Happy Chinese New Year. It's a killer for missionary work! Fireworks going off till four in the morning...no one's home and if they are they get mad at us for interrupting all the eating...but it has brought one good thing: lots of visits to members of the branch that no longer come to church. We went around with the Elders Quorum President and his wife all afternoon yesterday, just visiting a few of the less-active members. The EQP may just be the one holding this branch together. As we were thanking him for all his help he said it's his job that he promises to do every week as he takes the sacrament. Then he assured us that it wasn't putting him out at all because he gets blessings for it. Nice understanding of the gospel from a member of less than four years. They told us that they look at us as their daughters anyway so they enjoy helping. Ahh I love them. Last night I was thinking about how much love I felt and realizing that's how I feel the Holy Ghost most of the time. God is love. When I feel the Spirit it's just like a ton of love rushing around in my heart. And I like it.
We had an interesting lesson with A&D (from Indonesia) last week. When we were asking how their reading of the Book of Mormon had been going, A brought up how much it talks about the House of Israel. He was intrigued because his wife is a descendant of Judah. He asked us if we're part of Israel too and we smiled and told him yes, we're both from the tribe of Ephraim. Little things just keep pulling him more and more into finding out about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They're in KL now so they couldn't come to church on Sunday (these are the ones that go to the church depending on time for their kids...) but we'll meet again on Friday.
DA gave up on waiting to "bump" into us again and called us to meet. We had a good discussion and he's on date to be baptized at the end of March. He's still not sure if he believes in God, so there's a long way to go, but I know that it will happen fast once he can just climb to his knees and try praying sincerely. There's not much we can do until he chooses to do that.
Two amazing lessons with D this past week, members helped teach both of them! We taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Word of Wisdom, and the Law of Tithing. It was sweet to here her tell us that before we started teaching her she had no direction in life and now she feels like she's on a path. We got a call from her yesterday after she turned down some tea because she remembered "the five words of wisdom." It was cute. She's excited for her baptism next Saturday! Please pray for all of us that it will go through without a problem.
Funny story of the week? I had a sweet lady from Brisbane, Australia come up to me on the ferry yesterday and ask for help in buying a ticket for her and the rest of the travelers with her. As we were standing in the line to change for shillings, she looked at my nametag (that I happened to be wearing in English because I had left the flat without putting on my Malay one), and began to scold me and everything we "Mormons" believe in. At that point I didn't feel like telling her that my brother had served his mission in Brisbane :) She asked me how we even get to teach all these people that don't speak English and I told her it's not a problem because we speak Malay. She expressed her disgust in the work we're doing and told me it was bold of me to be here, so I smiled and said thank you. Sheesh. Some people just have really happy lives eh?
1 Nephi 7:12 continues to amaze me. I've been thinking a lot about it this past week. One morning while I was getting ready, I just started thinking about all the miracles in the Old Testament that I'm starting to read about. It could be easy to think that these miracles are just things that God causes to happen to show His power. Which they are of course, but I think we miss the view of the faith of the men through which God performs His miracles. If Moses didn't have the faith to part the Red Sea, it wouldn't have happened. Sure, the Lord can do all things according to his will for the children of man, but there's a pretty big condition on that..."IF it so be that they exercise faith in him." Faith is a power that will open the windows of heaven. Too often I expect things to just be miracles wrought without the workings of my own faith. It won't happen like that. So let us be faithful to him, and do our part.
I love you all and hope you're doing well! Enjoy that snow...I never thought I'd miss it but the thought of it is seeming pretty nice right now...
Sister Norton
HFI
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