Chelsie Rose

Dear Family,

I really can't believe that January is already nearly finished. This last week and a half FLEW by. We started off on a training tour last Tuesday that took us through yesterday. We went first to Kuching where we did some fun exchanges and had a really awesome training. All of the exchanges we got to do this time were way fun because we usually will only go on exchanges with the zone leaders, but this time we picked out some specific Elders that we wanted to see work. I thought it was excellent because it really helped us to see much better what is going on in the mission.

We went from Kuching to Sibu, where I spent my birthday. I got to go over to the awesome recent converts' house (known around Sibu as "The Big House") and they threw me a party. It was incredible! It's actually the same place where I spent my birthday last year! I've attached a picture of Chelsie Rose. She has gotten so big in the past year! She's now about 13 months old. The other picture that's attached is the family. Best birthday ever.

Chelsie Rose

Chelsie Rose and her family

From Sibu we took off to give our training and do exchanges in Bintulu, Miri, Tawau, KK, and Sandakan. Wow, it was a very exhausting trip. I still haven't quite recovered. In speaking of KK, I found out this week that Kelvin got his mission call to the London South Mission! He's way nervous because he feels that his English isn't good enough, but he'll be amazing.

Next week we'll be leaving Monday evening to go all through West Malaysia for another week-long tour. It'll be fun. I feel kinda like a zombie though and I don't know if I'll ever really be able to catch up on the amount of sleep I've lost since I've been in the office. I'm thinking that I might not want to go to school in the Spring after all so that I can just hibernate over the summer and start in the fall. Just kidding.

But about this whole school thing, February 1st has really snuck up on me and I haven't even really thought about what classes I want to take. Chelsie offered to help, and because she's been at it for awhile and knows what professors are good and which ones aren't, I'm thinking I'll just let her take care of most of it.

Awesome story of the week... So while we were in Miri, I was on exchanges with an Elder named Elder Pingle. He's a stud and it was a way fun exchange, but unfortunately as an Assistant I get the opportunity to ride all of the worst spare bikes in the mission for exchanges. Miri's spare was an awesome old Sister's bike. I looked pretty funny, but that's not really part of the story.

Anywho, we were riding down the street, and I was just jabbering away, not really paying attention to what was in front of me, when all of a sudden a spider-web gets me in the face. As a pedaled a few more times, I realized that it wasn't a spider-web, but some kind of string stretched across the road because it kept getting tighter and tighter as I pedaled. Turns out, there was a kid's kite that was stuck in the tree, and he was standing across the street trying to pull it out of the tree. I hit the string (which was actually fishing line) with my face, but as I kept going, it got tighter and tighter and kept pulling me farther and farther backwards. Then it slipped around my neck and I thought "wrugh ough!", so I busted out this sweet matrix move on my bike and the line finally broke free of my face, but it did leave a nice little gash on my neck. The moral of this story is that if you don't like looking stupid, a mission is not the place for you.

I'll be in touch over the next few days because I'm getting the list of hotels from Sister Carpenter tomorrow. I'll also see if we can get a morning flight to Sibu on that day when we were going to take the boat. You're right dad, the boat would take way too long, but I'm not exactly sure if there's a better flight.

Welp, I've gotta run, but I hope everybody is hanging in there. I love you all.

Love,
Elder Troxel

21 is the age you said I could buy a motorcycle, right?

Note from Dad: sorry this is so late, We have been busy with remodeling the family room, before Jordan gets home. I will not let it happen again.

Dear Family,

This last week has been one of the rare weeks when I've spent all my time in Singapore. We're taking off for Malaysia later this morning and we'll be on the run for 10 days without coming back. I'm pretty much a nomad. I have no home. But it's really fun to get out and see everybody (I miss Elder Chua). I say that because I know that he reads the blog.

We're going around everywhere to give my last training! Dun dun dun! It's a good one though. We've already given it to the Singapore zone and I hope it was motivating for them. I don't know when/if I'll have time to email in the next ten days, but this might be it until then.

I've attached a calendar of all my activities up through March. In the month of March I've gone through and laid out some rough plans of what we'll do for that week. I've included flight numbers, but here is a more detailed list:

March 10: Singapore to Kuching- Air Asia flight AK 6674 at 10:40am. Cost = 78.00 SGD (USD 59.00)
March 12: Express boat from Kuching to Sibu at 8:30am (we'll buy tickets there)
March 13: Sibu to Bintulu- Malaysia Airlines flight MH3240 at 8:15am. Cost = MYR 270.00 (USD 80.92)
March 14: Bintulu to KL- Malaysia Airlines flight MH2743 at 2:30pm. Cost = MYR 724.00 (USD 216.00)
March 17: KL to Singapore- Malaysia Airlines flight MH611 at 9:25am. Cost = MYR 396.00 (USD 118.68)

Dad will need to get on to the Malaysia Airlines and Air Asia websites to reserve and pay for those tickets. If that won't work, let me know and we can figure something else out... And if Dad doesn't want to take the 4 hour express boat (which would be AWESOME) then we can fly to Sibu.

On the Malaysia Airlines website it'll probably have a spot to type in an "Enrich" number. It's for frequent flier miles. I don't really know what to do with the miles that I've racked up (it's not all that many) but maybe it can get us some discounts or something.

When we get to KL, I'd like to go to this place called Genting Highlands. It's a big theme park. I've never been there, but it sounds pretty sweet. You can check it out online and see if you're interested. As far as hotels go, I totally forgot about those. I'm not going to have time to get that worked out until the latter part of next week, but if we need it done ASAP you can probably just call Sister Carpenter.

