

I'm both excited and nervous for the Chinese New Year events that are coming this week. We will see what will happens and how it affects our work. 

The hong bao envelope we received from the Buddhist Conference last week

The Chinese missionaries in Miri.

GongxiFacai! 

Elder Hanks