Thursday, May 10, 2012

One Month in the Field!

Hello!
got a pretty awesome story from this week! so we started teaching a girl, Riza, on Sunday who we had "met" on Saturday. I say "met" because we were at a recent converts house and she showed up but we didnt talk to her. we were at the house to fill out a baptismal record with a npw recent convert. anyway later on saturday we got a call from one of our recent converts saying that girl that we didnt talk to wanted to learn. She couldnt meet saturday night so we asked her if Riza could come to church. and she did! without even talking to us yet haha. so after church we taught her and she was very accepting of the first lesson. So we taught her again on Monday night, and she told us about a dream she had: "Friday night i dreamed that i met a girl that i had never met before, and this girl told me she was going to tanjong batu, -which is the road that leads to the church here in Tawau. Riza did not know this- so i followed this girl..." this is basically all she remembered from the dream. So that was friday night and then she saw us saturday, and then on Sunday when she went to church, she recognized the road she saw in her dream. She told us about all the feelings she ha when she first met us, and on her way to church. all very cool! shes very faithful and basically we just have to teach her all the lesson material.

thats the cool story for this week haha. so today we are flying out to Sibu, Sarawak for an "all eastern malaysia conference" we will be there from today and then coming back to Tawau saturday afternoon. itll be cool to finally meet other missionaries haha. a lot of them i will be meeting in their dying days. around june i guess the mission is gonna be "flipped upside down" because like half the zone leaders are goin home, so this will be a very young mission pretty soon. haha doesnt really mean a lot to me cuz ive been here for a month.

oh so will hopefully be buying an external hardrive this week while in sibu. probly about $100 USD so i thought id just give a heads up on that. Elder trotter recommends i have one so i dont have to worry about running out of space for pictures n stuff. so that'll be nice to have.

ya so those lizards are monitor lizards. i havent seen any really big ones yet, but trotter says he has seen like a five 1/2 footer! the biggest ive seen was like 3 feet. they usually stay in the gutters yes. they are all afraid of humans so theres no danger of attack haha. ya i bought those sandals. pretty nice for just wearing around the house. my feet are doing quite well actually! ya so the Tawau area is really really big, but we dont use the whole area because nobody has a way to get to church other than bus or taxi. rarely do they own cars. rarely. but ya semporna is actually in my area. so hopefully next week we get to go. biking, usually not THAT much. but sometimes itll be a ton of biking, and sometimes none at all. we usually bike to all our appointments, except we have like three investigators we take the bus to.

ok so for mothers day, it would be better if we could talk monday (US) tuesday for me. because trotters family cant talk sunday (US) but if sunday night works out better for you thats ok. we will just have to do separate days, which is fine. whichever day it turns out to be, it will be about 7PM US time. so im pretty sure sunday will work out better, butif everyone can talk on monday night that would be a little easier for us. i also bought a calling card so i can call ali or carson if he cant come. so i guess there isnt really a time limit, but i estimate we'll be able to talk for about 2 hours! i'm super excited!

so you should respond ASAP cuz i will be able to check my email later this week. i may even end up calling you to confirm our plans haha

ok, love you all and cant wait to talk!

Elder Giblette

May Day

hello all!
this week has been pretty great so far. although we were planning on going to semporna today the guy who wanted to take us doesnt have his phone on and we're planning to leave in like an hour and a half... hopefully itll work out cuz we have been pumped to go since last week! anyways thanks to everyone who wrote me, i cannot express how great it is to hear from anyone and everyone! 

So on saturday we are having two baptisms! these i will have actually been apart of teaching! one lady is the sister of that really short lady,  and the other is an indonesian lady that elder trotter had contacted a few weeks before i came. they are both super solid and have been coming to church for like the past 6 weeks. really excited for saturday! 

we are currently teaching a catholic lady who is pretty old but super smart. like really smart and understands how to think about things before she answers. very rarely will we teach someone who can make connections. usually the connection between the power that Jesus held and gave to his apostles, and the authority that power gives to baptize and lead the church. but this lady, her name is Maria, even understands that if the Book of Mormon is true, Joseph Smith must be a prophet. so when we asked her to be baptized, she said she would have to think about it, and read more from the BofM, and then she could answer. this is pretty much better than her saying yes because it means she understands exactly what we are asking. so we're a little nervous for our next meeting but we are hopeful. 

i'll have to take some pictures, but i spray painted my bike last night fluorescent yellow last night haha. this because it will reduce the chances of my bike being stolen haha, also cuz it looks totally sweet now. as for the toilet paper situation, you can ask Kellen about my thoughts on that haha. i'd love to hear from Bro. Gordhammer! it is super sweet that i got called to his area. basically all the members know who they are so thats pretty cool. but ya he is definitely a good source of info about where i am in the world. Tawau definitely has more of a city feel. its not really rural, just kind of like a small city and then a lot of "suburb" area. there are alot of cars and buildings. just malaysian-ized haha. meaning everything is just poor quality haha. 

Dont bother to send any gift cards. i doubt they would work out here, and we dont eat at these places very often. havent even been to pizza hut yet. i guess its just like way to expensive and the pizza isnt that good. but we'll go there eventually. funny story about mcdonalds though this week haha. so we had been waiting in line for about 45 min (normal) and i finally had ordered and right as i payed the power went out! so i was like one of the last people to get my order. Trotter didnt even get to order haha. we thought the power would be out for just a little bit, but they dont have a backup generator so it was gonna be few hours before it got back online haha. pretty funny. even one of the nicest places in Tawau can have a power outage...

thats about all i have this week! i might be sending pictures later today, or later this week. will have some with me in them finally haha

Love you all!
Elder Giblette