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!