Holiday Treats Gone Wild?

hi mom and dad!

it was so great to talk to you on Christmas, and really weird at the same time, sometimes i feel so far away, its weird that life is still going on like normal back home. weird.
basically, Christmas is insane, and my least favorite holiday in Malaysia ever! haha, is that over dramatic? so for Christmas, everyone invites you over to their house and you have to eat at every house you go to. like a meal. rice at every house. it was so bad, mom and dad. we were so full by the second house, and people kept saying, we cooked especially for you! we went to seven houses. and the last house, they are pretty well off, they had tons of people over, they made turkey and ham and lamb and all this stuff, and they loaded our plates with meat. and to top of the day, i got a flat tire, so the couple came to pick us up to take us home, and they came early, so we had to eat so fast, stuffing our faces with so much meat. merry Christmas, i never want to eat again! but other than that it was a really good Christmas. i LOVED my Christmas presents, and people love the Malay ctr ring, people are crazy for it. and the skirt you sent was so cute, and fits perfectly, and i can see me and it having a long and happy future, thank you so much!

the Sunday after Christmas i decided to fast, for a number of reasons, one of them being penance for Christmas gluttony the day before, and i think my body couldn't take so much stress, because the next day i was SO sick. i had a fever and a headache and an upset stomach, and i threw up in the afternoon, which was stupid, because by that time i had nothing in my stomach. yuck. we stayed in most of the day, but we had a few night appointments we couldn't miss, and i won't spare you the details family, when i got on my bike, it was pretty bad, I've never really felt that weak before, its a miracle i didn't fall off. we went to a recent converts house to explain why we missed our appointment earlier that day, and while we were there, i had to throw up again, in the ditch in front of her house. so bad. but after that, i felt a lot better, and we went to the rest of the appointments, and i was fine, they gave me something to drink and the bike ride home was perfectly fine. crazy. do you see why i hate Christmas? but now I'm fine except that i don't know if i will like rice as much as i did before. we'll see.

but other than that, kuching is doing fine, and since i think i am going to stay here until the end, I'm trying to really keep up the good things that we have seen happen here. i think one thing that i have learned is that you always have trials, no matter what is going on, so I'm just trying to push through them and have as much faith as i can. but i really really love the branch here, i hope to see lots of good things happen before i have to leave. but lets not think about that, there is plenty of time ahead of me. well mom and dad, i love you a lot, things are going good here, I'm learning patience like crazy and other stuff too. miss you,

sister Harrison

It's Almost Christmas !!

hi mom and dad!

this is a crazy week, sister lim went on a visa run to Singapore on Monday to Tuesday, today is p-day, tomorrow is zone conference, and Saturday is Christmas! it is insane, and its almost 2011. of course me and sister lim are getting worried about transfers again, because we have awesome people right now, and January is looking like a pretty good month for baptisms, we will see.

OK, listen to this crazy story. me and sister lim, seriously, have the craziest stories of how we find people. sometimes i feel like I'm kind of bumbling around a little bit, just doing missionary work the best way i know how, not sure if what I'm following is the spirit or just what I'm thinking. but i will tell you family, it is the spirit. this is usually how we find people. every day we bike around our area, going from members houses to investigators, and sometimes I'll just see a place and say to myself, hm, I've never contacted there. we should contact there when we have time. maybe I'll think that for a couple of weeks or so, and then, when we have the time to go knocking, we go there. That is how we found Angel and Buban. just a group of houses I've never been to, one night we walked over, there were tons of kids hanging around the door of the last house, so we said, hey, we'll go there. i kid you not, as we were walking up, the kids were rushed inside, the door was slammed shut and the lights were turned off. OK, we can take a hint, people are so weird. so we go to the next door neighbor. angel and buban. super nice, wanted us to come back, they are a young couple and they have a baby girl. they just moved here from Miri, and they just got baptized in another church there. but they really are awesome. we met them only one time, it was a great lesson. then, when we were back, nothing, door locked, and they don't answer there phone. so then, maybe a week later, we are at the church waiting for a member, I'm playing the piano and sister lim is bored, so she starts calling people, called up angel. angel said they had gone back to kampung, and had just come back to kuching that day! so we met them again, another awesome lesson. turns out they are going back to kampung again for Christmas, and we managed to meet them in like the four days they had in kuching. what are the chances! so we only just gave them a book of Mormon, but we are really excited for them. another day I'll tell you the other crazy finding stories, i have even better ones. so even though I'm not that good at recognizing the spirit guiding at the time, you can tell from the results. angel and buban asked us how we found them, we were literally guided to their door, thanks to their unfriendly neighbors. after we met them, we've never knocked the other doors in that area. never felt like i needed to. before i thought it was just my thoughts, but it is really cool to see your own thoughts be guided. i never thought that could happen before.

anywho, the work is going good, and i hope me and sister lim get a lot longer here. i've been here six and a half months already, and its been great. one day kuching will have a temple, and i will come back here. i know it will have a temple. its a really cool opportunity to get to be here and help it grow, the man we baptized last month, Sulin, i think he will help the branch a lot. we called them up to help us teach, and they were at the branch president's house from some Christmas thing or another, so we said, that is perfectly fine, just hang out with the branch members all the time, we are fine with that. they are so cool.

i was looking back over my journal, one of my first entries goes like this: 'do people actually like missionary work? i want to work hard, but I'm afraid, i just want it to be over already..' and then one of my recent entries, after a really good day went like this: 'I. LOVE. THE PEOPLE HERE. i love missionary work, i love Malaysia, blah blah blah blah.' there is definitely some growth there, don't you think?

so things are good, i love you family, so much. and i really love the gospel.

sister Harrison

P-Day and Christmas

hi mom and dad!

well, today is p-day, and as dad has requested, i will give you a little run down of how p-days go. the highlight of p-day, is, of course, email, and we either do it at the couple's house, they live below us, or we go to an Internet cafe, which is cheap, but usually full of Chinese teen aged boys playing shooting games with the sound turned all the way up. whatever. we go shopping, and sometimes the couple will even take us to get groceries, nice, huh? we have a washing machine, but we can do laundry on any day of the week. no dryer, though, so we just hang up our clothes to dry. usually we hang out with the missionaries in our zone, they live kind of far, but within a bike ride. we go bowling or to a museum, we went to an orangutan reserve once, pretty cool. and sometimes, sister lim lets us go to the church so i can play the piano, dang, mom and dad, i am really getting into the piano here. i mean, i don't really have time to play it except the occasional p-day, but i bet i could play for hours if i had the chance. i wonder if that will keep going when i'm home and have a piano all the time, i can't even imagine.

so we usually go out for the morning and come back in the afternoon, because we can watch some movies that are approved, so we just watch, write letters, and at six thirty we go out again for appointments with investigators. but we usually just have two appointments, and then come home again. its pretty nice. today is a little different because sister lim is sick, kind of fevery, so we'll just take it easy today.

but we are getting excited for Christmas, because we didn't get transferred! hooray! i was sure they were going to, but it didn't happen. so it looks like we get to be here together for a few more weeks. our mission doesn't have regular transfers because we get missionaries from two different mtcs, Provo and Philippines, plus Chinese elders and people going on visa runs all the time just messes things up. the next missionaries leave in a few weeks, so there will be transfers then, and then another transfer in a couple weeks more. so you never know! but we are here for Christmas, and that will be really fun. probably new year's too, i want to still be here for Chinese new year too, because we have a Chinese recent convert, but that is stretching a little bit. we'll see.

something really cool happened this week too. on Sunday, two new investigators, Akie and Vanessa, came to church. we went to see them that night, but akie wasn't there, and Vanessa was crying and all upset, i think akie drinks, and she wanted to go back and stay with her parents. we saw them again on Monday, taught the word of wisdom, akie said he wanted to try to follow it, even though he has big problems with smoking and drinking. we saw them again last night, and we asked akie why he wants to learn, why he wants to go to church, and do you know what he said? that he wants to change and help his family, and he thinks that this, that going to church is going to make all the difference. we taught them about the gospel, and they were really into the lesson, you could tell by their body language. I'm really excited for their family. that is all it takes, you know, to want to change and have the faith, which obviously they have. we were reading 1 nephi 3.7 with them, and i was explaining the story a little bit, but Vanessa already knew the whole story, it was awesome, Ibans are not big readers, that is for sure, and they don't have a lot of reading comprehension, so when somebody actually reads and knows the story, it is so so awesome. we have this one investigator, who does read, but whenever we ask her what verse she liked, she picks the weirdest verses, like, i, nephi was told by my father to do this and the, and she says, yeah, this verse, i really like this one. hahaha.. another funny thing about ibans while we are on the subject, they have no concept of time. when we meet people who have met the missionaries, we always ask them, when was that, how long ago? and they always always say, i bet it has been two or three months ago for sure, when you know that missionary hasn't been here for one or two years, at least. oh yeah, our recent convert, dorina, always says, i think its almost been a year since i was baptized. yeah a year, maybe in like eight more months. hahaha, got to love the ibans.

i love you family!

