wow. i cannot believe it's been one year. aww!! i'm coming to the top of the hill and looking back, the climb to this point went way too fast and now it's just downhill. it's sad to think that i'm half way done. i've accomplished so little. but there is another year in front of me and i want to see malaysia go up in flames in these next 12 months! (not literally, but more like spiritual flames). i've got a lot of goals that i'm less than half way to accomplishing, so i'll have to pick it up. in speaking of flames, i'll be burning a shirt sometime this next week. i've got plenty that i wouldn't mind burning because they're so nasty, but i'll just pick the worst one.
this week has been a good one. on saturday we had 5 more baptisms. it was awesome because 3 of them were kids of this epic recent convert family and 2 others were some of the first investigators we had in this area. so with those baptisms that brings our January total to 16. that's the same amount as i had the entire time i was in klang. The Lord is preparing so many people here we almost can't keep up with all of the people that want to learn. we've been extremely blessed to be put here.
Elder Watkins and i got word the other day that we are companionship of the month. we don't get anything except our name in the mission newsletter and a bunch of phone calls from other missionaries, but it's gratifying none the less. i've got a little bit of a feeling that i'm not going to be here all that much longer though. there will be transfers next week i think and i'm hoping my name won't be on the list. but i'll keep you updated.
i got to give the training at DDM yesterday. The title of the training was "The Faith to See." most of it was based off of D&C 42:48-52, but there was a lot more also. i learned so much preparing it. faith is probably the deepest doctrine there is, so it was really fun studying it all last week.
i'd heard that after chinese new year, the rain always stopped and there weren't any more floods... everyone was wrong. it was amazing that we had anybody at church this week, because all of town was under about 4 feet of water. the only day that elder watkins and i came home at night dry in the last week was yesterday. i got some good pictures of the flood. it's horrible for these people though. everyone had about 2 feet of water in their house. most people only live in one room, so it's not like they can move their things upstairs or anything, so everything just gets ruined. we got a call saturday morning at about 7:30 from a way awesome sister named Helen requesting that we bring her some garbage bags. i was really confused why, until she told me that they had 2 feet of water in their house and that they needed some way to keep things dry. it hadn't rained hard for a few days, so i was flabbergasted when i saw how high the flood was in town. i guess it just came from the river, because it wasn't from rain. we started to ride our bikes through it, but realized that it wasn't a very good idea when the water reached our handle bars. (ps-floods aren't good for bikes). we got to her house and she requested that we help her husband, Lajang, lift his motorcycle to higher ground... uh... ok. we did it, but it wasn't the easiest task i've ever had to accomplish, that's for sure. we carried his motorcycle about 200 yards to a parking lot that was on a lot higher ground. apuh! but we saved it and it started, so job well done.
(Note from Dad: Click on the pictures for the full size view!)
spring cleaning was this morning. we do a really thorough cleaning of our houses quarterly on a p-day. it's amazing how dirty a house can get after only 3 months of living in it. but no worries, it's dazzlingly clean now.
i'm gunna try to attach some pictures and maybe a video onto this email from elder watkin's camera. but if it doesn't work, no worries, because you'll see it anyway when i send my card home again.
anywho, i think that's just about it. i love it here. sibu was made for me. elder pace and i have decided that when they want us to leave here, we're just going to hide in the jungle and become rogue missionaries, going from village to village crying repentance to the people. and grow beards.
i love you all. keep on truckin'.
elder troxel
PS-the baptisms picture is the one from this last week
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