dear family,
first of all, i didn't really appreciate the whole "i smell waffles cooking" thing. was that really necessary? secondly, i love being a missionary. i'm in singapore right now on my first visa run. i'm with elder clark (one of our zone leaders in KL), elder Jugant (zone leader in KK), and elder named IForgothisname. it's pretty cool. singapore is beautiful. it's so clean! it makes me realize how dirty malaysia is.
so about this call on sunday... i'm going to have to call on monday morning here (sunday evening there) because if i were to call in the morning there, i'd be up really late. in the missionary hand book, it says conversations with family should not go more than 30-40 minutes, but president skelton has apparently said we can talk for about an hour. it's totally fine if chelsie comes over. hopefully everybody can be there. if they can work their schedules around it that would be really nice.
we had a baptism on saturday for a man named Ram. he's such a studd. he pretty much just fell into our laps too. he lives in port klang, which is about two hours on the train (not counting the time it takes to take a bus to the train station, wait for the train, and then walk to the church) from the church in PJ. He just decided one day that he wanted to come to church and that's when we met him. he's come for the past 8 weeks, including one time when he was deathly ill. he was helping to teach the gospel principles class to the other nepali men before he was even a member. the guy is a rock. another one of our recent converts, gopal, who helps us three or four nights a week, baptized him. it was so awesome. i got to confirm him. so during my training, i got to baptize AND confirm someone. that's really cool. i've been so blessed.
in speaking of training... i'm finished! all that really means though is that i don't get an hour and a half of personal study anymore. only an hour, which is a real bummer. but there are a ton of missionaries going home in the near future, which means i could be a trainer pretty soon. elder clark told elder palfreyman that i should tell president skelton in my next weekly report letter that i'm ready to train if he needs me too. elder palfreyman didn't really think that was a great idea. he really likes the work we're doing in klang together, but i think i need to have more responsibility so i can learn more how to do things for myself. when you're with your trainer, you're pretty much just along for the ride. i don't want to leave klang, but i really feel like i'm ready to train and that i probably will get a chance in the next couple of months.
the work is still a little bit slower than we would like it to be. we've been working really hard though. we've been fasting and praying to find a family this week that will progress all the way towards baptism. on monday we tracted into some good ones and hopefully they will progress and come to church. we'll see. we have six people on date for baptism right now, the next ones being on the 24th. i sent some pictures to chelsie of the guys who will be baptized on that day. their names are Deb and Bhakta, both from nepal. they're such studds. and they keep their commitments, which is excellent. if everything goes as planned, there should be six baptisms from our district on that day- two from our area and four from the PJ1 area. that would be so amazing. i hope it works out.
i weighed myself today and i was pretty surprised. 177. i've actually lost wieght. all that means though is that i've lost 15 pounds of muscle and gained 5 solid pounds of fat. i eat a TON. the food here is so delicious, i can't help myself. i love it. i am getting a bit of a gut, but at least my pants will fit better.
i'll try and draw out about 150ish US dollars today so i can have it for emergency funds. that's somewhere in between 400 and 500 RM (ringit malaysia). that will be enough to last my whole mission probably.
Malay is coming along slowly but surely. i've never learned a language before, so it's different for me. i don't hardly ever have to speak it though. 90% of people speak english is west malaysia, so i don't need to worry about it unless i go to east malaysia where NOBODY speaks english. i think i'll stay in west malaysia for the majority of my mission though.
nothing extremely crazy happened this week and i didn't do anything really stupid, so there's no weekly revelation this time. hopefully next week though =)
anywho, be safe. i love you all.
elder troxel
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