FINALLY

Hello,

so if you cant tell by the subject line, something exciting finally happened this week. 

we've found that we must just be really efficient at knocking doors, cause we had planned for about two hours, but the first house we knocked, we met an awesome guy named Kelvin. He welcomed us into his home right away, and we ended up talking with/teaching them for almost 2 hours haha. They are very open to learning new things, and they admitted to us, "we are Anglican, but we are also in doubt about our beliefs." Normally, this is not a good statement, but its like music to a missionary's ears hahaha. They would bring up random things,like being born with Adam's sin, and when we explained that we are only responsible for our own sins, they werent like offended, or defensive, but rather accepting, and said stuff like, "this is all new to us" "we need to study more about this" 

So needless to say we are really really excited and hope that they do not hear any of the terrible rumors that circulate around here about the church. We dont have a set appointment, but we hope to meet them wed or thurs. Anyways, finally SOMEthing happened for us, so i hope we can get some established investigators for E Hirschi and whoever replaces me. 

E Hirschi is still having a bit of a tough time with the language, but he is definitely improving. I guess i cant say for sure im geing transferred, but i would be VERY surprised if i stayed here for another cycle. Transfers will be the 20th. its super rare for a trainer to stay with his trainee after the 3 month training period is over. Its hard to say whether i'll stay in East Malaysia for the rest of my mission. Its definitely possible, but i would personally like to serve in Singapore again or Kuala Lumpur. 

In other news..theres not really any other news haha. I did my first baptismal interview, so that was cool. It was a Chinese man, so a member had to translate for me. But his name is Bong, and he is set to be baptized on the 22nd. 

So the vise thing.  We dont get visas in the usual sense. We simply go through immigration and get a 90 day "touring visa"  So zone conferences are set up to have us all come to Singapore in intervals of less than 90 days in order to get new stamps. the problem is that about 60 missionaries go through immigration at about the same time. Malaysia/Singapore, mostly Malaysia, are scared that we are working, for which you need an expensive work permit. So when they see large groups of similarly dressed white guys coming into Malaysia, with passports full of U-turns, (leaving the country right before the end of your 90 day stamp and coming back within a few days) they stop us and dont want us to come back into the country. There have been a few cases of one missionary being stopped, and then everyone behind him being stopped automatically cuz he looks like the other guy haha. So other than that, having zone conference in singapore is super fun. so now they have us wear p-day clothes when we go through immigration. The funny thing is when we were going through KL, i overheard the officers saying, "i remember these white guys, this time theyre wearing different clothes." hahaha so we arent really fooling anyone :) 

Its exciting to hear about all your travelings. I guess my only advice for Hayden is to not give up. its gonna suck, and its gonna be tough, but it will all be worth it. Refinished floors will be really nice. I cant imagine how itll be with george locked up.. haha that could get desperate. at least he will have the craft room to also roam around. a little more space. 

Gawai technically finishes at the end of the month, i guess the biggest celebrations are at the beginning and at the end. most people come back into town after about a week, but some stay away the whole month, some never come back haha. mostly the topic of drinking doesnt come up  unless we are teaching someone, but at christmas we got some of the same stuff. They see the white man drink on tv, and the real white man not drinking haha. 

Not much from here. I remember when summer break meant something...haha

Love,

Elder Giblette