Mosjid was pretty freaking cool!

The Mosjid that they went to on P-day...the tall spires are called minarets.

Nathan at the Mosjid

Kiwi and Nathan inside the Mosjid...this is in the prayer room.

How Far!?!? I day fine.... he-he that is Nigerian Pigeon English ha-ha... and when you speak it to them they love it.

Well this last week was alright. Renee's mom was just here. We didn't get to talk to her but, it didn't go super well when I gave them the letter we wrote. I am not sure if I told you last week about the letter but, the Smiths suggested we write a letter to her parents and stuff so I wrote one and gave it to Renee to give to her parents which she did and yesterday she sms'd us and said her father had sent an email in response to the letter and that it was not good..... So I suppose she just isn't a person who the Lord has prepared for us and we are just the people who were to start to teach her etc. Elder Kiwi said we are like Elis from the Bible where we go out and we find lots of people plant the seed and get them pretty far but, we are only preparing them for other people to take care of. Which is fine as long as their faith is getting affected as we teach them now?

Jacob is getting Baptized this Saturday so woohhhooooo freaking sweet. I hope after all this he will be able to take the gospel back and share it with his family in Nigeria and they too will also accept the gospel. He is really prepared to be baptized and to think it all started with us preaching a sermon to like 8 Africans and they would all just argue with us and then out of all that confusion one came to church and felt the spirit and knew it was true and now he hasn't missed church for 2 months.

Well funny story. As we are waiting for a Filipino to come down and come with us to church these 3 Filipina’s (Filipino=man Filipina=women) walked by and stared at us funny then stood kind of close by and they kept talking amongst themselves and then they would stare at us. Kiwi turns to me and goes man, their Filipinas and then I said, ok then you should go contact them. And he’s like no, you man. And I was like Na I scared they've been standing there for a while now and it was kinda funny. Then Kiwi says man you’re not a man if you can't talk to them. So I thought about it then went over and talked with them. I walked up and was like Hey, are you guys from the Philippines and there like, yeah. And I said we are missionaries from the church and their like, the Mormon Church? And I said yeah. One said, I have been to your church and my mom is a member but she has already passed away. They were going to a Catholic Church but, now we are starting to teach them. So they were pretty excited to meet us. Ones name was Pennsylvania ha-ha.

We also met with a member from main land China last week and he doesn't speak any English and he took us out to a nice place to eat dinner with his Mom and Dad and him who all don't speak English. So with are like 10 Chinese phrases we were able to somehow communicate for an hour and 30 minutes ha-ha so crazy. All we would say is this is delicious or this is nice or cool or what is your name ha-ha.

Sister Christine or recent convert from Indonesia is doing awesome and she got time off from her slaver to come meet with us and she took us out to lunch. She is so short but she is so awesome and has a great testimony even though she still prays like a Muslim ha-ha… it’s so funny to hear her pray.

Sister Ima another member who is Indonesian has a cool friend for us. She is going to bring them to church. She always brings friends for the missionaries to teach and the sad thing is she goes back to Indonesia on May 26.... So sad. She is so awesome and always gives me crap in Malay and when I attempt to translate for them she writes down all the things I say wrong ha-ha.

We also met with Sister Caroline and with Sister Gloria from East Malaysia and had lunch and asked them for friends to teach. Sister Caroline had given us a friend to teach but, wasn't super interested to the point that her friend was sitting behind us at the hawker stall and didn't say hi to us or Caroline which was really sad.... but what can you do eh? So then she proceeds to tell us that there are two Ibans over there and to go talk to them so we went over and it was weird but they listened till the bus came and we got there number. The funny part is we are in Shah Alam so they pointed out that we were the only two Christians amongst a billion Muslim girl’s ha-ha since it’s near a girl school. Shah Alam is the countries capitol.

