Jordan's Mission Apartments


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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Tears in Heaven

dear family,

this week has been so crazy! i can't believe it's already wednesday. with trying to get to know our investigators, members, area, and going on exchanges, my brain is pretty fried... but it's a blast and i love it. we just barely got back from doing exchanges in Miri, which is a 3 and a half hour bus ride from here. we've gotten up at 5:15 for the last two days! i'm grateful that i was able to sleep on the bus.

first of all though, it's good to hear that everything is good to go with dad's new job at the county. what will you be doing exactly? what does a deputy sheriff do? and i like the car, but it's kinda soccer-mom-ish don't you think? i thought you were going to get a corvette after you retired... what happened to that plan?

tell whitney not to worry, things will work out. cobaan saja. search like it all depends on you, and pray like it all depends on the Lord. it'll happen.

so mahonri isn't Elder Stewart's brother, he's actually his uncle. he told me that mayor stewart was his dad, but he's actually his grandpa. my bad, still the same family though.

anywho, you asked about my area. it's not the biggest area i've had, but it's pretty big. we have a place called RPR, which is just a ton of what they call rumah batu's. they are the more upper scale housing for poor people. then there is a giant kampung called sebatang. it is awesome. it's just hundreds and hundreds of little wooden shacks in the jungle. that is my favorite part about our area. there isn't electricity there, so they either have to use generators, or when it gets dark just candles. it's pretty awesome to teach someone at night by candle light in the middle of the jungle. we've been working with some really good members to give us referrals, and it's been paying off. we contacted six member referrals last week, and we received a lot more.

things are looking promising here. it's awesome to be with elder gulbrandsen. i've learned a lot from him. he and i are a lot alike. he's been blessed with the gift of gab in abundance. me, not so much, but i can keep up.

like i said, we just got back from exchanges in miri. i got to go with elder watkins! oh man, he is so funny. it was a good exchange. plus, i got to see what's going on with the work there and what can and needs to be done. this zone consists of two cities- bintulu and miri. bintulu has been doing really well lately, but miri is still lagging a bit. they've got 633 members in that city, but the activity is less than 25% there. we gave them some pointers on how they can improve, and we left there feeling confident that things are going to start to change there.

in speaking of changes, i probably won't be with elder gulbrandsen for too much longer. he'll for sure be the next assistant, and he should be leaving in just a couple of weeks. i think they'll actually move elder watkins here to replace him, but none of that is for sure yet... just 98% right now :)

i got an email from elder kunioka today saying that he was going back to SUU for school. he'll be playing baseball there. but he has a lot of family in the provo-orem area, so he will occasionally go up there. you should write him an email and see when he'll get a chance to come up so you can invite him over for dinner or something. he's a stud.

i've discovered that i'm an old missionary. when we went to get on the bus to go to miri, i set my bag down on the seat, and as i did that, i heard a tear. all the seams on the left shoulder of my shirt just decided to explode. i guess they'd had enough. as if i didn't already look raggedy enough, as i stood up, my pants hooked on something and once again, burst about 4 inches of seam. it was a rough bus ride. every time i get a hole, i sew it up, and then another one pops up. i can't wait for you to see how awesome my sewing jobs are.

welp, i think that's pretty much it. this is my address here:

no. 44 taman bamboo
Bintulu 97000
sarawak, east malaysia

think i'll probably be here until november or so... but it's never sure. i hopefully will get some packages brought to me at zone conference next week. i'm crossing my fingers that there will be some shoes in there :)

anywho, i love you all.
love, elder troxel

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