farewell president and sister clark

So we get a new mission president this next week.  It’s really weird to think about.  We’re so lucky though, President Clark's last Sunday in the mission was spent in kuching.  What can I say…we're a big deal.

I’m really sorry I feel like I’m probably going to keep disappointing with my emails....I’m just tired, mommy.  I don't have too many words left to explain all of this :)

Sister Parker had another bad crash on the bike last night and we were in the hospital till pretty late.  That’s 4x in 3 months of bike riding for her.  I’ve been on the bike for 8 months now and never fallen or had anything happen.  I’m grateful.  I seem to have better luck “knock on wood”.

Acha's family is set for their baptism on Friday of this week.  We had to get two different people to baptize them all because eight might make one man too tired.  I love them so much and am so excited to see their faces as they come out of the waters of baptism.

We had a really sad lesson with Asen.  Something happened, maybe he heard some anti-stuff, he wouldn't say, but basically we had our last lesson with him last week.  He said he doesn't want to be baptized or follow Christ, he wants to continue following his family in praying to Buddha.  It was heart breaking.  Hopefully he'll get another chance sometime in the future and his heart will be able to open again.

There was a big party at the church to send off the Clark’s, lots of traditional dancing and eating :)  I love the iban and bidayuh cultures. Then we had an awesome Sunday for church.  It was district conference with President Clark, and we had more investigators at church than I’ve had in my whole mission. It was an awesome experience for each of them.  

Jung is really shining right now.  SHE invited her husband to be baptized with her...beat us to the punch.  He wants to.  They both loved church on Sunday and recognized that it was different than any other church they've ever been to.  We taught her about the Sabbath day and she quit her job because they wouldn't give her Sundays off to go to church.  It’s no wonder she's feeling the change the gospel is bringing to her, sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven :)

We started teaching the second half of Acha's family this past week also.  We watched the video Finding Faith in Christ and it was awesome to see a full room of people, sitting and gaining a better understanding of who Christ is.  The next day, while we were teaching Jung, I heard a really familiar movie playing from one of the other rooms (she lives in a longhouse, so there are other rooms with other families that just have doors from the outside), and then I realized it was Kapi watching FFIC again.  He lives right next to her and had been at Acha's the night before watching the movie with us.  It was pretty funny trying to figure out how I knew that song coming from the other room....oh duh...it's a church movie I’ve seen over a fifty times in the past year.

So yeah, things are good.  Everything keeps going.  We inherited a second branch this weekend, the newly formed Kuching International Branch.  Basically it's for all English and Chinese speaking members in all of Kuching.  So.....where's my Chinese???  I forgot how to speak it again.

I love you all and hope you have an awesome week!

Sayangi,

Sister Norton

HFI