It's going to be a blast. I'm really excited for Dad to get to see everything and everybody. Oh yeah, Kelvin got his mission call, but he's out of town so he hasn't opened it yet. I hope he comes to this mission, but the other two guys that just got their mission calls from his branch are both going out of the country. In fact, one of them is going to Washington DC. But it's south, not north. He's going to the Provo MTC in May, so I'm going to meet up with him when he gets into Salt Lake before he goes into the MTC.

The mission is doing extremely well right now. It's really exciting and I'm grateful to be able to see it and play a small role in this stellar work. It's epic.
Anywho, I've gotta run. Tell everybody that they're in my prayers (especially TJ and Kimberly). I love you all!

Love,
Elder Troxel

Woah Eye Knee

Dear Family,

What a week! It's been stellar! I believe the last time I wrote you we had just begun our mission tour with Elder Watson. That was EPIC! It was so cool to be able to be around him pretty much 24/7 for five or so days. Being around a General Authority just makes you realize how far away you are from perfection.

They live in Hong Kong though, so I told them I was going to be going there to the temple in March, and Sister Watson gave me some good information on Hotels and stuff. They couldn't remember off the top of their heads if they were going to be in town or not at that time, but if they are we might be able to see them. She's going to email the hotel info to Sister Clark, but she also said that you could email her. Just say that you are Elder Troxel's parents and you are wondering if had any tips on places to stay in Hong Kong.

On the tour, we had training meetings here is Singapore, KL, Sibu, and Miri. All of them were excellent, but Sibu's especially because we got to be there for the first ever Sibu district conference. Just on my mission, Sibu has gone from 1 branch to a district with 3 branches and 2 groups. That's so sweet. The church is growing so fast in East Malaysia! The conference that we had in Miri was with Sarawak North and Sabah zones. Both of those are close to my heart because I was a zone leader in both of them.

We have a tradition in our mission that all of the missionaries bear a "last testimony" at the end of their last zone conference. Well, I had mine there. It's funny, because every time you see somebody bear their last testimony, you think "man, that day will never come for me." But mine has come and past. It was cool, because I got to see all the missionaries who came out with me bear their last testimonies too as we went around.

In speaking of the church growing like crazy, the branch in Miri just split from one branch to two with a Chinese speaking group. I didn't even think to ask President Clark about the new leadership, but I just got an email from a man named Edwin telling me that he was called to be the new Branch President. I taught and baptized that guy about 8 months ago in Kuching! That's so sweet! Wow, I never would've thunk that he'd be a Branch President by now. That's such good news though.

He and I have a bet that I can't remember if I told you about or not; he has a goal to get sealed in the temple to his wife as soon as possible after he hits his one year mark, so I bet him that I would get married in the temple before he did. If I lose, then I owe him a package from America. I don't think I'm going to win this one, but you never know right?

Before I forget, Dad had some questions:

1. No, I don't have any adapters anymore... I haven't the foggiest as to where mine went, but you'll probably need to bring one.

2. You might want to bring a small amount of something like that, because the chances of getting the "cirit-birit" (diarrhea) are fairly high. It might get taken away by Malaysian customs though, but I'm not sure.

So yeah, looks like I'm going to BYU! I'm pretty pumped. I'd love to take a class with both Whitney and Chelsie, but I'm afraid they are both way to intelligent for my level. I was planning on starting slow with something like "Cursive 101" or "Times Tables for Dummies" classes. I haven't really looked closely at the details, but I hear that you can start registering for classes the first of February. Should I do it from here? I don't know, I'm new to this College nonsense.

Anywho, I've gotta run, but I love you all!

Love,
Elder Troxel

Warp Speed

Dear family of mine,

I will apologize now because this email is going to be really short. I'm now entering a time warp that will bring me to the end of my mission. For the last 4 days we have worked tirelessly (just kidding, I'm really tired) to try and get mission tour all organized.

Elder Watson got here today and we'll have the first training meeting tomorrow in Singapore, then to KL on Friday, Sibu on Saturday, then Miri on Monday. Then next week we'll have a couple days to finish our other training before Elder Stone and I take off for our two week training tour.

When that's all over, we've got another training that we'll have to give at the zone leader counsel the second week of February. That gives us just enough time to prepare for our visiting authorities tour. AH! Then I'm done.

It's been a strange week for me. I got to go on exchanges will my MTC companion Elder Shipp. He is a funny guy. We were with him for new years, which actually turned out to be pretty wild.

We got to that area at about 2:30 in the morning of Dec 31st. We went to the zone leaders' apartment at 3am. When we got there, Elder Stone realized that he left his luggage on the bus! the next day, he called the driver, and the driver told him that it was still on the bus, but that he wouldn't be back in town until 2:30 the next morning! So we stayed up all night, celebrating the new year and reminiscing, then we took the ferry across the river to get his baggage at the bus station. Pretty crazy.

Elder Pace, a very close friend of mine from the MTC, went home today. He decided to go home a month early for school, and I'm extending a month, so now we've got a two month gap. It was weird though. He's gone! Another one bites the dust!

Thanks for all of your prayers. I'll need them for the next couple months. I'm in a sprint to the finish, however, if you recall, I've never been a strong finisher in a race... Lets just hope that's just a problem with physical stamina and that I'll be able to push through to the finish line.

I love you all.

-Elder Troxel