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