Golden Kampung

this has been a crazy week, because it is the last installation of the missionary leadership training, and all the missionaries from East Malaysia are here in kuching for it. right now there are exactly forty two missionaries in East Malaysia, and forty two in West Malaysia and Singapore, crazy. and six sister missionaries in one apartment at one time, lets just say that we didn't exactly get to bed at eleven o'clock, ha 2. the conference was good, except that i had to give a talk on the purpose of missionary (i swear i speak at every conference) . also the zone leaders decided it would be a good idea to have it at their chapel, pretty much a forty five minute bike ride from where we live, hooray. (can i just say, just after biking from there, that kuching is huge? we just biked forty five minutes from there, and forty five minutes the other way is still in our area! )

later this week me and sister lim are going to the youth conference to talk to the young women about missionary work, and then this weekend is district conference, for all the branches in kuching. triple conference week. district conference is always a little stressful because its at a weird place at a different time, and you have to get it all worked out with your investigators, and then, they have a 'welcoming meeting' after conference for all the recent converts and investigators, and there is the mission president and assistants, seeing how many of your people showed up. oh well, it only happens twice a year anyway, but somehow I've already been through four of them...

if sister lim and i stay in kuching we are getting a ten ringgit Christmas tree and going to have an awesome Christmas! we find out on Friday if any of us are getting transferred....

this email is sort of a mish mash of thoughts going through my head right now, but i did want to tell you one kind of crazy story. so my district leader has been telling me for awhile that there is a kampung (like a group of Iban houses) in my area that i don't know about, and he wanted to show us where it was. it never worked out, but finally yesterday me and sister lim had some time and he explained where it was and we went kampung hunting. it involved going down this secret road through the jungle behind this huge Methodist church, past all these Muslim houses, across the high way, then he said to just look for the lane between the factories. we found it, and i had actually been there once before with sister seve, when i first got here, but i had completely forgotten how to get there. so what it was was a narrow little lane between a brick wall and a barbed wire fence, that just kept going back and back and back, and then, it opened up, and there, between the walls of these two factories, all these iban houses. Insane. but a member lives there and we went to see her, and then we went to the very end and started to knock all the doors. and get this, 1, 2, 3, 4, every house we knocked on said we could come back. we only had time to knock four though, so i can't wait to try the rest. so instead of a golden investigator, we found a golden kampung! we are seeing most of them on Sunday, so we will see. i got a picture of that little lane, just wait till you see it, its crazy. it feels good to have some new investigators though, and pretty sweet to start working in a new area, too. can you believe i have been in kuching for six months already? gosh, i can't believe it.

well, i hope you have a really good Christmas season, December is flying by... i love you, mom and dad! stay safe in the snow, okay? and i will live up my first Christmas on the equator.

love, sister Harrison

Ha Ha, Sister Sugi

my dearest family,

dang, family, last week was like the best week i have ever had on my mission so far. an awesome baptism, (my first family!) Sulin, Simbut, and David Maxwell, and Ah Mei. then, Sunday night, we went to teach sulin and simbut's friends who have been learning, Robert and Norena. First of all, Sulin was still in his shirt and tie, so freaking sweet, and the lesson went really well, they are working towards baptism and have stopped drinking coffee and tea (hooray!) not only that, but they introduced us to their friends who just moved in, Akie and Vanessa (and their son is named Tomas Moroni Gudam, no joke). they are interested too. after that lesson, i felt like everything, everything, hard things and working everyday and trials and everything was worth it just to be there for that moment. to see how the gospel has touched the lives of these people, to see them open up to it, to be their friends and laugh with them, there is no comparison. it was like nothing else. so yes, i will be so sad if i get transferred. but mom and dad, if you come here, i will take you to their house. when sulin beared his testimony after his baptism, i almost cried it was so good. he said he felt like he started a brand new life, he was grateful for the gospel, and then, he said, in effect, he was grateful for me and sister lim coming and bringing the commandments to him. Simbut's testimony was so cute, she said before she was afraid, but now she's not afraid anymore, and that was it. what a cool family. you think it couldn't get better, but it does. Our district leader, elder sugi, was the one who interviewed them for baptism, and actually he was the one to baptize them. and yes, they call him sister sugi. so freaking sweet.

there is not really anything else to say, except I'm sending the Christmas present today, so look out for that. oh yeah, and some how, incredibly, i think I'm getting better at the piano. sometimes i play on p days, but i can kind of play by ear now, i figured out how to play the beginning of the 'lean on me song' not only by ear but also by memory, because I'm sure i haven't heard it in over a year. so that's kind of a cool little blessing. I'll tell you one thing, since I've been on the mission I've decided that i want to get really good at the piano, and i want to get really good at sewing, and i want to run a marathon, but I'll leave all those things till later.

i love you family!

Thanksgiving in Malaysia ! ! !

happy thanksgiving everyone, the day has finally arrived!

this year i am particularly excited, I'm not sure why, maybe it was all those praise and thanksgiving hymns. but it is turning into a pretty good thanksgiving. we live right above the senior couple here, and so me and sister lim and elder and sister reidt are cooking everything and all the elders are coming over and we are going to hang out all day and play games and stuff. and sister reidt already made apple and pumpkin pies yesterday, and lemon today, so basically, I'm so excited! so even though I'm far away from my real family (sniff sniff, i love you guys..) it sort of feels like a family here, and it is nice. it would be sweet to have Christmas here too. we almost didn't have thanksgiving though. first we were going to have it on Thursday, then the zone leaders were being all weird, so fine, we'll have it on pday, but there wasn't enough time to make all the stuff, and we tried switching pday and we weren't allowed, and then it ended up being me and sister lim going to the market for exercise yesterday morning to get all the stuff for pies, and now its today and it is going to be good. the funny thing is, the zone from miri is having their thanksgiving on Friday, because that is Thursday in America. weird. oh well i don't care, I'd rather hang out all day and not feel guilty about not working. ah, missionary life.

in other news, me and sister lim are excited because there is a baptism on Saturday! and for the first time my whole mission, a family is getting baptized, all together. cool, huh? sulin, simbut, and their son, david. they are such a cool family. they got interviewed for their baptism yesterday, and the wife, simbut, was nervous and it was so cute. she was telling us when she was in school, she would cheat all the time and write the answers on her hand and have signals with her friends during tests and stuff. oh yeah. when we went over the questions with them, they were trying to memorize all the steps of the gospel and everything, which is funny, because that's not even part of the questions. simbut is so funny, when we were teaching the ten commandments, she was telling her eight year old son, read this, honor thy father and thy mother, do you see that? she said. haha i really love that family. so they are getting baptized this Saturday along with this Chinese girl we've been teaching, Ah Mei, she is twenty-five. i really like her, she is so quiet, and her Malay is not that good, and her mandarin isn't that good either, she speaks hokkien Chinese. (i never knew languages were such a big barrier before i got here) but between our Malay and sister lim's Chinese we taught her (thank goodness she understands the Chinese book of Mormon) she is so quiet, and really shy, because her Malay is not good, and we were worried for her interview, because before when we asked her what repentance means, she would just say 'pray', and she would say it in Chinese. 'yeah', we'd say, 'that is definitely part of it...' but when we went over the questions with her on Monday, she did beautifully, we are really excited for her, too. her dad is coming to the baptism. sometimes he listens in on our lessons, and he told us he could come to church after Chinese new year, so we will see. (but he said that after he heard us teaching about tithing, so that's pretty good)

i have a lot more to tell you, but i will save some for the letter. things are going really good right now. our district leader is sort of on fire right now, and he is getting us excited about the work, its a really good feeling. we went out to lunch with our whole zone, and right there in the restaurant, he got us two new investigators. what?! but i know right as i feel like the work is going so good and things are coming together, i can feel a transfer or something coming on.. but whatever, i got to see sulin and simbut's baptism, so that is enough. and it has taken me so long to feel this way, to feel confident in the language, to feel more confident as a missionary that with our faith we can make miracles come about. but it was definitely worth it to slog through all the bad times and hard stuff to finally feel this way. sometimes i don't want to go to sleep because i want to enjoy the feeling a little longer.

anywho, family, i love you, enjoy your thanksgiving!