We also taught a guy named Prince from Nigeria and his friend Folarian and their both pretty cool. but Folarian was talking about how Christ turned the water to wine then got drunk then Prince was like, no stupid he turned it into like a juice not wine and it’s not ok to get drunk and Christ wasn't drunk. So he totally destroyed him. The best part was they were very sorry they couldn’t come to church because we haven’t taught them before and they said they pray in this special corner for repentance. So they showed us this corner and in it was a Book of Mormon, some coins and that was it. He said he bought the BOM off a friend and he loved it. They had also come to church two weeks ago but had never been given a BOM by us so, it was way crazy so, he already has a testimony of it. It’s pretty crazy.

The Mosjid was pretty freaking cool and big. It very similar to the temple but it holds 25,000 men in the prayer room and the women’s room I don’t know how many. But it’s pretty nice and cool I will send some pictures. We are also going back again with all the elders for Zone Conference next week and to see the Sultans Palace and check out a museum and some cool malls ha-ha.

Sunday Afternoon with his Son...Priceless!!!

I remember when the boys were little and they would beg Jeff to go out and play ball with them. I am glad that somethings never change even if it isn't as often as it use to be. These are the truly PRICELESS moments to us as parents.

Back in the Game!!!

Don't mess with me

Hitting his Double

Back in the Game!!!

After seven long weeks Landon was finally cleared to play Baseball again. Yesterday was his first game he played in. He played outfield the first two innings, warmed up to pitch the third and pitched the last two innings facing only six batters total. Pretty good for not pitching since last summer due to injuries. His bat wasn't too bad either. He hit a double and a single. As you can see by the score it was a shut out.

Final Score

Jacob quit smoking...Baptism date set!

Traditional Malaysian Dancing

Elder Thomas, Kiwi, and Nathan with the Dancers

Elder Kelley teaching Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes :)

Teaching the Myanmar refugees English

Hey everyone,

Well this week was pretty exciting. I'll start off with Jacob our African investigator. So we have been working with Jacob for awhile trying to get him done with smoking. We've been calling him every night. Talking about faith and prayer and then finally it all came together when I called him Monday night and asked him how it went and he said he had quit smoking pretty much cold turkey because he was smoking 2-3 sticks a day and then he just decided to pray and tell the lord he was finished with it and asked for strength and then stopped. He is probably one of the most spiritual investigators I have had so far. Everything we teach he is very receptive to and he has a great understanding of what we read from the Book of Mormon. He always has some good insight for it. After he quit smoking he bore his testimony about how he knows the Book of Mormon is the word of God and how the prophets were inspired by God to write this book and said that Joseph Smith was an inspired man to translate the book. It was an awesome lesson and it was so exciting. So he is totally ready for baptism on May 1st now and he is way excited. His only question the whole lesson was why we had to move his date back then forward ha-ha. This was because he hadn't quit smoking yet. But all in all he is pretty freaking awesome.

Renee is finally back from KK but her parents still disapprove of her being baptized which is really tough and we are not quite sure what to do with her. Maybe talk about how God is greater than her parents or we might even write a letter to her parents. But she is still reading the BOM every day and praying which is good.

Andrian won't be getting baptized this week since it turns out he’s only 8 still ha-ha, and that he’s the branches responsibility and we also want to get his parents active again so his Dad can baptism him instead of a branch member. Which is sad cause his grandma really wanted him to get baptized but, it will have to wait I guess.

So Elder Thomas and Kelley in the PJ1 area have been having some awesome success that we have been a part of also. They have been working in an area we also worked in when we covered all three areas. And they have found a great group of Myanmar people there who are willing to learn and other people as well. There is now even a possibility of getting a group started out there. One of the guys went to pastor school in Myanmar and was recommended by a teacher there to read the Book of Mormon since they had it in the school library and he read it and loved it. Another one is the brother in law of the first Myanmar man to be baptized in Myanmar and is currently the Branch President there. It’s so exciting to see the possibility of a new group out there. There are already a lot of members out there and a ton of investigators and right now the members and the investigators travel a great distance to get to church. Like 2 hours by public transport and 1 by themselves. We have also been doing some service out there teaching young Myanmar refugees English which is way cool and funny since they just mimic you, at least the youngest ones do and its way funny.

