-Apparently another plane is lost here in Malaysia from Singapore.. pretty scary because we fly all the time here whenever we need to move areas. It has to be one of the most expensive missions in the world because of all the flights..
-Last p-day we did an escape room which is a room that has clue's and you have to try and get out. They are popular here and apparently starting to get popular in the states.
-Christmas here is wild. Everyone forces you to eat at their houses and they just continue to stuff you with food all day long. I felt so fat that the day after christmas that night at 10 pm I went outside and did some of the stations conditioning that we do for pre-season basketball at MIT in the pouring rain because I ate a lot of food and not healthy food. Felt much better after that. Never thought I would do those on my own.
-Shout out to MIT bball brothers who are doing winter break stations now. I am with you guys. Doing a little in East Malaysia as well.
-Skype was super awesome this week! So happy to see you all! Huge boost for the week!
-Christmas day we biked so far and visited so many people and sang so many songs and had about 10 lessons and I was so full of food and so tired from biking. The next morning was so hard to get up. But definitely the most fulfilling Christmas yet; just reminding people the true meaning of Christmas.
-My companion is super super clean and hates anything dirty at all and so we have been learning how to clean better. Say thanks to my companion Mom.
-Funny story. We found these huge leaves in the jungle and started play sword fighting with them and then started biking home. Mid-way home our hands started to itch and sting like crazy and we realized that the leaves we had been playing with had some sort of self-defense thing and so we suffered for an hour or so but then it went away. Scared us though because we didn't know how long the itching and stinging torture would last. Don't play with big leaves.
-This week is the New Year! So I want to invite everyone to read this inspiring talk about regrets and resolutions and make some specific new years resolutions!
The biggest three regrets of people:
1. I wish I had spent more time with the people I love.
2. I wish I had lived up to my potential (not career/job)
3. I wish I let myself be happier
Read what President Uctdorf has to say here: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/of-regrets-and-resolutions?lang=eng
Love you all,
Happy New Year!
评长老
Elder Pierce
This is the Missing Letter Below from the week before Christmas:
-Ate bat and flying squirrel this week. Not bad. Kind of like weird chicken/beef. Don't really know how to explain it.
-This week got 100 pullups, 100 situps and 100 pushups in 15 min! Got my goal. Pretty happy with it. Calling out Dad, Sawyer & Jackson to try it..no chance..
-For Chinese I am currently memorizing the missionary dictionary..it's just like a shortened version of the real dictionary..all the actually useful words. But then I ask Penny usually on the words to see if they use them in Malaysia. Malaysia chinese is really lazy chinese and ask her how to use them. Memorizing a dictionary without knowing how to use the words is pointless..I am on letter "L"
-We teach about two thirds of our lessons in chinese..the rest in English...my Malay is not quite there yet..but can bear testimony and pray.
-Ah Boon one of our investigators got an answer this week praying to know if the book of mormon is true! Such a sweet experience for him..it was a treasured lesson for sure..
-This week we have been doing a lot of home teaching actually helping to jumpstart it in our branch..We started a program called Love "One" Other...giving them only one person/family to home teach at first until they manage that and then giving them more..it went pretty well this week.
-A huge problem we face with investigators out here is that a lot of people think all churches are true..it's probably a problem everywhere but I guess I just realized it more on the mission..
It makes it easy for them to not have a desire to know if our church is true because they already believe it is true but there are lots of different ways to get to heaven..we end up really focusing on the first vision a lot..
-Right now I am reading "Jesus the Christ" by James E. Talmage with "the harmony of the 4 gospels" which is in the back of the bible and just gives a chronological reading of the 4 gospels. They go along perfectly together and I am learning a ton about Jesus Christ's life right now.
-This week being Christmas, I will not be doing much celebrating but actually a lot more working than usual. This is the best time to get into people's houses and share messages uplifting them about the real gift of Christmas. It is going to be a hard but joyful week.
This is a video I shared a couple weeks ago but it is worth a second watch. Don't forget the real meaning of Christmas. It isn't in wrapping paper. He is the Gift.
(Side Note: 1:34 in the video has a cool shot of the Mooncake Festival which is a chinese holiday I was able to celebrate earlier this year. I got to let one of those balloons go and it really does look like that. The sky is literally dotted with balloons.)
Merry Christmas!
Love you all,
Elder Pierce
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