Sister Harrison

Is this much fun legal?

hi mom and dad and everyone,

kuching is doing good and things are moving along. last week we only got two new investigators, which for this area, is not good, its a really low number. so this week we've been trying to do better, our goal is one new investigator a day, and we got one on Monday, and one on Tuesday, so far so good. we met a really cool girl yesterday, we knocked on her door, just said basically that we were from our church, and she let us right in, and got us Milo to drink, we shared a little bit, and she was very happy for us to come back. what?! that is all you could ever hope for when you are contacting. we almost didn't go knocking too because we didn't have that much time. crazy. seriously, the people are just prepared to hear the gospel, every day it is a testimony builder to me. i mean, sure, there are tons of people who just start shaking there heads when you try to talk to them and people who pretend they aren't home and everything, and then there are people who just let you right in.

yesterday was actually a pretty fun day, our last appointment was a birthday party for one of our investigators, Ah Mei, she is Chinese. we didn't have that much time so we were eating pretty fast, they made steamboat for us, which is a pot of boiling soup in the middle of the table, and you cook meat and veggies and stuff in it, so delicious. so we said, uh, sorry, we have to go.. and they said, no no, the cake, you have to sing to her! so they brought out the cake and we sang, and then we were stuffing the cake into our mouths, and i started sneezing like ten times, and it was almost our curfew, and we were running around a little like chickens with our heads cut off. and then sister Lim made me help her finish her cake because she couldn't. we were so full, because we had just had two appointments before where they fed us. yay for missionary work. it was a fun night and we rode home in record time. we were really glad we went because it was just her family and us, not that many people came. it was really nice, it felt like we were a part of her family. but don't worry, i still remember who my real family is, i love you family, and i miss you,

sister Harrison

Thanksgiving, Success and Singing

hi family

dang, sometimes i feel so far away.. Asher is going to school, what? Harrison can not only walk, but talk, too, what?! I've officially been out for a year now, i hope Xena still remembers me! anyway, the holiday season is officially underway here. I've been celebrating thanksgiving this whole month of November. "celebrating thanksgiving" means that when it is my turn to pick the hymn for companionship study, i choose from the 'praise and thanksgiving' section of the hymnbook. i just discovered that section, and let me tell you, this thanksgiving season is going to be a really good one.

anyway, we have had some good things and some bad things go on here in our little kuching world. we have some baptisms coming up, and for me it is the first family that i have ever taught, so i am really really excited about it. the wife, Simbut, just recently opened up and she loves church, and is reading the book of Mormon, when before, she would just sit and listen and her husband was the one to talk to all of us. so Sulin is the husband and Simbut is the wife and David is their son, he's eight. they are really cool and will get baptized in a couple of weeks. bad things, a family we have been working with for a long time, reni and tedong, we stopped by once a couple of weeks ago and they were drunk, i might have told you about that. last Saturday we had a really good lesson with them, they really want this in their life but struggling to make the changes. so that was way good, but then on Sunday, they didn't come to church. oh well, we are seeing them tonight, i will tell you how it goes.

oh one last cool story. last week we had some time because and appointment fell through so we knocked a couple of doors in that same apartment complex. usually knocking there isn't that great, it has a lot of Chinese (in my limited knowledge of the Chinese language, i know how to say, 'we're Buddhist' -wo men pai sin-) but we knocked just two houses. one had a girl named tracy, who actually said we could come back, and when we did, she was so good. she has lots of good questions, and has talked to lots of people from lots of different churches, which is usually a good sign. then yesterday when we gave her a book of Mormon, she got out her bible and stuff, and she already had a really old book of Mormon in her house. i seriously couldn't believe it. i guess it was her dad's, who lives in bintulu, which is like nine hours away. crazy! but she is cool, and i hope good things happen with her. if she gets baptized and if reni and tedong get baptized, those are the two craziest stories of how we found them. that would be really cool.

anyway family, i love you, i hope you have a good thanksgiving season, feed my picture some corn again??

sister Harrison

PS i made up a song on my bike that turned out pretty good, I'll share it with you. it goes to the tune of "my favorite things" from sound of music. enjoy

kitabs and bug bites and biking in dresses

sunshine and tan lines and sweaty blonde tresses

visiting Ibans and making them sing,

these are a few of my favorite things

oh malaysia, when i leave you,

i will be so sad,

but if i remember my favorite things,

then i don't feel so bad.

rice, chicken curry, and endless, hot summer

can't teach the Muslims, its really a bummer

and in melayu they haven't a thing,

Malaysia Malaysia makes me want to sing

oh Malaysia, when i leave you

i will feel so sad,

but if i remember my favorite things

then i don't feel so bad

Mufflers Hurt !!

hi family,

just another little weekly update. still here in kuching, still doing missionary work. oh yeah. still learning a lot. i woke up today, and i was just so happy, so i must be doing something right. we saw this family last night, Sulin and Simbut and their son, David, and they are so good. last week we saw them and talked to them about baptism, and they weren't really that sure about it, Simbut, the wife, said she was afraid of cold water. but they went to church and really really liked it. and when we saw them yesterday, we came in, sat down, and they asked us when they were getting baptized. awesome, we had this whole lesson prepared talking about the gospel, and why we need to be baptized, and if they wanted to get baptized at the end of the month, but bam, at the beginning, they asked, and we said, how about the 26th? awesome. this is the first family I've taught that really wants to get baptized and is really excited about it. it is so cool. dang, what a good gospel.

in other news, i burned my leg on a moto muffler last night, one was behind me, that i just was still hot, and i stepped back, and bam. that is the second time that has happened on my mission, the last time was in sibu, same scenario. ouch. now I'm going to have twin scars on the back of my leg. excellent. but everybody here has scars from motos, seriously everybody. so I'm glad i fit in that way.

today for pday sister lim was nice enough to let us go to the church, and she wrote letters while i just played the piano for like an hour and a half. i really miss the piano, i could remember a lot of stuff though, some pieces i memorized forever ago, and sort of a lot of that Ben folds stuff that i always used to play. good times, i didn't realize how much i missed it. so we may be at the church every pday after this.. haha.

okay family, i love you, have a good week,

sister Harrison

Now you know what MILO is.

hi family!

mom and dad, you are the best, thank you for sending me awesome stuff all the time, I'm sorry i always am asking you guys to send me stuff, but i am forever grateful. this week was really good, we finished up the training in Sibu, and we came back to dive into the work, only to have sister lim leave on Monday to go to Singapore to chop her passport. she has to go back nearly every month because usually they only give her thirty days, unless she gets an extension. but now she is back, and we are back, and we have some cool people right now. most of them are families, which is really cool, i have never really taught families before now, so i am really grateful we got to find them and have the opportunity to teach them. they are all having their own personal struggles right now, meaning that none of them came to church last week. lame. but hopefully this week will be another story, and my district leader says we have to be bold and everything, so we are working on that.

i'm glad to hear that mom is doing better, and that she is working furiously along with the orchestra, i can't wait to hear her! and also i am waiting on pins and needles to hear how lance's date went.. haha seriously tell me i want to know.

but family, i love you and things are doing really well here, have a good Halloween!

sister Harrison

PS. milo is a chocolate malt drink, sort of like hot chocolate but not quite. it is delicious hot or cold, i hear you can get it in America at the Asian market, so don't worry family, i will have you try it and you will love it too!

PPS

we live above elder and sister reidt, and sister reidt has been helping me do a little quilt (don't worry, all on pday) but its turning out pretty cool, and we included a picture.. hibiscus is the national flower, bunga raya love you fam!

Sibu Mission Training

hi fam, I'm writing you from the sibu, the city of my birth. we are here for mission training, and it is really weird to be back here. the last time i was here, it was January! insane, it is October right now. mostly everything is the same, same house same church, same email place. weird. time goes by way to fast, and i think i say that in every email.

the conference has been great, getting us really pumped up for work in our area, and it is really cool just to listen to the gospel. we saw (finally) conference last week, and it went by so fast. Anita and ain got baptized last week, and it was a bit of a nightmare, we had ady baptize her, he is our recent convert from September, and it was his first time baptizing, and lets just say that i lost count of the times he had to rebaptize her. at least six or seven. oops. i hope he is not afraid to baptize again, but at least she is baptized, and i don't think she'll forget that one any time soon.

the funniest thing happened on Sunday, we went over to tom's house, we are teaching his family, his niece and nephew are Bianca and martin, i may have mentioned them before. anywho, they never want to pray in the lessons, they are really shy about it, we have been wanting them to pray for at least two weeks now. tom finally prayed at the beginning, and we hardly even had to ask him. it was a really good prayer. so we asked martin to give the closing prayer, and we wrote an outline for a prayer in his book of Mormon, and said he could follow it as he prayed. so he agreed. and basically, translated into english, this is how it went, 'Heavenly Father, speak from your heart..' haha the whole family busted up laughing, even martin. they are such a good family, the only problem is that tom works every Sunday. but, he says after October his job on Sundays is ending, so we are excited for them.

love your favorite little Malaysian,

sister Harrison

Baptisms are Awesome !!

