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This week was another terrific week in Sibu. I am loving it here! My faith increased this week as I went on exchanges with the zone leaders. I went with Elder Ngatikaura to his area in sibu jaya. It was one of the funnest days of my mission! We taught a lot of great lessons and had a way successful day. It was gawai day when I went on this exchange. Gawai is a huge holiday out here! It is basically the Christmas of Malaysia! Everything shuts down for 2 weeks and everyone returns to their "kompong" or hometown. Sibu Jaya was one of those hometowns. The first thing we did that day was go to a big flat or like a giant apartment complex. So we get there and basically all of the Sibu Jaya branch is from this flat. We show up and everyone starts singing and dancing and yelling for the giant white guys haha. We walk into a room where we taught an investigator. Then we ate. For gawai what they do is everyone has a ton of food and drinks at their house and they keep their doors open and people just walk in and eat food. So we started at this first house and then went to house to house eating boatloads of food! I have never eaten so much in my life! At the end of it we went to a total of 9 houses where at each one they filled our plates with tons of food. I could barely move after haha. That night we went to a Less Actives house. This house was super fun because they had a pet monkey! I was playing with the monkey and I made a very baad mistake by giving it my flash light. Haha the monkey just went to town on this thing. He was biting all the rubber and just destroying it. We tried wrestling him for it but he wouldnt give it up. Then we tried trading him food for it but it still didnt work. He was getting mad and started running at us and swiping at us haha. Then finally they owner brought out this little cookie thing and when the monkey saw it he straight away dropped my light and got the cookie haha. It was super fun but monkeys are evil.

 I learned from Elder Ngatikaura some great planning techniques. Often times in our area we are left with no plans and nothing really to do besides "contacting" As you probably know putting contacting as your plans is not very effective and not a very motivating thing to have in your plans. Elder Ngatikaura invited me to start thinking of new ways to find people rather then just contacting. So what me and Elder Pearce decided to do is when we meet someone we have to make them smile before we just go straight into contacting them. The ways we have done this is things like play basketball for 5 minutes with them, or do a trick on our bikes for them, or we just simply smile really big at them and they smile back. I have noticed that people are much more willing to talk to you if you connect with them through a smile. I have enjoyed doing this much more then just simple "street contacting" and it is much more effective. Another thing we have been doing that has increased my faith is serving our members. We have been going to members houses and almost forcing them to let us clean up a bit haha. I have truly felt my love for these people grow as I have smiled with them and served them. I have began to realize that that is what missions are all about. Is loving the people and helping their lives to improve through service and the gospel. I have also enjoyed doing small acts of service around the house for my companion. I love giving service it just makes everyone feel so good.

This week we saw a miracle in finding a sincere investigator. It is hard to find people that are humble and sincere out here but this week we found one. I contacted him using my "word of wisdom contacting" approach and the contact went wonderfully and i felt the spirit. Since I contacted him I had him keep popping up into my thoughts telling me to call him and meet with him. While we were advertising English class we ran into him again which usually means god is telling us to meet with him. So the next day we set up an appointment with him and he is well prepared. He listens intently and has an actual desire to change. I am excited that god has trusted me to work with this man.

As for members we had a great miracle as well. There is a family from ukraine in our branch who are very strong members. The dad got called to the branch presidency this week and he is just awesome! He is a great leader and he actually gets things done. The branch here struggles with leadership but now this brother is pushing things forward.

Thank you everyone for all the love, prayers, and support! Have a wonderful week!

-蘇长老