Personal Learnings

Awesome rainbow! 

A vanload of bikes!

Hello!

Another week!

Sabah is doing alright--we are seeing the work pick up in Tawau and Sandakan, and hoping/praying/working that Kota Kinabalu will soon follow. Our specific area is still not doing so hot. We found some new people this week, and hopefully we will see them progress. However, I'm learning a lot here in KK. The work is slow, but I feel that my rate of learning is very high. Now I just need to continue to apply what I'm learning and get the level of work up as well. This week I particularly learned from Elder Bednar's talk about using our burdens to give us spiritual traction. I highly recommend it: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2014/04/bear-up-their-burdens-with-ease?lang=eng And I also found Mitt Romney's BYU devotional speech very insightful, especially what he shared about perspective. Watch or listen to it here: http://speeches.byu.edu/index.php?act=viewitem&id=2213

We took two members who are 18 and 17 to follow us this week, and we had pretty incredible experiences with them. With Sofery (18), we were trapped by some bad rain and prayed together, asking God to stop it for us - within 5 minutes the downpour was down to a trickle, and after having the impression to demonstrate our faith by walking out even though there was a drizzle left, we left and saw it all stop. Once we got to our destination, the rain began to pour again. God's hand was over us!

With Stenly (17), we prayed for guidance and offered our gratitude for the Lord's goodness at least 5 or 6 times in the day, and Stenly had the experience of receiving a prompting to go to a certain place. We went there, and were let in and able to teach a little bit about the uniqueness of our church. In another instance, after rescuing a mangy dog hopelessly trapped in a giant gutter, we saw a woman watching us and cheering for us! So afterwards, our hands being pretty gross, we went to her home and asked to wash our hands off there! We then, after getting to know her and her experience with religion, shared the Restoration video with her. She accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon with the commitment to read it. Hopefully we can go back to both homes this week. Just a great day on Saturday. It's great to feel worn out on Sunday because you know you were working hard.

And Sunday after church, I  had a great experience getting to know a man who was angrily burning some plants in a public area, a former Christian man (2 years no church) whose life was falling apart. I listened, felt the Spirit's whispering to ask if he still prays - and he said no, he doesn't. After further questions, he explained that the peace that he felt before (when he was close to God) was gone. I then testified that I was here as a representative of Jesus Christ and that God wanted him to know that he should turn back. I literally called him to repentance with love and concern for him, and then challenged him to pray again. His countenance had changed and he agreed to do so. I am going to follow up tomorrow to see how! Cool stuff. Fulfilling my purpose.

We are laying the foundations of our Church here, and all that we do (even the little things) will be recorded by the angels in heaven - whether or not we get credit for it here on earth (which doesn't matter anyways), God will reward us for all the good we do because He and His angels notice it all!

Malaysia boleh!

Love,

Elder Coleman

All in the life of a missionary!