A TRUE Christmas

The Christmas package you guys sent got to Malaysia on time! Only problem is it came with the zone leaders...and they left it in Butterworth...so I got it on the 27th. Elder Whittaker apologized and says he owes me sushi for "ruining" my present but also said I'll always remember the year I got to enjoy the true meaning of Christmas, unhindered by presents :) And guess what? I kind of liked it. Don't take that as a hint for next year though, Mommy.

Nearly all of our appointments have dropped within the last week because everyone has been so busy with Christmas and different things, but we've had a lot of time to spend with members and also just going around flats and sharing simple messages about Christ. Most people here admit they don't even know what CHRISTmas is. So we've been helping them out.

I got so many wonderful letters and packages from friends and family back home. I loved them all so much! Thank you! I will be writing back as soon as I can.

The highlight of course was skyping with my family! All 12 of them at the house...it was so good to see everyone.

We do have some great news about J (the Indonesian, not the Nigerian). We met with her last Friday and she had prayed about finding a way to get to church, just as we asked her to. A few weeks ago we knocked on another Indonesian woman's door and the next day we called her back to see if we could come over. She said her mother-in-law wouldn't let us in, but that we've been teaching her friend. We told J about it but didn't think much of it. On Friday J said that we could fix both of their problems, we could teach at her house so Y (her friend) didn't have to worry about the mother-in-law, and Y has a car to take them to church! I know it wasn't a coincidence that we found Y. And it was such a miracle for J to be able to get an answer to how she could get to church. So, now it will just be working to get those plans to follow through. It will happen.

DA forgot about his appt. with us on Thursday, or maybe he was ditching us...either way. After we waited for almost a half hour, we decided to go to BJ to find some people there. The first one we found as we walked in the mall was DA. I don't know who was more surprised about us being able to track him down without even knowing we were doing it. So that's four times we've just run into him now. He still doesn't know if he believes in God though. He's been praying and says he doesn't feel like those prayers are heard or answered. But we've run into four times without an appt. I don't know what that could be...

Saturday we spent some time doing service at the Penang Home, an old folks home. I loved every second of it! It felt so good to be doing something for someone else on Christmas eve instead of running around trying to get last minute things done for parties and what not like I'm usually doing at home. I think I'll make it a tradition :)

That's about it folks. Sorry I'm out of time again. I love you all though and hope you had a marvelous Christmas and that you got a chance to think about why it's such a special time of the year. And Happy New Year too! Be safe please!

Sister Norton

HFI

in all of penang, only you two are on bicycles

We had a guy stop and tell us no one rides bikes here. We told him there had been another guy who just passed on bicycle and he said, "Oh, so you're .03% then," and walked off laughing. Everyone knows we're the white girls that ride bicycles in skirts. And we ride so so much :(

This week has been great. Things are still tough, but I'm still happy. It's my Saviour's birthday! And we all know how much I like birthdays :) I've had a good amount of time to think about why Christmas brings us so much joy, and I think a lot of it has to do with promises. God has promised his children so much, and Christmas is when we celebrate the time when our Saviour was born and those promises started being fulfilled. We can see that God's word is good. We can put complete and total trust in those promises. He has promised us eternal life, and we may not have obtained it yet, but the promised way there was born in the city of David. He has promised us that He'll never leave us alone; He'll come to us and comfort us if we'll just call for Him. And we can have His peace, which is not of this world. He promised that all things would be gathered in one in the Latter-days, and that promise began to be fulfilled when a young boy named Joseph Smith knelt in a grove of trees and the Father and the Son came to him to answer his prayer. And we're promised that our Messiah will come again. What else could we ask for? I love the Lord and I love this season when we get to focus on things that are not of this world. I hope that all of us can have a light heart this year as you think about the love that your Heavenly Father has for you in order for Him to promise you so much.

J&S have been reading the Book of Mormon and we talked about baptism this last week. If you haven't seen the new video on lds.org, watch it! We're going to watch it with them next week :) http://lds.org/pages/mormon-messages?lang=eng#a-book-of-mormon-story

D,D, & A. D is the 16 year old girl we've been teaching, and D&A are her parents. Before we thought we were just teaching the dad, but then her mom came to the Christmas party at the church, and to sacrament meeting on Sunday morning! We'll be going to visit them tonight.

