Accidental Blessings

Hello, This week has definitely been better than last, especially towards the end of this week. We've still got a long ways to go, but improvement doesn't always come as quickly as we'd like. My companion has great desires to work hard, but has developed a lot of bad habits making it difficult for him. Hopefully, those will slowly fade and be replaced by new, better ones. Elder Barfuss served in the California Newport Beach Mission for a while before coming to Singapore/Malaysia. There was a district YSA activity this weekend and it wasn't very good honestly. But, our branch is doing one this Saturday, at our church, so hopefully we can make that one good. It's hard to do when I don't have a phone, but we're working on it. Language Study has not been super great still, I need to be better at being disciplined with my studies even if those around me aren't. I read a good BYU speech about 100% responsibility and it was super good. It helped me realize it really is all up to me to make things good, I can't let other people hold me back, or count on them to push me forward. However, you can always ask for help. I was able to have a local member help me with one of my language studies this week and it was pretty good, hopefully we can do it more often. We did have our pass-off lesson with Jim, but we didn't put him on date for baptism. However, I'm not sure if I already mentioned it, but a couple weeks ago, Elder Zaleski and I put Brandon on date to be baptized. He's the one I met on the train who lived in Auburn, Washington and went to Green River the same time as Derek. Wei Jie is progressing well, he committed to living the Word of Wisdom on Friday, and is still doing his scripture study, it's awesome. We actually didn't find any new friends this week, sadly. Fortunately, we got a lot of people's phone numbers and some potentials to find this upcoming week. No one new at church, and the number of YSA that come to church is about 5. We tend to focus on finding YSA's for some reason. President Woo calls them kingdom builders, but I think they do a lot more to build the kingdom when they have a spouse. Zone Conference was awesome. One thing that was emphasized was a training President Nelson gave to the new mission presidents for the missionaries. This training was about praying in your closets. The prophet wanted missionaries to actually have a place they go to get away from the world and really speak with the Lord, and it's been amazing:). This is something I've really craved since going out on the mission because I'm always with my companion and don't feel I can really pray vocally and be alone with God. But, we have an extra closet/room with the ironing board and such that I've been using, and while it's not necessarily sound proof, I've been able to pray more vocally, and I like it a lot. They also talked a lot about the importance of Preach My Gospel. Essentially, they taught that many missionaries start looking in so many different places for answers, and how they can be better missionaries when the answer is PMG. It was created by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, it was created for missionaries. The interesting thing about this training is that it never occurred while I'd been putting a lot of time into PMG, but as soon as I started putting less of a focus on it, they told me it's essential, so I had to go back to focusing on it. We didn't really hit any of our goals this week, but I believe next week will be better, we've discussed and made plans for a lot of things. Miracle: So, we were taking this train down to Kajang and then going back up to Cochrane. I didn't catch the part about going to Kajang when we first made that plan, so I accidentally got off at Cochrane, and realized when the train left with my companion still on it that I was supposed to stay on the train. So, I had to borrow some dude's phone and call my companion, then I got on the next train. As I got on, a guy caught my eye, and I went to talk to him. When I told him why I was here in Malaysia he said he'd love to learn more about Jesus. He was Hindu and believed in Jesus as a god, but not quite in the Christian sense, so he wanted to learn more. It was crazy, he got off the next stop but grabbed our number and asked for the church address so he can come next week. THEN, I taught this other kid about the Book of Mormon and he had this huge epiphany moment where he realized it doesn't make sense that God only dealt with his people in the Middle East/Jerlusalem. So, he was pretty excited to learn about the Book of Mormon. It was crazy because I never would've met either of them if I hadn't accidentally gotten off the train at the wrong stop. God is in the details. Challenge: We're chillin Good News: We're watching a Sharing the Gospel Broadcast with our branch council this week and there will be a training on it this 5th Sunday for the ward. I think it will be very helpful for the work. Elder Jaxon Wardle