hi family, hi mom and dad,

guess what? we get to watch conference this weekend! cool, huh? but we are super excited, i can't believe it has already been six months since the last time i saw conference. dang time goes by fast. we are also having a baptism this weekend, so it is has been an awesome week. Anita and ain are getting baptized. the craziest story of how we met them. they knew elders a long time ago, maybe more than a year. but they saw some elders riding their bikes and yelled out to them, the elders stopped and got there number, and gave it to us. then like a week later, like an hour before church, i was calling people, trying to get people to come, and i just called them and told them about church, and Anita showed up with four kids in tow. so freaking awesome. since then she has come every week, and is super strong. she is from Indonesia, just like Ady, who got baptized last month, and Dorina, who got baptized in August. and not only are they all Indonesian, they are are they same dialect of Indonesian. sweet. they are starting a little Indonesian club. yesterday i met another Indonesian from the same place as them, so we'll try to get him converted too. and they are all super strong together, it is really cool to see. so baptism, conference, and next week we are going to Sibu for mission conference. crazy, i feel like I'm traveling as much as you guys are! it will be really cool to be back in Sibu, i haven't been there since January. Dang.

yesterday we saw these people we are teaching, Reni and Tedong, and Tedong, the dad, said some pretty cool things. first, i was asking him what faith means, and in effect, he said it is when we want to do good and don't want to do bad anymore. what a good answer. sure faith is when we believe, but is when we believe enough to follow, to change our lives. he is cool. we were asking them about baptism, and he said the only thing he is afraid of is starting to follow something, and then later not being able to follow it. so cool huh? usually people don't even think it through that far. so if he was to get baptized, he knows he is in it for good, that it is a real change in his life. we are excited for him. hopefully in a few weeks i will be telling you that they are getting baptized!

but i love you family, have a good week,

sister Harrison

It's the Rainy Season !

dear mom and dad, and the rest of the family too,

hi dad i like your email, and I'm glad hear that you are deliberating over my Christmas package, haha.

hi mom my favorite part of your email was when you said "we are enjoying your letters and emails immensely" i wrote this in the letter I'm sending, but two nights ago i had a horrible dream i was at home and you and dad sat me down and said that you hated my letters! crazy dream, huh? but i totally thought it was real, and i was crying in my dream and everything, so i am really happy that that is not the case. thanks for liking my letters. and don't worry, my dreams aren't all bad. last night sister lim said l was laughing out loud in my sleep. creepy, yes. it must have been pretty funny.

kuching is good. the wet season has starting in true Malaysian fashion by completely soaking us, and then as soon as we buy rain coats and drag them around with us everywhere, it has been as dry and hot as ever. I'll include a picture, we bought temporary bright yellow raincoats, that we wore over our bags and under our helmets, and they were billowing out in the wind. as if we didn't stand out enough. oh well.

next week we will be getting ready for a baptism, Anita and her daughter Ain. Anita is really cool. she comes to church every week even though she has to sit outside the whole time because her baby just cries and cries. he is such a sad baby. his dad is a big drug user, the first of it I've ever seen in Malaysia, and sometimes i worry that that is why he cries all the time. so so sad, but I'm happy we got to meet Anita anyway, and really happy she always comes to church.

i love you family, so much!

sister Harrison

A miracle !!

dear family,

yesterday a miracle happened. i still can't believe it, even now, every time i think about it. we were biking yesterday, and it was starting to rain, and we were just biking like normal, coming down this little hill to a stoplight, and there were lots of cars waiting, and some trying to get over to turn. anywho, i biked around these cars to get up to the stoplight, and i look back, and sister lim had slipped and fallen. so when i got back to her she had gotten up already, but her knee was bleeding a little bit (seriously, me and sister lim fall all the time, we are back luck for each other) so when she fell, she fell to the ground, the bike slid out from under her, and she put her hand out to catch her fall, and the car right by her pulled up, and rolled right over her hand, her hand was out, and it rolled right over it. so i said, pretty much, bag the appointments we are going into the clinic. she said, no no its really fine, i I'm like whatever you are probably in shock something. but she could move it and said it wasn't painful or anything, so we kept going. but then down the road, i was thinking to myself, a car rolled over her had. a car rolled over her hand. so i made us stop again, and told her we were going in. but looking at her hand, no swelling at all, no pain, no mark, she could totally move it all around. so i asked her if she would bowl with it the next day, like we were planning, and she said, why not? so we continued on with our day. can you believe that? am i crazy to think that is a miracle? i mean, hundreds and hundreds of pounds, and nothing, not even a mark. all those little bones, and it rolled over her wrist, too. gosh. i don't know why, but Heavenly Father is watching out for us.

so even though we have hard times, and sometimes people ignore us when we talk to them, none of that really matters. we have a lot to work on with our missionary work, so many things I'm not good at when it comes to missionary work. but whatever, we just try and work and Heavenly Father looks out for us. its a good gospel, family. its funny, we teach the plan of salvation all the time, but you still can learn something new. I've been reading the old testament, do you remember when the Lord killed the first born of the Egyptians, and saved the first born of Israel? well, it talks about how all the first born had to give their lives to serving the Lord, and it makes sense, He saved their lives, so their lives really belong to Him. all of a sudden it just clicked for me, that is why we promise to always follow commandments, because through Christ our lives are saved and now our lives belong to Him. just a little personal insight, take it or leave it. i love you family!

sister Harrison

Zone Conference, Yea !!

hello family,

the email is coming out a bit late because yesterday we had zone conference. everyone from kuching, and then all the missionaries from sibu came down too. basically, it was awesome. so last month at mission conference, it was pretty heavy training and new material, so at zone conference, it was more doctrinal. One thing that he talked about was angels, and i had never thought about it before, but the book of Mormon has so many stories with angelic visitations. it is practically riddled with them. So it was a really cool thing to study and to hear about all of those stories again. when i have time that is something that would be awesome to study from the book of Mormon. recently i have been stressing out about numbers and getting mad at leaders for getting worried about my numbers, and that is exactly what they talked about at zone conference. usually after people have a couple of baptisms they go through this famine so to speak when they are 'rebuilding their area'. and then they showed us how you can see this coming from your numbers. and then they told us how we can see it and avoid it, all using our numbers. i seriously felt like my eyes were opened, like i am just barely learning how to really do missionary work, and now i know why numbers are important. i think we will change the way we do missionary work, and it is pretty exciting. i don't know if it is that interesting to read about, but we are pretty excited about it.

sister lim and i are getting along really great. we recently found this grocery store where that has everything we love, and everything is cheaper! the night we found this out, we were practically dancing around the store. we were on our bikes, so we kept saying things like, 'later, we'll come back later for it' and 'we can come back everyday!' since we eat at home all the time (sister lim cooks, yum) we have all this money, so grocery shopping is really fun for us. but yeah, we are having fun and trying to work really hard too. if things go right, we should have a lot of baptisms coming up next month, and hopefully, every week after that if we can get this consistency thing down.

i love you family, i pray for you!

sister Harrison

PS sister lim and i are still pretty accident prone. i fell last Thursday too, and i will spare you the details because the scape on my leg is already better. love you!

Crash and Orangutan City

hey family.

it sounds like things are still going full force over there in America, lots of people visiting las Vegas, del taco nights at one thirty and lots of granite counter tops. you sure know how to make a girl miss home. just kidding, things are going really well over here, too. we thought we wouldn't have anyone at church on Sunday, and we were pretty bummed about it. but i called up this referral i got from an elder, i called her up at 12, told her church was at one thirty, and she came and brought four kids! we met her yesterday, her name is Anita, she is from Indonesia. she is really cool, and learned from elders before. I'm not sure why she never got baptized, but she is super willing to learn and come to church and everything, so i am not complaining. and we have a couple of other families that we are excited about. one is brand new, Reni and Tedong, and their son Sylvester Stallone. (we thought his name was just boy for a long time, but apparently, its not, its sylvester, awesome) we taught them for the first time just yesterday, and Tedong, the dad, was really into it, and even prayed at the end of the lesson. in my other areas, we never really got the chance to teach families together like that, and it is awesome, the best kind of teaching. so i really hope things work out for them.

today we also got the chance to go see the orangutan wildlife part. it only cost three ringgit, which is one dollar, and it was totally worth it. huge orangutans, moms, and little babies, and little ones practically doing cartwheels on the rope, it was so cool. so i highly recommend it if any of you are in the kuching way.

what else? oh, me and sister lim are not the best combination. it turns out we both tend to get into a lot of accidents. sister lim fell on her bike going down this hill, and the next day, we were crossing the street, this barrier in the middle with dirt and rocks, and i stepped in this huge hole, and got cut on my leg. it was a tiny little cut, but it bled sort of a lot, I'm going to try to send you the picture we took. but yesterday, I'm happy to report, neither of us had any accidents, and counting today, that is two days already, its a good start.

