Bah, Bah -- Sabah

hi family!
still here in sabah. one cool thing about sabah, is they have their own slang. they just throw in bah after a phrase whenever they feel like it. the funny thing is, when they are speaking in english, they still do it. we were talking to some ladies at a clothes store, and they were saying things like, this is second handbah. or, we've been here for a yearbah. yay for sabah slang. (they also say syok for cool, it sounds like shock. and thats all the slang i know so far)

so it seems the only stories i have are bus contacting stories, and truthfully, i have yet to teach about the gospel in my bus contacting exploits. usually they are muslim, or a chinese person who doesn't care or i can't understand them. but even still, i got a really cool story.
so the very first day i contacted on the bus, i was talking to this lady from the philipines, and just when i found out she could speak english, she had to get off the bus. so i wasn't feeling that hot about it. then we were knocking in this one area about a week later. and who do we knock into? this same lady, who even remembered me! and even more cool, she only has one day of a month, and we happend to talk to her on her one day off, awesome! we are teaching her tomorrow, so hopefully it goes well. but she seemed cool, and we have a filipino guy in our branch we can set her up with, perfect! so if you think that bus contacting is a lost cause, even if you never talk about the gospel, think again!

Here are two images from Sibu, from Renee's latest letter:

The first is Renee at a Chinese Temple (Selamat Tahun Baru Cina!)
The second is a recent convert family. Of course, Renee is on the right, her companion on the left. The father is a member with a grandson on his lap. The wife is quitting her job to be able to go to church.
Awesome!

Wow, do I love this area!!

I'm on a bit of a high right now because i just got flooded with emails! it is really fun to hear from the family, what everyone is doing -i can't believe it is even snowing any place in the world, it is eighty two here everyday!

so i thought today i would talk about my mission, the basics really, that some people know, but i'll just throw it down here anyway. So. my mission is singapore and malaysia, and malaysia has two parts, west malaysia that is right next to thailand, and east malaysia that shares an island with indonesia and brunei. i'm in east malaysia right now, and actually, nine out of the eleven sisters are in east malaysia. the other two are in Kuala Lumpur, west malaysia. there arent any in singapore right now. and usually we fly from area to area.

Malaysia is an interesting country, because it is run by muslims. and no muslim is allowed to convert, and if you marry a muslim, you become a muslim, too. So we are allowed to be in the country, but we can't teach muslims at all, not even if they want to learn, its really sad.
Two days ago I was riding the bus, and had my first contact in Malay. i was pretty nervous and had to make myself change seats to the back of the bus so i could talk to some people. I had to work myself up so i could start a conversation, and basically i feel like a phony because my malay isn't that good, but whatever. i started talking to this guy, and its going good, i can understand him, he has a brother and a sister, he works but he was off that day, and then, find out, muslim. great. now i have to pretend to be interested in our conversation to be nice, but i know its not going anywhere. awesome first contact. but bus contacting is nice because you will probably never see them again. and later that day i learned a good new joke that makes everyone laugh, called make fun of how bad i am at malay, they love it!

KK. is a really fun city, we walk and take buses everywhere. but the buses stop at seven thirty, who knows why, and so we take a taxi home every night. and we live in this big complex with a guard and a pool and a gym and everything, its really cool.

yesterday we taught a brand new investigator, one of our first real lessons here. it was the mom of a recent convert, gary. it was such a cool lesson, because she goes to church (catholic) she really likes the way it makes her feel. and i guess Gary never really went to church. and now, here is her son, bearing his testimony to her, reading from the scriptures, you could tell she was really happy for him. and when she was talking about feeling the spirit, about reading the scriptures, Gary was so happy too. Gary has such an awesome testimony, he basically taught the lesson. I want to be a good of teacher as he is!

love you all, sister harrison

I'm Transferred !!!