We visited with G&M on Sunday night also. M is not Christian but shared such an awesome yet simple testimony of prayer. We invited her to pray to our Heavenly Father every day and she tried it for a week. At first she said it was like she didn't have problems anymore, then corrected herself saying, "Or I guess I still do have problems, but it's like I know how to get through them better." She said, "It feels wonderful, like nothing I've ever felt before." Luckily we got through that part of the lesson before a bee came into the flat and made the rest of the lesson a little harder to focus on.

Did I tell you about DA? He's a man that the elders used to be teaching, but stopped answering their calls. About a month ago, we were on a bus and he came up to us asking if we were the Mormons. The elders had given us his number to try meeting with him but we couldn't get a hold of him either, and we didn't know he was the man we were talking to on the bus, if that makes sense. He told us his name as he hopped off the bus and we were in shock wondering if it was the same guy we'd been trying to call. Then about two weeks ago, we were biking to an appointment and he biked by going the other direction (see! someone else bikes too!), so we stopped and talked and invited him to come to the Christmas party, and he came to that. Then on Monday, we stopped for dinner and as we were eating we watched a man at another table who was reading a newspaper but had his back to us, thinking that it might be him. When we left, we walked past the table, and it was him! So we sat down and talked for a while just about his life and different things, then got down to God. He is big on science and doesn't believe there is a God or any creator. All we could do was teach and bear simply testimony that there is a God, He is our Father, and we can know Him. We invited him to try praying and he said he would. We're meeting again tomorrow.

Now to R. She's an 18-year-old girl we found in a kampung last week. We asked some people if there were any Christians in the kampung and they pointed us to her house but no one was home so we just left a pamphlet in the window. We went back later to find it was a Jehovah's Witness home, but they let us in and were so nice. We went back to see R last night and had a really great lesson about the Restoration of the gospel. She's still very unsure of the idea of a prophet after Christ, but the amazing part is that she wants to learn and she wants to listen. We were so scared going into the lesson that we would just be confronted with so many verses in the bible and the Spirit would be driven away through contention, but the Spirit was there the whole time. She's sincerely looking for truth. So I'm counting that one as a miracle. I'm excited to see where it goes with her.

Two of the younger girls in the branch have started calling me "Shakira Jie Mei" (Sister Shakira). Don't know where the confusion is coming from, I think it's just the hair.

I hope you all have a happy happy Christmas and your hearts will be light :) I love you all so much! Don't be late for our skype date, dear family :)

Sister Norton

HFI

Presents under the tree :)

Happy Christmas everyone!

south side

We biked to the southern beaches of Penang last night...we had no idea that's where our appointment was going to take us, and no idea it would be as long of a ride as it was. I don't know what they look like though, it was dark :)

This week has been leaps better than last. I've just decided I'm going to be happy and I'm not giving up without a fight. Dad, your email about the relationship you've developed with our Father in Heaven did so much to help me evaluate the relationship that I have with him. And I know He doesn't expect me to just give up now, it's just a few friendly curve balls. I'm still in the game.

We had a great lesson with D&D last week, teaching them the Restoration of Christ's Church. When we asked them how they felt about it, they said it made them feel like Christ is still near. We testified that He is very near, that He leads this church, and invited them to be baptized, which they accepted once they get a chance to first pray about it. We'll go back tomorrow night.

We still hadn't heard from the first J for a while, the young Indonesian mom, so we just decided to stop by her flat and let her know we're concerned and we love her. I was so glad that we did, even though it let us know that she's maybe beginning to give up hope. She has no ride to church and her husband won't take her, so she's starting to feel like she shouldn't learn any more because she knows she won't be able to have it as part of her life. It made me so sad for her. We've got to find her a way to get to church. At least she now knows that we're not giving up yet.

So J&S, our awesome Nigerian friends. We taught them about the Restoration and after that, J's concern came out...she doesn't think there was enough music and rejoicing at church. I immediately thought of something I wanted to show them on mormon.org, Alex Boye's profile. Turns out his mom was from Nigeria! There was an immediate connection with that. Then S wanted to show us some music that he listens to every day, and he turned on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir! I told them about my love for music and singing and S even made me sing with the Motab recording. I loved it, so much fun. They are so full of passion and love for the Lord. I tried to bear testimony of music and it's power, that we believe it to be a prayer, but there's right music for the right time, and during sacrament meeting is the time for reverent music to help us remember our Savior and not chase away those sacred moments we have to reflect on what He did for us. It helped, but they're still not sure I think. We'll see them again tomorrow also though.

