Merdeka!

So this week has been pretty tough, as none of our investigators came to church, but we were able to teach a few good lessons. a couple of our investigators were also not able to meet with us, so our efforts were largely focused towards meeting less active members, which is not all that bad. its usually easier to get in the door of a less-active member than it is to find new people to teach. one of the initiatives started a while ago by the Asia presidency was to try to make missionary efforts half towards investigators and half towards less active/recent convert work. 

We ended the week with an awesome Hari Merdeka (Independence Day) Beach BBQ activity on Saturday, complete with volleyball and soccer and inter-branch tug of war haha. Super fun and always good for the members to get together with members of the other branches, as not too long ago they were all one branch (about 5 years ago i think) there is definitely a lot of love between the members here. One cool thing i noticed, that as the beach/park area was packed with people, I can say that our little branches here in malaysia are a "peculiar people" as we were virtually surrounded by other parties smoking and drinking, and frankly not appearing to be having a good time. haha. anyways it was great to be a part of that and we had some members come to sacrament meeting who have not been in a while.

So our investigator, Lucyana, will hopefully be baptized at the end of this week. i say this without 100% confidence because she will be interviewed tomorrow, and the elder interviewing her had been known to be pretty tough. Its a problem i didnt think i would ever face, but i just pray thay my feelings of her being ready are true, and the interview wont be a problem. So we look forward to that!

today we are havin a pretty relaxed p-day, gonna play a little ping pong with the other 2 elde3rs in the district. 

the Malay Book of Mormon has not yet played a huge influence in our work yet, but i think it will have a bigger effect on the members once they arrive. (the members have to order their own separately). i think there will be a big focus on reading it once they have it. We are at a point in our work where we dont really try to make time to find new people to teach, cuz we are already teaching "enough" people, and then with the direction to work half our time with less-actives, we dont really put a lot of emphasis on making sure we place a copy everyday. But the work is going well, the usual ups n downs of people progressing or not progressing. 

sorry mom but it is not exactly an easy task to print things off from the internet cafe, but if i remember i can do it on the church computer the next time im there. the quote that you inserted is a very prevalent one. thanks for adding that :) i think a lot of times i feel like the member work, the investigator work, etc just feels in vain because of the history and culture of the people here. but im always reminded that i simply need to do what I feel i need to do. to  put forth MY effort in faith, and then trusting that my actions will have a positive effect. We are constantly reminded that we sometimes never see the effects that we do have immediately or even ever. But when E Wilson visited at District Conference, he said its hard to believe how fast the church is growing  here and how much progress has been made since the last time he came. 

cant get enough of that picture of Kellen haha. classic shirt, ugliest thing ive ever seen ahah. and judging by that picture i think its safe to say that i am now the SHORTEST boy in the famiy. welp, i reigned over my little brothers while i could. now im gonna go back and get picked on all the time... just me n mom huddled together in a corner, bein small. 

nothin else to say here! love you all!

Elder Giblette