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

A Day late, but not a Dollar short.

hi family!
i know, the email is very late this week, the last few days have been pretty crazy. sister petty went to Singapore. there were no girl members who don't work during the day, so i hung out for three days at sister Alice's house, she has three little boys, 6, 4, and one. so i hung out with her during the day, and when the members my age got off of work, we did a little missionary work and then slept back at our house. its weird how it worked out, visa runs are good if you are the one going, but if you are the one staying, you don't get a lot done. it felt really good for sister petty to get back and start missionary work back up. I thought it would be nice, to have a little break, hang out at her house, just have time to study and relax a little bit. but i didn't like it, i felt uneasy like there was something i had to get done all the time. sound like a missionary? so three days of that was plenty for me. but because i was there i met Alice's neighbor, rioh. he's cool and an elder who was here before gave him a book of Mormon, but he has never learned. he just happened to walk by their door, and started asking them questions about the book of Mormon. we are meeting him tonight, i hope he is good.

but it feels really good to be back to normal. sister petty came back from Singapore with all this enthusiasm and ideas and so we have a renewed effort to do really well. sometimes i think i don't work as hard as i could and should, so I'm going to change that right now. and guess what? we are now going to start wearing our tags full time. and let me tell you, it feels so weird. i have only worn it from the house to the email place so far, and it was weird. i feel like a brand new missionary. (also i sort of feel like part of the FBI, taking kk by storm with our tags and our bags and our skirts.) is this how most missionaries feel? so I'm really feeling the tag right now, but i'm sure I'll get so used to it that i don't even think about it.

what else? Malay feels good, my hair is growing out of the slight butchering it received (don't tell sister Goodwin i said that) about the skirts, I'll send you a letter with more of a run down, but don't worry too much, just if you happen to come across what i am looking for, then you can send it to me. i am also looking for new sandals, and maybe could you send me some money for them? ten or twenty dollars would go really far here, and then i could get some that would really last, so just let me know what you think of that.

anywho, i think that is all for today, i love it out here, and i have a feeling things are just going to get better. i love you all, so much, so so much!

love, sister 'who's wearing the tag now' Harrison

Whoa, I just talked to you guys !!

hi family,
it was really cool to talk to everyone i did on mother's day, (well, technically it was Monday for me..) it is weird to think that you are halfway around the world, and that it was night time there. and it was weird, because everyone sounds the same, just my same, good old family back home, it was really cool.

yesterday, for some reason, was such a good day. at the start of the day we had some extra time before our appointment, even though it isn't the funnest thing to do, we decided to go knocking. sometimes (sorry, tangent here) i am so sad that we can't teach Muslims. there are some really nice ones out there. once i even talked to one who had read some of the book of Mormon, had really good questions about prophets and everything, but we couldn't do anything, it was so sad, he wanted to learn so bad. here in Malaysia, they say they have religious freedom for everyone except the Muslims. if you marry a Muslim, you have to join. what an oppressive religion. and someone was telling me if you want to go high up in your field or do anything with the government, you have to convert. you just can't go anywhere if you aren't a Muslim. hooray for America. anywho, we were knocking on doors, and found a really cool lady who says she and her husband want to learn, and is friends with someone we are teaching right now. that was just the beginning of a really good day. we had some great lessons, and found some more great people. it was like things finally started to come together. we even talked to this lady who has a lot of friends who want to learn, and she even called us this morning to confirm that we are coming over tomorrow. i have never heard of an investigator calling to confirm an appointment, awesome.
so really quick, do you want to hear something funny? so this lady, she is SDA, seventh day adventist. the funny thing about Malaysia is that they number the days of the week, and day one (hari satu) is monday. so the kicker? all these seventh day adventists are going to church on the sixth day, hari enam, and everyone else worships on the seventh day.

things are going well, me and sister petty are getting along great and time is screaming by. also, i have had very strange dreams lately, the best of which entailed me training my pet hawk, it was a very cool dream. i love you family, and hope everything goes well, you are the best!

sister 'boleh bah kalau kau' harrison

ps i have one last story that i forgot to tell.
anywho, whenever we walk down the street, people always yell out to us. sometimes its 'orang putih' which means white person, sometimes it is good morning (at all hours of the day) frequently it is i love you (i can't count the number of men who have professed there love to me, i wonder if they say it to the elders, too..) so we were walking down the street and someone yelled out hello, ususally i would say hello back and keep on walking, but before i could, he followed with 'is it me your looking for? i can see it in your eyes' it was so funny, i could see Marc with his hand on the window singing it.. that is definitely the best thing anyone has ever yelled/sung to me.

Mother's Day - Hurray !!

hi family, lama tidak nampak!

yesterday marked six months into my mission, which i cannot believe. and i have almost been with sister petty for a month now, can you believe that? we are getting along really well, she is really cool. but she doesn't have that much longer left, either. I'm not sure if i will be transferred before she gets sent home or not, but it is looking like i will stay here. which means i will have killed off two companions in a row, and which means i will stay in KK for quite a while, which i am totally fine with. sister petty goes home in august, and three other sisters go home then too. right now there are only ten sisters, and going down from ten to six is quite a bit. so hopefully we will get some more sisters before that happens. six sisters is only three companionships, crazy.

anywho, the work here is good. i feel like we have turned a corner. before everything wasn't working out, and we couldn't even scrap together new investigators, from our own efforts and from the branch. it was super frustrating because before, it seemed new investigators would just come to us, from all sorts of places. but yesterday, we found some really cool people, and got nine new investigators in one day! so i will admit one was a family with seven kids, but even still, they seemed pretty cool. so i feel like things will start happening. and we are having a baptism this Saturday, farini is awesome, so i really can't complain, because even when we didn't have that many investigators, we were teaching perhaps the most golden person I've ever met, so it all works out.

sister Harrison