Wow. Tomorrow, I hit 6 months as a missionary. 16½ more to go. jomlah🤺
Maaf y'all are gonna need to pull out the translate app too😭
Monday- Monday was great. P-days are always awesome. Quick daily planning what you're gonna do for that P-night from 6:30-9:30 and then just no worries for the rest of the day is nice. Me and Elder Page just got everything prepared and nice and ready for this week and transfer. Cleaned up the apartment, got cleaning supplies, hit a nice little P-study, slept in too, called fam, got groceries, upgraded our bikes, got haircuts. So so solid to just lock in and bersedia kami sendiri untuk pemindahan ini.
Tuesday- accidentally woke up late again. Had a solid DCM. Did a lot of contacting on our phones, public contacting in shoplots, we really focused on how to talk and converse with Chinese people who don't really know who God is. In Chinese culture, they see God as a far-off distant spirit who is not able to be communicated with. They see him as cold and mysterious. That would be a sad reality indeed. So, we focused on teaching Buddhist and just Chinese people in general that God is our loving Heavenly Father and so many wonderful eternal truths that we are blessed to know as members of the Lord's church. Did a little bit of finding, like an hour straight of just sitting at the church and contacting people on our phones and then had a 45-minute lesson because of it, just reaching out to people. Met this super cool guy and he's awesome, gonna keep teaching him see if he wants to be baptized and be saved. Let's hope he makes the right decision Kan!?
Wednesday- very basic day honestly, did some morning shoplot finding, contacts, planned a good amount, lunch, language study. The usual. I promise y'all not every day is some crazy fun awesome exciting time. A lot of it is repetitive, but it's still very fulfilling.
Thursday- man what a day Thursday was. Wow. Biked an hour (biked the entire way on a broken bike juga) to this massive mall closer to downtown Johor Bahru. Really really nice mall for sure. Elder Page kept saying it felt like we were in Singapore. We went to Carl Jr's for lunch. Now if I was in America I wouldn't FATHOM going to a Carl's Jr. I mean like Elder Page is acting like Carl Jr's is like Chick Fil-a but hey he put me on honestly😭 Carl jJr's hit so hard oh me. AND FREE REFILLS. Wow. They did not know what was gonna happen when they saw Elder Barlow pull up I swear. Man I drank so much coke it was lowkey nasty how much coke I was putting down. Took full advantage kamu sudah tahu. Anyways destroyed those chicken tenders and waffle fries, did like three hours of weekly planning. All of our studies juga. Thursdays are so light because you literally just sit for like five hours straight because of our weekly planning. Did only like 45 minutes of finding and then the worst happened. On our way back to the part of the city where our house and the church is, my chain snaps and Elder Page's bike tire just absolutely explodes. So, we had to walk bike like 45 minutes back to our area. We're walking on the side of the highway, there's like these massive trucks just whizzing past. Motorcycles everywhere driving on the side trying to get past traffic where we were walking. Soooo sketch. Walking through shrubbery because if you were to step out onto the road it could be game over, I'm not gonna lie. So sketch. We used our bike lights and our safety vest that we have so it was chill but still though. We ended up being fine and had no close calls. Was getting really disappointed though. Wanted to get back to the church and do our calls. Had a lot of really important calls that night with our On-Dates and everything. But we had to sit down on some bench and do it there, halfway home. We got them done and then walked the rest of the way back home. We had to walk through a lowkey sketchy super super Muslim neighborhood like walking through alleyways in the dark. Could've easily just got jumped and robbed I'm not gonna lie. Luckily The Lord is protecting us because it's just insane nothing bad happened to us that night. Got home at like 10:00. Whole time walking of course I was just talking to myself tryna keep myself calm, love talking to myself and just thinking about the day and the week ahead and stuff like that.
Anyways, Thursday was cool. Met this one really cool guy from the Philippines‼️🇵🇭 (super rare to meet Filipino YSA bros honestly, there's a TON of YSA Filipino woman in Singapore though) Anyways, Mac was so awesome. I told him "saya ada satu kawan dekat Filipina sekarang, dia tinggal di Laoag City" This dude couldn't believe it. I was like "kamu kenal kota itu kah" and he was like, "yeah, I do." Elder Page did the entire contact in English, and I did the whole contact in Malay😭😭 it was so funny. Like Elder Page shared a scripture in English and I explained it all in Malay and I talked about the restoration in Malay and Elder Page was talking about Joseph Smith in English. So awesome. It's so cool too like me and Elder Page's Malay are SO different. I like speaking it really fast and using the correct more formal words and Elder Page speaks it really informal (not a bad thing at all, actually better most times to speak it more informally tbh) and controlled and like compacted more.
Man, Malay is so awesome. It's literally Arabic + local languages jumbled and a good amount of English words and English derivatives. No missionary sounds the same either. It depends on where you learn it as a missionary. You can tell when a missionary learns it in Sarawak or Sabah or started in West Malaysia. West Malaysia Malay is so so crazy different than east Malaysia Malay. So cool. Anyways for no reason at all, I was just using Malay because why not? He could understand it, and I might as well, gotta stay Sarawak ready. Gotta stay east Malaysia ready where all the Malay is if I get moved back to Sarawak next transfer.
Anyways, shout out, Elder Caldwell, for helping me and Elder Page building trust for that contact, ended up making him a friend🫡
Friday- Friday was super santai, sangat chill. Only had like 45 minutes- 1 hour of finding. Couple lessons, taught English class, ate with a member, fixed our bikes. Solid day.
Saturday- Saturday was crazy haha. Went over to a Filipino member's house (there's a ton of Filipinos in our branch. Actually, a lot from the Philippines move to Singapore and Johor Bahru for better work and money) They were having an all-Filipino member lunch thing and making traditional Filipino food. So good. Also literally did a combined like two hours of contacting on our phones just contacted literally everyone inviting them to Church. Taught an hour-long lesson with our on-date and explained to her about a situation we're having right now with them. Obviously can't get into the details but yeah Crazy day. It was fun though, so much going on. We were grabbing back to the church from the Filipino picnic grub jamuan type thing and our grab driver (Uber driver) was sooooo chill. You guessed it. Yes, he was Muslim, good job. So we try to stay away from saying "kami sukarelawan di sini" or like "kami suka tolong ramai orang seluruh Johor Bahru" jangan state your purpose to a Muslim purpose but man he was so chill and we were just chatting it up. Anyways
Sunday- church was solid. I went up and bore my testimony about D&C 58:1-7 the verses that Elder Simonsen taught me about back in Miri. Went caroling with the members had a lot of fun doing that, did a ton of shoplot finding at night at this big night market just crawling with various peoples from all over middle east and SE Asia. Literally all of our contacts are in Chinese though so for a lot of them I kinda just stand there and let Elder Page do his work. Kinda getting annoying I'm not gonna lie. There's just SO MANY Chinese people in Malaysia it's insanity. All the people that can speak Malay we can't even talk to or teach😭😭 because their all Melayu (Muslim) so all of our public contacting finding is in English or just Chinese. Elder Page is super great asking "boleh cakap bahasa Melayu kah" so I can get involved and actually understand what they're saying. Great day though.
Solid week. Handling the workload has been getting a lot better. We leave for Singapore Zone conference next Sunday, so that'll be super super exciting. Love y'all, y'all are awesome. Keep sending emails and support. I appreciate it with all my heart!
Elder Barlow🇲🇾⚜️
No comments:
Post a Comment