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