I'm transferred! only one month in Sibu, and I'm out of there. So now i'm in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. (and we are living with the senior couple here for a couple weeks, until they go home, and we take over their apartment, so i'm emailing on their computer. so email, twice in one pday, yay!)
Let me tell you, sabah is awesome. i can't even describe it. there have never been sisters here before. or actually, i think there were sisters here ten years ago, but i heard that their apartment got broken into, so they sent them out. But the day after we left Sibu, the sister's house got broken into, so really it could happen anywhere. So me and sister richey are basically breaking history! its so cool, my mtc teachers would talk about it, and i remember wanting to go to sabah so so bad. And saying, maybe one day, it will be open to sisters.. and i even mentioned it to the president's wife when i got to singapore. and now, i'm there already, i can't even believe it!

so basically, sabah is awesome because 1) it is beautiful here. our apartment looks right out over the ocean, i'll send you a picture, beautiful turquoise water, green islands, like a postcard, no joke. 2)there are so many cool things to do, mount kinabalu is only an hour and a half away (tallest mountain in southeast asia whoot whoot!) and lots of museums and just really awesome things 3)the language is no longer messed up, everybody here speaks really good malay, really fast malay. the elders who really get good at malay all serve in sabah, so i'm pretty excited for that
and the church is also really good here, they have a chapel even.

and we live right in downtown, super close to all the shops and the open market(you would die if you saw it, farmers market times infinity, and it is every day!) the malls, and most importantly, the bus terminal. because we have no bikes here :(. the buses are crazy, a huge parking lot full of them, and people are just yelling out where these buses are going, so you can usually find the right bus. most of the time the buses are just vans, and they wait until they are full, and then they ride away, loud music blasting the whole way. and when you catch a bus not at the terminal, you either go to a stop like normal, or you can just stand by the side of the road and wave them down as they pass. they will probably stop for white people.

here is my new address, the mail is a little better here than in Sibu, and I think that I will be here for a long time, at least I hope so:

Renee Harrison
Unit B7-12 Block B
Marina Court Condominium
Kota Kinabalu, Sabah 88000
East Malaysia

and if you give that out to anyone, just make sure that they don't put sister on it. and packages should always go to singapore, because for sure it will get there. I'm so excited for that to be on the back of the program at church! because i'm in Malaysia, not singapore, its much cooler here.

keyboards, converts & babies

(Renee' is working on a keyboard that doesn't always type the 'n' key, so I had to go back through and add a bunch of n's. If I've missed any, sorry / Dad)

sibu is doing really great, everyone here is getting revved up for chinese New year, its a pretty big deal. and everywhere we go they play chinese new year music, which is sort of like christmas music, except they are faster and higher pitched and there are only a few different songs that they keep playing over and over. so it is fun right, but since chinese new year is two weeks log, and not until the fourteeth, i might be going crazy. and we got to see a chinese temple/pagoda yesterday that was really cool, they had a ton of incense burning and everything. i got some pictures, don't worry.

thats enough about chinese new year. the best part about my mission right now is being able to go to mukah. i think i told you a little about it, but i'll explain a bit more. when the work started there, there were only two long time members, who had been converted other places, and then moved there. so we started a group, and in august started sending senior missionaries there, and then two sisters started going a couple of months later. and then when i came, i took the place of one of the sisters. so basically, we are the first missionaries that have ever been able to teach there, and i really can't believe that they let me go, but it is really awesome, the people are so good there. Now there is a group of about thirty members and we are just teaching family members of recent converts, and the people we are teaching are so anxious to learn and want to get baptized. last week we met for the first time in a room we rented in a hotel, it was so cool. this is the kind of work where the hand of the Lord is so evident, because these people are so prepared to find the gospel. the first family sis richey taught, none of them smoked or drank, so they had no major problems, and they have been so, so good. the faith of these members, in this tiny little group, has been such a testimony to me. they come every week, even though none of them know any of the hymns or anything, they just come and try, this is exactly what the gospel is supposed to be. you can see how the gospel changes people's lives, how they become better people, have closer families, and it is so cool to see.

and for the first time, i was talking to this girl, mostly all by myself, and i understood what she was saying, not every word, but we were talking about her baby (who is the same age as mira, i always think about her when i see her little baby) and she was just talking about how awesome her baby is, learning to crawl already and starting to eat real food. so that was exciting, we could actually communicate, so take that world! Love, Sister Harrison