so i love you family, and have a great nother week, enjoy the cold weather, haha.

love, sister Harrison

PS. did you know orangutan is the only English word from Malay, orang is person and hutan is jungle, have i told you that before? just a little trivia for all the Harrison's out there

PPS in the accident picture the cut is the tiny dot on my leg, the blood just ran down into my shoe, and that is why my foot is bloody. gross slash awesome

Birthday Thanks

hi family,

maybe just a short email today because i had birthday overload here in the email department, and i have been writing people back like crazy, it is awesome,i love my family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (twenty two, for how old i am now)

things here in kuching are going okay, a lot of new implements in missionary work. so i feel a bit overwhelmed sometimes, but yesterday i got a really nice compliment on my Malay from an Indonesian elder, so i guess everything works out. we are having a baptism this Friday. his name is adih. he is from Indonesia. and he is probably the coolest, most prepared to hear the gospel person i have ever met slash taught. the other cool thing about this baptism is that it is my first one as a senior comp, which is cool in its own right. after him we will have exactly zero people on baptism date, so it is back to the grindstone. we do have a new family, though, that we are seeing this Saturday again, and i have good hope for them. one of them is a nineteen year old boy, who you, by his hair and tattoos and stuff would never be interested in the gospel, but he is the best one! i have a testimony that heavenly father answers our prayers. i have been praying to find men, men who could get the Melchizedek priesthood, and it has started to happen, i love the gospel, and good thing heavenly father loves us so much.

so i love you family, if you don't believe me, look above, i think twenty two exclamation points speak for themselves.

sister Harrison

New Comp / New Lease on Life !!

hello family,

i just got back from Singapore on Saturday, i have a new companion, (sister lim) and right now i am sort of riding a spiritual high. i remember the first night that my new compie got here, i was praying hard that we would do good, and that i would be okay in training her and finding and teaching people, because i was a little nervous for all the responsibilities of the senior companion. anyway, i just felt a lot of hope, for our area, for the people we were teaching, for missionary work in general, that things even though they might be hard, will turn out good and that we will see a lot of good things happen. so we have just been working hard and i actually really like being a senior companion, go figure. i really like kuching too. we are teaching this one guy, adih. OK, so in my missionary lifetime i have taught a few pretty golden investigators, but i think that adih blows them all out of the water. first, we met him at church, he came with his friend, jepris. he has come every week since that, even when we were in Singapore. the day we were planning to put him on baptismal date, he asked if he could be baptized, and the clincher, we taught him the word of wisdom last night. before, he used to drink and smoke, but he already stopped doing both already. dang, he is awesome. and he told us he has three friends he wants to bring to church! he has to go back to Indonesia in December, but until then he will really be a help to the branch.

anyway, i am really feeling missionary work right now. you remember back when, when i was in KK, i had ups and downs like crazy? well, now it just feels like up all the time. it feels good, and now i know what people are talking about when they say they find joy in the work. i think I've come a long way from when i couldn't imagine how anyone could like doing missionary work. so that is that family, put that in your pipe and smoke it. (is that missionary appropriate? just an expression everyone...)

i love you all so much. keep staying awesome, have a good fall. here the weather never changes, it is really weird. love you,

sister Harrison

Singapore, baby !!

i know it is hard to believe that I'm actually doing missionary work out here in this tropical paradise, especially when our mission president puts us up in Singapore for a whole week. its kind of hard for me to believe, too. but every missionary from this mission is here in Singapore right now, and the conference is only half way done! it is really cool, we have conference from nine until five everyday, which is hearing from our president, doing role plays, things like that, and after, we go out, either with investigators, members, less actives, or just contacting. i personally have been contacting for the last two days, and it is kind of scary here in Singapore, it is all street contacting, you just have to walk up to people and strike up a conversation, and usually it goes pretty good. last night i talked to a Filipino lady for a while, she was really cool, i gave her a pamphlet and she said she would read it, i couldn't get her number because she suddenly had to get on her bus. the good part was, it wasn't scary, and i said some good things and she was really nice. but after i talked to her i was kind of mad at myself, i really only explained about the church in kind of an objectionable kind of way, i didn't really share my testimony, i didn't get her number, and i really didn't commit her to do anything besides read the pamphlet. I've been out here for so long, but i still have a lot to learn. but all in all, it went okay, for my first time contacting here, i will only get better at it as i go along.

the training itself is really cool, lots of new things, but in a way, the same things we have been doing, with a re emphasis on the basics, like teaching people how they can get personal revelation through prayer and the book of Mormon and going to church, lots of missionary things like that. it has been awesome so far. I'm going to change a lot of the ways i do things, like always start with questions and here from the people more and have a lot more emphasis on the book of Mormon. sorry if this is boring you to tears, but whatever. its cool to a missionary, okay?

I'm meeting my new missionary later today. her name is sister lim, and she is from Singapore. I've got a good feeling about this one. I'm pretty nervous to train, but we have a good area, and we have a lot of new things (thanks to this five day conference) to change and to work on, so I'm sure we will be busy.

anywho, family, i love you, i miss you. school is already started, the summer is almost over, i can't believe it. give my love to Trent, and what day is lance leaving? pretty soon there will be another Harrison on the eastern hemisphere, I'm pretty stoked for that. i love you family, take care, i pray for you!

sister Harrison

Sister H on her own

yes, my compie left me for the sunny weather and kangaroos of down under. its crazy to kill off a missionary, sort of like the end of an era. she has been in kuching, this same area for over a year. dang, those are some big shoes to fill. so here i am, chillin' at the couples apartment on p-day. i don't get my new companion until i get to Singapore next week. so far this week I've been doing all i can to beg borrow and steal people to be my temporary companion, and I've gotten a little work done, and I've had a lot of plans fall through, but what else is new about being a missionary. on Monday i went out with sister Hellen, she is coming to this mission in October, she is awesome. anyway, we went to Umang's house, she is getting baptized on sept. 4, and she came to church for the first time on Sunday. this is sis Hellen's first appointment, and its dark because this lady doesn't have electricity, we were sitting around a candle on the floor. there were a few other people there, and at least one of them was drunk and the others were smoking. we had planned to teach the word of wisdom, but that didn't feel like the best plan. anywho, we started our lesson, talking about faith. now, some drunk people are good and will just sit there and listen, but this guy was not one of them. he kept asking loud annoying questions, like if he could have one of my sisters (don't worry guys, i told him you all were already married) blah blah blah and everyone was laughing at him, basically impossible to teach. so i just read one more scripture and we did the skedaddle out of there. so i think that lesson broke both me and sister hellen in. drunk people do dumb things, but they think they are hilarious. i don't get it. but tonight, we are taking sister hellen out on the bike, her first time to ride on the road, so that is going to be pretty fun. we have this brand new investigator, Adih, he just showed up at church on Sunday with his friend who is a member. when he first walked in on Sunday i thought he was dorina's (she just got baptized) husband. dorina told me that maybe one day her husband would come to church, when he was old and had to use a cane to get there (her words, not mine) so i went right up and started talking to him, come to find out he was just a friend who was there, awesome, I'll take it. he is cool, apparently he learned a lot from elders back in Indonesia, and our first meeting he asked me if we could set up our church in his home town after he went back; a pretty promising beginning.

but on Sunday we head out to Singapore. all the missionaries from Sarawak, and maybe from sabah, so basically all of the east Malaysian missionaries are going to be on the same plane headed to Singapore. they all fly in to kuching, and we all take a plane there. cool, huh? i want to get a picture of all those missionaries on one plane. and then, once we get to Singapore, we are all going to take the subway to get to the mission office. so many missionaries, with all of their bags on one train. awesome. so we are going there for this new training, and we will have time to go out at night and contact and practice our new skills. eighty plus plus missionaries, taking Singapore by storm. Singapore is not that big of place. two elders from our district used to serve in Singapore, so they are going to show us around. i'm pretty excited for it. my new little missionary come in on that Wednesday, and after everyone goes home, we stay for orientation, so we don't get back until Saturday night. when we get back, it will be me and this brand new missionary rushing around trying to see everyone in one day, getting people to church. that will be a nice way to start off her mission. Kuching is a good place, though. she will like it here. i have a feeling i will be here for a long time, they don't move missionaries around very much. but i am fine here. let me stay here and get some good work done.

but it is time to sign off, i love you mom and dad, i hope things are going well now that you have no kids at home! i can't even believe it, what's it going to be like when i am the only kid there...

