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