Last night was crazy. We had an appt. with a friend of someone who is learning about the Church in Singapore. We biked out to their place, which took about a half hour longer than we expected and got there just dripping in sweat. She asked us to pray for her mom and her family because her mom has diabetes and there are some other problems in the family. From what most Christian churches are like over here, I assumed that she wanted us to "bless" her mom, something that we, as sisters and not having the Priesthood authority, can't do. They are all Hindu and didn't invite us over with the intention of learning more about Jesus Christ or His church, but just to get some added blessings. That is definitely faith, I am not doubting that. But we explained to them that we didn't have the power to heal or give them blessings, we could only pray with them and teach them how they could pray for themselves. We taught them about how faith works, and how prayer needs to be followed with faith in Jesus Christ and a desire to follow Him. Then we all knelt together and we taught them how to pray. They invited us to come back and teach them more about Jesus Christ. They even want to take us to their cousin’s house to teach them for Christmas! THEN we were told we weren't done and we still had to go to the mother-in-law's house and pray for her and teach her about prayer because she has cancer. Luckily they took us in the car for that one. That's what took us down towards the beach. I guess I shouldn't say we biked all the way there :) It was such an awesome night just going around teaching about something so simple as prayer and helping others to begin developing that personal relationship with our Father in Heaven. Nights like that make me love missionary work.

I got TONS of letters last week from the ward! Thank you so much to the Peterson's for sending them and to all the Young Men and Young Women in the ward, and also to the Bonham's. You guys are awesome! I love you all and hope you have a great week and a wonderful Christmas!!

Dengan kasih,

Sister Norton

HFI

we pakai basikal lah!

So we've got our bikes up and running. There's a killer hill next to our house that we've named "the hill called desolation." And riding in a skirt is not so easy. The rain doesn't help either.

We had some unexpected news this last week of a transfer in the sisters. Sister Song had to be moved to Singapore to be in the office after being hit by a motor bike on her bicycle. It crushed part of her spine so please pray for her. Her work must not be done though because she's expected to make a full recovery and be back out in about a month. Pray for us while we ride our bikes too...the drivers are crazy here!

Sunday was a miracle. We haven't ever had more than one investigator come to church...we got four this week. And they're all progressing. Heavenly Father isn't letting us give up just yet.

Sadly, J isn't answering calls or SMS from us...so my heart is broken once again.

Our new J, from Nigeria, came to church and is doing great though. She introduced us to two of her friends and we had a great lesson with them on Monday. We'll be going back again on Friday. I love Nigerians.

A few highlights from the week:

Sister Wilkes got bit by a kid while we were teaching a lesson.

We were knocking on some flats when we got to a door and a man opened and asked, "Did you just call me? How did you know my name?" We were confused and explained who we were and a little bit of the message we were sharing. He let us in and invited us to come back again, but kept bringing up that someone had called his phone right before we knocked on the door, asking for him by name. When he said yes, they said, "Ok thank you, wrong number." Apparently he and his family just moved into that flat two weeks ago and he hasn't given anyone their landline number yet. I was thinking about it a lot after we left and when we returned a few nights later to teach him about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Book of Mormon, he brought it up again, saying he keeps thinking about it, and that's why he let us in. He thinks he's supposed to listen to what we had to say. I knew that was true the second he shared that. Sadly he didn't give us a time we could come back and teach more. I guess it shows how loving the Lord is to help us recognize answers even when He knows we have the agency to ignore them. I just hope he will give the Book of Mormon a chance and we'll hear from him again. He's the assistant pastor at a Lutheran church here in Penang.

We had Ramly burgers to celebrate my nine month mark last week! It's FLOWN.

Sorry, there's a lot more but I'm running out of time.

Other than that, it's been a pretty tough week again. I've been thinking a lot about the kind of temptations that Christ faced in order for Him to tell Satan, "Get thee behind me." I think he was probably throwing a lot of discouraging thoughts at the Lord, trying to make Him think He couldn't fulfill His purpose. I know I don't have the same purpose as the Savior of the world, mine is insignificant in comparison, but I do know I have been set apart to find His lost sheep. That's my purpose. And sadly Satan has really been getting to me lately. He makes me cry and feel like I can't do this every single day. It's been tough. But I can't describe how thankful I am for prayer, the chance I have to talk with my Father in Heaven and plead for the comfort I need to keep going. I receive it every time I ask. I'm also thankful for the Book of Mormon, for the Holy Ghost prompting the authors of that book to write things that would be so relevant and so comforting to me. Just read Alma 26. I know in whom I have trusted. I'm not giving up yet.

I love you all and hope you have a good week!

Sayangi,

Sister Norton

HFI

Sister Norton & Sister Wilkes :)