Ch Ch Ch Changes

hello mom and dad, family, everyone else
kuching is doing really good. Our baptism on Saturday was so good. Dorina, one of the ladies, when she got up to bear her testimony, she couldn't even speak, and you could feel the spirit so strong, and then i found a scripture that was perfect for her, read mosiah 4.20, it is way cool. and this week is going really good so far, on Monday, we met with some people who have a baptism date, one was the husband of Bingot, the other lady that got baptized. he is super cool, but he works all the time. he gets home from work around five, and that's usually when we meet him, for twenty minutes or so, then he goes and sleeps for a couple of hours and goes to work again at eight. He works security all night, and comes home in time to go to his day job. he only gets two hours of sleep a night! he has Sundays off from his day job, and he said he could come to church for an hour. i hope he can, that family really needs their dad with them.

so, next week sister seve leaves me.. and i don't get a new companion for a whole week! can you believe that? so I've been trying to find people i can go out with. there is a sister here, sister hellen, who is leaving on a mission in September, (she is actually serving in this mission, maybe later we'll be companions?..) and so she can go out with me after she gets home from work some days, so that only leaves the afternoons, and Bingot said she could help me too. when i first heard I'd be alone, i thought, awesome. a whole week of missionary work the hard way. but now i think it will be fine and it will probably help hellen a lot, and I'm sure it will help me a lot too. and when i finally get a companion again, I'll be super happy and grateful.

so, I'm alone for a week, and then on Sunday, on the 22nd, every single missionary from this mission is going into Singapore, for brand new training, and that is where I'll pick up my new companion. apparently, they are making a lot of changes, and switching things up, the whole way they train missionaries is going to be different. so its kind of exciting, and a five days in Singapore to boot. its coming at the perfect time too, me a brand new trainer with a brand new companion, who will be super pumped for missionary work, i have a feeling this is going to be a really good thing. i have a new testimony about trials and about doing hard things. heavenly father wants us to do things that are hard for us, he wants us to become better than we are. and we can. i read this in a talk by Elder Holland --I testify that bad days come to an end, that faith always triumphs, and that heavenly promises are always kept-- faith always triumphs. anyway, fam fam i love you a lot. say hi to everyone for me! i love you!
love, sister Harrison

Half-Way Day Already !!

hi mom, hi dad, hi family,

today is my halfway day. the reason i know is because i got the halfway package mom sent last Thursday, and i waited until today to open it! are you proud? PS, it was an awesome awesome package, the jelly beans are gone already, turns out the were the perfect thing to send, because sister seve doesn't even like them! and mom, how did you get so cool? OK family, so you can know how cool mom is, guess what she did? she put scriptures on all of the little gifts, that were all wrapped separately. but that is not all. i notice from the outside of the package, that one of the things was a stain stick, and the scripture was about how the Lord removed the stains off the swords of the anti-nephi-lehites.. so me and my companion had a good old time reading all of the scriptures and trying to guess what was inside all of the presents. the perfect pastime for a missionary, let me tell you what. my personal favorite was how charity suffereth long and is kind, turned out to be mascara! (eyelash lengthening mascara, to be exact) which was perfect, because my other one was getting a little low. and mom, the skirt you sent is perfect too, fits great, will be perfect for the bike too. you are awesome, mom! how did i get a mother like you? PS, can you believe that i am already done with half of my mission? when i think about it, half of my mission is memory already, it just blows me away.

this was a really good week, we are having four people baptized this Saturday! a mom, bingot, and her two children, Lorren, 13, and Caroline 11, and one other lady, Dorina. they are so awesome. yesterday, the kids asked us when they were getting baptized, and we said Saturday, and they got so excited, i want to remember that moment for the rest of my life, they were both all smiles and practically jumping up and down, i know i wasn't that excited to be baptized. they are really cool kids. hopefully their dad, Spencer, will be baptized in a couple of weeks. he has to kick cigarettes first, but he really loves his family and is a really cool guy.

one more interesting piece of news about my mission, this is pretty new, but I'm pretty sure it will go into effect soon. they are sort of separating our mission. so missionaries who get sent to east Malaysia will stay in east Malaysia their whole mission (that is where i am right now) and people who go to west Malaysia, (which includes Singapore) will stay in west Malaysia their whole mission. because those two places are way different, it is kind of like they are two different missions anyway. but it is still one mission, still one mission president. it is kind of crazy, because east Malaysia is where missionary work is kind of exploding right now, lots of people lots of baptisms. and west Malaysia is definitely slower work. also, i don't know how much this will effect sisters anyway, because there are only five sister areas anyway, and one of them is in west Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur. we'll see. but lots of changes are coming, that is for sure.

anywho, family, i love you lots, don't have too much fun without me!

ou te alofa ya te oi, (haha, samoan, courtesy of sister seve)
sister harrison

Renee' Sees her first Cockroach !

hi family!
this last week was very eventful. number one, last week i got four flat tires! one on Sunday, one on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and one on Saturday. crazy town. two in the front and two in the back. and i know what all of you bikers are thinking, and i did check for nails and such in the tire. turns out the back tire had a pretty big hole that was causing some problems, but that i couldn't really do anything about. but then i found a spare tire laying around, so i put that on yesterday, and so far, so good, no flat tires. but now my brakes are all messed up, somehow i cant get them 'perfectly aligned' when i put the stupid tire on. gears and brakes just make life more difficult, (can i hear a holla for fixed gear?) but this bike has done pretty good by me so far, so I'm not complaining. in other news, we also moved this week, the elders moved out of their apartment, and we moved in because it is closer to our area. menjigitkan. which means disgusting. that apartment was so dirty, but we spent a morning cleaning, and now it looks a lot better. (the only problems now are getting hot water and bugs, i saw my very first cockroach in Malaysia in this apartment) but we do live by both of the senior couples, which is awesome, sometimes they make us dinner when we come home, and they let us use their computer for email, woot woot!

but enough about that. missionary work is doing really good too. we were teaching these two girls, Nancy and Florence. they work at the mall, and we were going to drop them because they hardly have any time to see us, and they couldn't get work off on Sunday. so out of the blue yesterday, on our way to lunch, we got a call from Florence, and she wanted us to come over and teach. so we said, okay, sure. we went over, it was a good lesson (we taught it at the mall, in the food court) we asked them again about church, and for some reason, now they can come, take work off for a few hours. we were so surprised, we seriously were about to drop them, and they just blew us out of the water. they are so cool, they gave us free Milo (which is delicious, sort of a mix between nesquick and hot chocolate) and they are excited to come to church and have us over and everything. awesome!

so yeah, kuching is doing good. missionary work is going, like it always does, i don't know where the time goes. sister richey has almost been home for four months now, and she is getting married in September! and sister petty goes home next week, and sister seve two weeks after that. dang, my companions don't stay around for long after i am done with them. we will see about this next one..

but i love you family, i'm always thinking about you, good luck to Tracy about the bar, the last day is today, right? love you family!

sister Harrison

PS. parents, you are going to Dustin's weddding this weekend? well, just so you know, a sister from this mission, sister Goodwin, is from his stake! her little sister is going to be a bridesmaid at his wedding, she is good friends with his fiance. i bet her parents will be there too. so if you want, you should look for her. her little sister is really blonde. sister Goodwin is awesome, we lived in the same house in sibu in my very first month. but anyway, have fun at the wedding, and tell Dustin hi and congratulations!

Books and Baptisms

hi family,

as you probably heard from my subject line, there is big news in the Indonesian language department. there is a new Indonesian book of Mormon! it doesn't sound like much, but it is big big news. the old book of Mormon is good, but a really hard translation, it uses tons of deep Indonesian words that even Indonesians don't understand. and as people here speak Malay, it was hard for them to understand scriptures in lessons and chapters they would read on their own. so now there is a brand new one, and it looks super nice, it has cross references and an index and an introduction, all of which the old one didn't have. we will have copies of it maybe in a month. and news on the Malay translation of the book of Mormon, they are in second nephi, hooray! so maybe in about a million more years they will be done. i don't understand why there is no rush to get materials in Malay, it is super frustrating. but this book of Mormon is enough for me, i really think people will really like it and be able to understand it.

in other news, we are having two baptisms this Saturday! one is a girl who is eleven and one is a really old man. he was supposed to get baptized last week, but he smoked one cigarette last Wednesday, so it is this Saturday. we bought grandpa (the old man) these really strong candy lozenge things to eat when he wants to smoke. we took him over to the house, and the family started to eat them, i hope he has enough left to last to his baptism.

i just got the family letters yesterday, thank you Kim, i think that was the best idea ever. it sounds like everyone is doing good and has cool things happening in their lives. I'm super jealous about the Jamie/lance bike trip, and about all the swimming lessons the nieces and nephews are getting.. (its been a long time since i went swimming, but i have been biking, so i can't complain) and i heard Kim and Byron found a house.. does it have a pool? because i have a sneaking suspicion that there are going to be a lot of road trips next year..

