A lot happened this week, lot of highs and lows. I'll walk yall through it.
Monday- after p-day ended, the Elders from Bintulu came up and I got to see and meet up with my guy Elder Boseman who's my district leader here for Miritulu (Miri and Bintulu). We had a fun ministering night with some members and Elder Boseman got to see some members who he used to teach literally like 22-23 months ago because he started his mission in Miri as well, which was so cool to see him be so happy around people he hasn't seen in forever, as well as hearing from one of the members that of course his Malay was very little when he started and knew no Iban (like me, same place, same situation with language) and now here he was speaking Iban with them and understanding every word they said. Gave me a lot of motivation to continue to wait on the Lord's timing and continue to work hard at my Malay first and then focus on Iban later in my mission. We shared a quick message with them, and I shared Isaiah 55:8-9 in Malay which has quickly become my favorite scripture.
Scripture from Pres. and Sister Ho
Tuesday- did my second part of the exchange with my boy Elder Overly, who was in my MTC district which was so much fun. Now our 2nd time serving together, once in Bintulu, and now once in Miri. Love it. It was a good day and since this was my area, I took the both of us into a Kampung and I was able to get a number from a lady all in Malay which was so awesome.
Wednesday- AP's (assistant to the president, for those of you who don't know) flew in Tuesday night and me and Elder Bartholomew went to work together on another exchange (back to back exchanges, wild) (and yes I was stressing big time lol, I had to lock in like crazy😭) but I soon realized dude was such a chiller, which was so fire, he was awesome and of course he got us like 5 new friends that day, he was pushing me hard but he told me he didn't need to wait up for me at all and that I wasn't slowing him down. He complimented me a lot and we had a lot of deep conversations about why we're serving, and I told him a lot about myself and my family and my goals and who I'm doing this for, and he did likewise too, it was so awesome.
Me and Elder Bartholomew at a lesson.
At the end of the night after teaching a family from Nigeria on video call (in English too, so you already know I cooked) living in Kuala Lumpur because you know APs get to teach the golden families, we had about 30 minutes left and it was literally raining sideways so I'm like, "Oh, bet nights over we can wait out the rain and then bike home at 9:30 and be done." Of course, this man Elder Bartholomew turns to me and is like, "Let's go do some bike finding," with the biggest smile on his face, dude was eaaaager to bike in the rain and I'm not even gonna lie. I literally said like, "Dude, there's no way" right to the APs face😭 but as soon as we stepped outside the rain had died down a ton, so we did the bike finding and right at the buzzer, it's like 9:28 ish probably and this is our last person who we barely got to come outside and we were able to get his number. It was honestly a miracle! It was so wild. I said to myself after I'm like, "That's why this man is AP, because he has consecrated himself to give ALL his heart, might, mind and strength to the Lord even until the very last minute or door and then AFTER our trial of faith we saw a miracle." I learned a very very important lesson about the work through Elder Bart that night. Later that night he gave me some invitations, said a prayer, blessed me and my family in it, and left the next morning.
Honestly, this email is incredibly long and I'm starving. Me and Elder Randall are boutta go get some food as I'm writing this so:
Thursday-Sunday was a blur and a jumble of a ton of dropped lessons, disappointing finding, very hot and humid weather, a couple lessons here and there with members, finding in the literal jungle, getting absolutely demolished by mosquitos and dense forest vegetation, biking the Le Mans on like forest back trails which were crazy bumpy with like mud and massive puddles, jaggedy bouldered trails also, was dissapointed by my Malay, and honestly was just not feeling it mentally. Was hard to do pretty much everything to be honest, but I did it and it's onto the next week. Some weeks are gonna be like that, really good at first and 2nd half of the week just not great, or vice versa, and I'm coming to learn that. I have a week and a half left in the transfer so looking to finish it out strong. Could share a lot of different spiritual thoughts but this email is already way too long😂 hope y'all are all good back home. I miss pizza (there is Pizza Hut here and Dominos, but they don't use tomato sauce at all🥲) and my Baja blasts of course, but this work is so awesome and if this is the hardest the mission can offer me in terms of language, culture, area then its only up from here. None of that will really change, I'll only become stronger through Jesus Christ's grace and power.
Me eating a kampung fish
-Elder Barlow
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