The Gift of Tongues is a Thing!

Monday, December 16, 2013
Elder Coleman and his companion with their investigator Erika and some of her family
(she's on the left with her hands on the little boy)
 Hello everyone!

Okay, I know, I missed last week's update and I'm sorry!! I had to run quickly and didn't have time to get a long email in. This week I hope makes up for it!!

My new companion, Elder Cook, is from Kaysville, Utah, and was serving in Bintulu before he came over to Johor Bahru with me. He has definitely got a good work ethic, and I think that's awesome! I'm thinking we are going to do some great work together. 

This week has been great showing the new Elder around and introducing him to the members. I have been praying ever since I began my mission to obtain the Gift of Tongues, essentially the ability to speak other languages through a gift of the Spirit. I have had some awesome progression in the Malay language since I began, but in the last week, the language seems to have clicked. When Elder Adams left, a missionary with some of the best bahasa in the entire mission, I really needed to improve if I wanted to understand things said to me. I prayed harder and got some major help. It's been so cool. I seem to be able to understand most things spoken to me now. I'm going to try and keep up everything that I've been doing to make sure I still can improve and receive help from the Lord!

We had some awesome lessons this week with Erika. She is so enthusiastic about the gospel and is really accepting everything we've taught her. In fact, we moved up her baptismal date two weeks to January 4th! It's been so cool seeing her progress and also feeling the Spirit so strongly in our lessons. In one of our recent lessons, I nearly started crying because the Spirit was so strong! Man! So great.

My companion and I are really working on finding others to teach right now, and one of the major other things we do is help people who have stopped coming to church every week refind their commitment and come back into the fold. That is what Christ did, right? :)
   
Okay, something that I love about Malay, one of the greatest things about the language in my opinion. You can get really creative with what you say with it. In Malay, there is a suffix (which sometimes comes with a prefix but don't worry about it) that makes me laugh like every day. The suffix is "-kan". Check this out. It essentially means to "___-ify" something. 

Example: Jatuh means to fall, but the word "jatuhkan" means to knock something over! Or to fall-ify something. or.... Kalah means to lose, but kalahkan means to defeat, or to lose-ify someone! hahahahh Is that not epic?!?!? I mean that's just genius! If it doesn't make sense, I'll have plenty of time to attempt to explain it when I get back in a couple of years :)

Alright, I love you all! You're all in my thoughts and prayers!

Malaysia Boleh!

Elder Coleman
TYTYTYTYTY