anywho, things are going good here. its still hot here, but i really think I'm getting used to it. i hardly even notice it anymore. do you know what that means? I'm going to die the next time I'm in Utah for winter. before i always prided myself on my thick blood, but now my blood is as thin as they come. when i get out of bed to say my prayers in the morning, the air con freezes me to the max. what am i going to do?

so family, i love you tons. have a good week, I'll see you on the flip side

love, sister Harrison

Gotta love the Chickens

hi family!

i really can't say anything, i have the best family in the world. best support under the sun. things here in kuching are going pretty swimmingly. on Monday we had to drop half of the people we had on baptism date. they went to the Methodist church two weeks in a row, gah. but i explain more about that in my letter. we also found some pretty promising people, one family who is super excited to come to church. so even though we had to drop people, they were replaced by better people, so the work goes on, and life is good.

this weekend grandpa is getting baptized. he is the grandpa of a really awesome, active family. he is the one who is the old iban man who can't here very well. but he stopped smoking, and comes to church in style every week. to teach him, we speak in Malay, and his family yells iban into his ear. yesterday the district leader and the zone leader gave him his baptismal interview, because they are okay at iban. we could basically hear the whole thing because they had to yell the whole time. the best part was the zl asked if he ever killed anyone (i guess they didn't know 'commit a serious crime' in Iban), he said no. they he asked if he had killed any chickens, and he said, 'i can't lie, I've killed a lot of chickens in my time' haha. that is for real. one time we were in the house and he was doing this Iban tradition, he had a chicken and was sort of waving it around and saying stuff in Iban, and then they killed it. they did kill it in another room, but they had the blood in these Tupperware containers. awesome.

anywho, he is getting baptized on Friday. we were filling out his baptismal record, he doesn't remember his birthday or year, he doesn't remember when he was married, it took him awhile to remember his dad's full name. family history here would almost be impossible, just wait for the millennium. that will be a really cool baptism, I'm excited for it.

in other news, we are getting two brand new missionaries here, and one is becca's friend, willem kampenhout. i haven't met him yet, but he is going to be in my same district, so that will be awesome. what a small world. he is going to love kuching, it would be an awesome place to start your mission.

so I'm just working on teaching and talking and have this new goal to know every person in the branch, which will really help me a lot, i think I'll be here for a long time. but it's a long list, and there are a lot of less actives on it, so lets go.

family, i love you so much. i miss you tons, but i know you we still be there for me when i get back. i hope you are sucking all fun you can out of summer. love you!

sister Harrison

Vitamins Save the Day !!

hi family.

i had a good fourth of July, i mostly celebrated by singing all the American songs i knew out loud to annoy my companion. it was a good day.

Sunday was the first time our new branch met. our branch, because it is two branches combined, has two elders quorum presidents, two relief society presidents, two young women presidents, so all that stuff has to be worked out. but even with two rs presidents, they were confused at who should be doing what, and so they just had the missionaries teach the lesson, which was the first time i had ever taught in church, and it went pretty well, i thought.

our people are doing good too. we have one lady that is so close to baptism, she just needs to come to church a couple more times. but this week she couldn't come, because all of her children had pink eye, and she was getting it too. it was so sad, all her kids had one or two eyes totally swollen shut. even her little little baby had it. we didn't even want to go in there, because i have already had enough eye infections to last me the rest of my mission. so that is really sad, i hope they get better soon.

in other news, a couple of weeks ago, my hair started to fall out. nothing big or anything, no clumps, but quite a bit. lots of hair in the shower drain, lots of hair on my combs, and lots of hair on my clothes. so i started to get a little worried, i mean, this family has a history of hair loss, especially when we are only eating mashed potatoes. or only eating rice and noddles. anyway, so i made a goal to eat more veggies. but the hair kept falling out. and one night for like half an hour i ran my fingers through my hair, and strands just kept coming out and kept coming out. it was scary, i don't want to be a bald missionary! so i called up the mission president's wife, who is a nurse, and what do you know, she suggests a multivitamin. and what do you know, three days later, i still have hair loss, but it is much, much slower. thank goodness for vitamins. i will never scoff at them again. and now i don't have to worry about eating vegetables all the time, haha. so that was one of the big events of the week, and I'm glad my email is that it has stopped, and not that I'm worried that I'm going to be bald later.

so that is everything for this week, i hope things are going good at home. say hi to all the nieces and nephews for me, i love you all, talk to you next week!

sister Harrison

Training in my future?

i can't believe that the fourth of July is almost around the corner, crazy. this is going to be my first fourth of July that i celebrate on soil that isn't consecrated by liberty, justice, freedom and democracy. it is going to be a tough holiday to get through. the truth is the holiday is just made more fun because my companion is from Australia, and there is another elder from Canada, and so, especially this close to independence day, we take every opportunity that we can to wave our proverbial flag. yay for America. hopefully one of the elders will translate the star spangled banner into Malay, so take that, Malaysian government who gives religious freedom to everyone but Muslims.

we just had zone conference, and it was awesome. i had a really good talk with president Clark in our interview, about how it is easy to just glide on the surface of things, especially in missionary work, to do what is expected and go through the motions. but it is when you try with all your might that real things start to happen. he talked to me about when someone asks you to go a mile, go with him in twain, how all the blessings come during the second mile. so i have been thinking about that a lot. i love zone conference, it really revs you up and gets you excited about the work. the next zone conference is soon too, at the end of July, hooray.

your email turned out to be right on the money, dad. i just found out that when sister seve goes home, i am going to get a brand new missionary. so i definitely have been thinking a lot about missionary work and what i need to work on. when i found that out, i told sister seve we had to do role plays every day, because i have no idea how to commit people to baptism, help them get over concerns, how to get referrals, i don't know anything! but it won't be for awhile, and i know i have come a long way. the other day, we met this awesome family (already members) and it was just amazing to me how these phrases in Malay were just coming out of my mouth. like they were just falling out, no problem. i wish that would happen when i taught, but i still have a lot of time left to learn. let's just hope i don't mess this sister up for the rest of her mission.

anywho, things are going good, we have two people now that are coming closer to baptism. one is a lady who is really good, but her husband is a complete bum. he just come home drunk everyday after work, and won't watch her kids when she wants to go to church. what a piece of crap. oh well, i hope she keeps going strong, and her husband lets her be baptized. the other is this old old man who can't hear very well and only speaks Iban. he is sweet, and he hasn't smoked for two weeks already, he is so cool.

i really like the gospel and being here in Malaysia. you can really see how the gospel just rings true to people. usually we don't have any problem teaching the word of wisdom or the law of chastity, because people already know (well, with the exception of coffee and tea) that those things just aren't good things do be doing. they already know, it just rings true to them. its cool.

anywho, family, I'm not used to writing emails this long, i better sign out. but i love you, and things are doing really really good here.

sister Harrison

PS hi dad. dad, you would love the food here. everything is spicy, and i love it. they put chili sauce or peppers on almost everything. (its true, at McDonald's, you eat your fries with chili sauce instead of ketchup, it is delicious) and the curry here is to die for, just plain old Malaysian chicken curry, and it is so good. I'm going to have to learn how to make it so i can cook it for you guys when i get back. so i have developed quite the endurance for spicy food, i don't know if plain American spice will be enough for me when i get back.. just kidding.. i love you dad!

The Knee is better !

hi family,

sorry i didn't email yesterday. this week is zone conference, and so our pday was pushed back to today. things are going good, my knee is better, not swollen anymore. and i have stayed away from mystery pills, I've learned my lesson. there is not that much to tell, this weekend is district conference, and the district is splitting from three branches into five, which is a pretty big change. it is cool, because you need to have five branches in order to become a stake later on. so maybe a couple of years down the road will we have a stake in Malaysia, yay! the work is going good. we have some cool people, one is an old man, the father of a member, and when we told him that he couldn't smoke anymore, he broke his cigarettes in half, and he hasn't smoked since! he is so cool. the longer i am out here, the more i realize how important the gospel is to people's lives. without it, our life isn't really that much.

things at home sound fun, I'm glad that you went camping, i hope it was a lot of fun, sorry it was so cold! when i come back i have a feeling i am going to be cold all the time. i get cold if the air conditioning is on in the house, seriously. good thing i brought a sweatshirt. when my comp turns on the air con, i put it on. crazy. but I'm not used to the heat yet either, unless you call sweating buckets used to the heat... gross.

so family, i love you're guts. everything out here, the heat sweat, weird things that happen to your skin in Malaysia, everything is worth it. say hi to America for me,

love you, sister Harrison

Wounded Knee

hi family,

today was definitely a feast day on the email front, not only did i get a lot of emails, but they were all very long, i love my family!