We recently put a Sri Lankan family on a date last week and they are pretty excited for baptism. The husband wanted to be baptized before we even asked him to be… ha-ha. He is from an RC (Roman Catholic I think) background and he said his baptism really didn't mean anything to him before and we talked about authority and everything, it went really well. The senior couple the Smiths here are also teaching him a little during Family Home Evening. They are pretty awesome and have 2 really funny kids. And that is all for investigators.

Last week on P- day we went and saw Malaysian traditional dances which is pretty dang cool and only cost 5 rm and was way fun. And today we are off to see a Mosjid that has the tallest minarets in the world.

We are still meeting with lots of members though and trying to get some referrals from them slowly, slowly it will come. But all in all Klang is just awesome but huge and hard to get people to church cause it’s ridiculous to find ha-ha.... but things are slowly, slowly getting the Branch stronger and investigators to church.

Elder Watkins

275 Stairs to the Top of Batu Caves

Batu Caves

at the Easter Cantana

Eating Coconuts...

Hey everyone,

This week was good. We went and taught Jacob some more and brought a member with us to help him break the smoking habit. He’s doing well and still loves church especially conference. So we saw conference last Sunday and Saturday by the way. Jacob is slowly progressing and will get in the water soon ha-ha. Andrian is going well he won't be baptized till April 25 due to some vacation problems ha-ha. He’s doing awesome and still the same old same old with him ha-ha. He loves to play games with us at his place but, isn't too happy when Marie Jean or someone else wins ha-ha.

We found this new cool Vietnamese investigator who’s doing pretty well. We met him last Friday and just taught him last night. He definitely has the desire to learn, he asked great questions and when we gave him a Vietnamese Book or Mormon last week he already had read 10 pages of it and understood and asked questions about it. He thought it was one of the most interesting books he has ever read, except he thinks he can't finish it since he’s lazy and said it’s such a big book ha-ha.

On Monday we met up with a member from Indonesia named Nofri and her sister Santi in an attempt to get her to learn we met up with them at Batu Caves... which isn't my favorite place one cause of the 275 stairs which we had already climbed once before they got there out of boredom... But her sister is a non member and we were trying to get her to meet up with us and let us teach her later. So we introduced the Book of Mormon and she wouldn't take it sadly. she just keep saying later... then Nofri was sad cause she wants her sister to feel like she does at church but, her sister is all about a charismatic church with loud music, guitars, drums etc.

On Sunday we met up with Eddy Wong a return missionary from this mission who’s from KK and some of his family is in our ward. We went and saw him before he went off to BYU Hawaii last Monday. He’s way cool and should do well there.

We’ve also been teaching some Nepalese guys who are pretty cool. 1 is RC 1 is Hindu and 1 is Jehovah Witness. They are all pretty good and will be coming to church next month when their work shifts changes. Right now they work day shift from 7am-7pm but next month it’s from 7pm to 7am so they will come to church then. One has already been to church once and loved it. We also taught a Fijian last week and she’s cool part of her family are members already. She isn't super interested right now but things could change.

And I have never had that ice cream sandwich you saw on the Amazing Race before but, I have had plenty of other interesting ice cream things before. I have had Durian ice cream and they usually put them on sticks and they are square. But Elder Kiwi has had it before said he didn't like it but, he is like Landon pilih budak...picky ha-ha.

Since the 4 missionaries went home we got a new Zone Leader named Elder Austin and he’s cool so far ha-ha he only wears black ties though he-he. And Mountain Dew is sold all over KL btw so I am so happy this week ha-ha now all we need in Dr. Pepper. Oh and Elder Leavitt my trainer is now a ZL in KK that’s also something that happened.

Today we are going to the travel the tourism center of Malaysia to see all the Malaysian traditional dances which should be pretty cool.

Happy Birthday Grandma Berlin! Selamat Hari Jadi Nanek.
Elder Watkins