things here in kuching are going O. K. time is going by really fast, it seems like every day is full of people to see and places to go, and by the time i know it, we are on our way home for the night. that's the way i like missionary work. it seems like since I've been in kuching, i have just noticed how far i have really come. i have a new confidence about missionary work that i have never had before, its a pretty good feeling. the language feels good, I'm not scared to talk to people, i have things to say in lessons. there is still a long way to go, but it is nice to feel like i am getting somewhere. and sister seve is aWEsoMe. we get along really well, it is so nice when that happens. i know (from experience) that i'm not going to be best friends with all of my companions, but it is just so nice when you do get along well, maybe that is one of the reasons things feel like they are going pretty good here, and going pretty fast. its so sad, she leaves in august, and she keeps joking that I'm going to be a trainer when she leaves aaaaahhhhhhhhh. i don't think i am ready for that kind of responsibility. but we'll see, it is a long way off.

do you know what i hate? when people work on Sunday. it is so sad, because if they can't come to church, we can't really teach them. we are teaching this sixteen year old boy named Fabien, and he is really cool, he reads and prays and knows a lot about the gospel, we've been teaching him for awhile but i think we are going to have to drop him because he can never come to church. it takes a lot of faith to quit your job to come to church. anyway, that is the thing that i am most sad about right now, because he is so cool, and the church could help his life so much. we are teaching some other cool people too. one is this really old grandpa of a member, he can't hear very well at all, and he only speaks Iban. so we say something, and his grand kids yell what we say in Iban into his ear. he smokes, but i think he will stop. he came to church last week, and he looked super classy, this really Iban man, in gray slacks and a maroon button up shirt. i hope he gets baptized.

anything else? oh yeah, my knee has been giving me some trouble. i twisted it back in KK, and it has just been swollen and stiff since then. the other night, i was carrying my bike up the stairs and it gave out on me a little bit. Its really scary to me, because this same kind of thing would happen before my surgery. anyway, I've been taking ibuprofen to lessen the swelling. i remember my doctor saying it doesn't matter when you take it as long as you take the same twenty for hour dosage.

anyway, my knee has been feeling better now, i think the bike helps it a little. I'll keep you updated, and I'll go in if it starts to get worse, don't worry.

anywho family, i love you a lot, thanks for all of your emails. until next week,

sister Harrison

New Area // New Address

well, family, here i am in a brand new area with a brand new companion. now that i have had three areas and three companions, I'm feeling a little seasoned, and this is the first area I've come in feeling pretty confident about the language, so it feels good. ( but just this morning the elders said that five months out still meant i was a greenie, ah well..)

I'm with sister seve, she is Samoan from Australia, and it goes without saying, she is awesome. sister richey trained her too. she is friendly and outgoing and has been in kuching for almost a year! anything else about her? she is really good at volleyball and she has a dance crew back home. we get along. kuching is really cool, too. it is the capital of Sarawak. KK is the capital of Sabah, but kuching is bigger than kk, i think, and it has a different feel. maybe because we lived in downtown kk, i felt like it was busy and loud, but her it is huge, but quieter and prettier, there are trees and parks everywhere, i like it a lot. Our area here is massive. they just rearranged the areas because the branches are splitting from three to five at the end of this month. our area is all of sister seve's old area, plus a lot of land from two or three different elders' areas. it takes over an hour to bike from our house to the other side of the area. And i haven't been on a bike for four months! basically, my back end is really hurting and i have bruises on my hands from the handle bars.. but I'm sure this area will whip me back into shape in no time.

the people here are really cool, from the Iban tribe. they are awesome, i have missed being with ibans.

the language here is different too, sister seve and another elder said i use a lot of words that they don't hear very often. which is cool, but i hope everyone can understand me okay here. I'm sure it will be fine. it is so weird to look back and see how much you have learned, so weird.

so basically things are doing good. I'm happy healthy, ready to get into the work here.

i love you all, i hope things are going good at home. I'm freaking stoked lance got the thing in India, and i cannot believe Trent is out of high school. any big vacations planned? well, love you family, sister Harrison

ps now my mail has to go to the address in Singapore, i guess the mail isn't that reliable here

i'm pretty sure this is it:

sister Harrison

253 Bukit timah road, floor 4

Singapore, 256960

Singapore

you might want to check it to make sure.

PS We've checked the address and it is as follows:

Renee Harrison
Singapore Mission
253 Bukit Timah Road Floor 4
Singapore 259690
Singapore

I'm getting Transferred ! !

i have some news for you, I'm getting transferred from KK to Kuching. so i am leaving Sabah. i definitely have mixed feelings about it because KK has been so good to me. things are starting to look up, and we have good people who are getting baptized in a couple of weeks. Its so sad because it was kind of hard for a long time, and now I'm leaving before i get to see the evidence of all our hard work. but, i think that how it always is for transfers. you always leave people who are good, who you have been working with for a long time. And i think kuching is going to be really cool, i think it is bigger than KK, and we get to ride bikes there, so of course i am stoked about that. so that is pretty much the big news over here. in other news, we put four people on baptism date in the last two days. let me tell you, it feels so good to have people on date. before they are on date, you are less sure how they feel about the church, if they are learning just to learn or whatever, but after, it feels good. they know that baptism is the goal, and you can teach toward that, it just feels better, more like you are on the same page. So now we have people that are working towards it, and two of them practically asked us if they could be baptized, so i am feeling pretty good about the area. and it does feel good that i am leaving it in a good place and sister petty will do good here when i leave.

something cool happened in the Malay department this week. we were teaching a Filipino, (ramel, he is really cool) and it was in English, because his Malay isn't that good. i hadn't taught in english in a long time, and it was so weird. I have a friend serving in Germany, and he said he hated contacting in English. i remember thinking how is that even possible, sure, your German is so good, that it is easier to speak that than your mother tongue? anyway, it wasn't harder to teach in English, it was nice. but sometimes during the lesson Malay phrases would pop into my head, phrases that i say all the time, and i sort of had to translate them back into English, and that has never happened to me before it was cool. I'm going to miss sabah malay though. its the prettiest Malay. oh well, maybe i will get the chance to come back here at the end of my mission.

anywho, family, things are doing really good, and as always time is going fast. i love you all so much.

OK, love love love
sister Harrison

I've eaten Chicken Feet

hello family, time for a little update from your favorite person in Malaysia, (that's a broad claim to make, but I'll stand by it)

the other day sister Petty and i were thinking of things that would never be the same after Malaysia. I will never scoff at chicken with bones again. (last night i even ate a fried fishhead, eyes and all!) i miss crosswalks a lot, and will never take them for granted. also umbrellas. before the mish, i never thought about them, they are just not very common in Utah. but here, man or woman, rain or shine, everyone carries an umbrella. and yes, family, i have become an umbrella carrier. it is kind of nice whenever it starts to rain (it rains at least once a day) to just pop it open and have a little bubble of transportable dryness. even in the sun, it is really nice to carry around. i scoffed at people with umbrellas in the sun, -until i tried it, and it is nice.
anything else? oh, here they eat with a spoon in their right hand and a fork in their left hand. when i first got here i thought it was a little primitive, but really it is ingenious. for one thing, you never have to put down your fork and pick of a knife, because you can just cut with the edge of your spoon, and for another, (Kim would love this) every bite is a perfect bite. you arrange the food on your spoon with your fork, a little of this, a little of that, perfect bite every time. who would've thought Malaysia would come up with a better way.

so, missionary work. its good. really good. everything seems to be coming together. for the past few weeks it was pretty hard, we had no one good, no one was coming to church. and then, last week, five people at church. i seriously don't know why it changed so fast, we found these people by coincidence, and they were super good. for instance, we went to see some people with a member, but they weren't home. so David, who goes out with missionaries a lot, said the elders were teaching this other lady before, we could go visit her, because she apparently has an awesome view of the city. so we went to see her, and she was awesome! it was a Friday, and even though we had never taught her before, she came to church, loved it, said it really touched her heart. our first meeting with her was so good, she had good questions, and she started crying when she gave the closing prayer. i was blown away. who knows why the elders stopped teaching her, but she is definitely ready now.

we are teaching this other guy, his name is rioh, and he is from the Philippines. i might have told you about him already, i met him while sister petty was in Singapore, i was at sister Alice's house, and he just passed by and started asking us about church. he is so funny. he is a model for a living; he is sort of an unlikely candidate for an investigator, but he has a lot of questions and is really open, he said he will read and pray (he actually said if he wanted to he could read the book of Mormon in one day) but i think if he got a testimony of the book of Mormon, he would be unstoppable. maybe right now he is just curious, but he could be really good.

we have other people that are really good too, but there is no time to talk about them. things are going great, i feel like the time is just slipping away..

oh yeah, PS, i hardly even notice the tag, it didn't take very long. now the most annoying thing is when people read your name as you pass them on the street, oh well..

the gospel is true, the people here are great. (haha, I'm such a missionary, and i don't even care. i have plenty of time to normal up once i am home)

your favorite,
sister 'I've eaten chicken feet' Harrison