This week Elder Avery sent a voice recording and several photos. The following is transcribed from the voice recording:
All Right! (In kind of a southern drawl voice for most of the time) Let’s jump into things, “MY WEEEEK”. 
So,
this past week was just superb. On Monday, we had an exciting turn of
events. Um, we went to the hospital to pick up a missionary named Elder
Gara… from Malaysia. No worries, he’s fine. He had gotten in a bike
accident earlier, and then before that, I guess he got in a bike crash like
months and months before. And he hurt his wrist and then hurt it again, and
it was actually good that he hurt it again, because sometimes Malaysian
doctors miss things and it turns out that his wrist, like his hand
wasn’t like, really fully attached to, like bones or anything. So he
needed to come and do surgery in Singapore, glad he didn’t stay in
Kuching, because the doctor there was gonna do something different
that was going to be terrible. So we brought him into Singapore then.
He’s been our companion this whole week. He’s really nice, he’s from
Sarawak and he is Iban, which is one of the dayak tribes here.
He’s a really nice elder, we’re glad we get to work with him. We did
another family home evening with Brother Y* P* and his wife Yu*
and their cute little daughters, one’s like 3 or 4 years old and the
other is a little baby and we went over how to increase faith in Jesus
Christ. It was a lot of fun, we drew pictures with the little girls, the
ways they were going to increase their faith- it was way fun.
And
then, after that, it was Tuesday. After our reporting we ended up just
going out and doing work and… pretty good day.. I would tell you more,
except that I don’t have my previous planner to look over, because while
I was going over my planner, my planner, random days were out of order
and upside down and stuff… so I had a misprint planner, so I have a new
one now. So I don’t remember what else happened on Tuesday.. (haha)
Um.. so.. skippin' forward to when I got a new planner! (Pause) Um… oh,
this is awkward, I’m trying to remember my week and I can’t remember
everything I just got Elder Harker’s planner and I’ll just go through
his except that it’s all in Malay so I don’t know what to do… (Elder Harker laughing) (Elder Avery) What?... (Elder Harker) So what day? (Avery) What is Raboo? (Harker) Wednesday. (Avery) Aww! That’s the one! Raboo!
Okay
so then, Wednesday we ended meeting with an investigator named Er*,
he’s older. He used to be, well…I shouldn’t say older, he’s like early
40s. (Elder Harker chuckling) But, he used to be Christian and
he kind of left religion and Christianity because of depression and
other things and so, he was just talking about like.. I don’t know, he
kind of got on the whole (southern accent in higher pitch) “Yeah,
well why did Joseph Smith get to see God, like, I’ve never seen God… or
like an angel and he got to do this and we just have to go off like
faith and stuff” like I’ve never seen God” So we had to explain that,
do you go off faith… but I got a little fiery because sometimes it heats
me up a little bit, when people say things like that. So I was like,
“Yeah. Joseph Smith got to see God and Jesus Christ. Because after he
was beaten nearly to death, multiple times and tarred and feathered,
multiple times, lost multiple children because of the ramifications of
things that mobs did and other tribulations they were going through and
his people were marched through snow and left like blood in their
footsteps and all that stuff… and then HE DIED. He never denied it,
whereas any other human being, any other person, would have done that.
Joseph Smith was an exceptional man and not only that, but of course he
had to exercise and use faith before he received a witness just like it
says in Ether 12:6. So, we told him that and hopefully that will help
him, I think he should be good.
Then
also that day, we taught an awesome investigator from Indonesia named
Sister Em*, that we found a little while ago and now like even now,
my phone is going off cause her and another member in the stake, who’s
Indonesian, named Sister I*, they just talk all day about what’s
happened, just message each other and talk about gospel stuff. But, on
Wednesday when we taught Sister Em*, which was a super good lesson,
which was really short, because she only had 20 minutes, because she is a
domestic helper and doesn’t get a lot of spare time. And she really
like it, we reviewed the restoration and she was like, “of course I’ll
be baptized on September 17th, like why not?” And that’s really cool, she’s doing really well with the Book of Mormon, she’s reading it and then…. …
Oh, yeah, (in a fast then drawn out funny voice…)
Fast forward to Thursday, evening after our weekly planning, we
had to go pretty far out of our area, because one of our recent converts
named Ro*, her friend’s grandma needed a blessing so we went way
far to, I forget the name of the place..but we went really far to there, to
go give the blessing (Josh yawning and talking), but we felt
like it was … sorry that was a yawn… but we felt like it was necessary
because, I don’t know, Ro*... um... never mind... this.… Members are
great. I love them… But sometimes... it’s hard to go to your home teachers
and stuff like that, when they are not close to you, when you have
things like that pop up. Sometimes recent converts just have to go to
the missionaries. Anyways… (laughs)... so that was out of our area, but
we did that for her and because she really wanted us to do and not a
member.
And then after that, it was Friday and so, Friday... let’s see Friday… (some foreign word for Friday) Juoomant..
is that what it is? And Friday was a finding day and we ended up kind
of finding this really awesome guy from China, I feel bad, we keep
finding awesome people, but then they’re not in our area, so HA! I need
to be careful about that. But, we found this really awesome guy from
China, so we passed him off to some Chinese elders that day, so that was
cool. We also went to "Singbon?" park and met this really cool girl who
is also from Indonesia and we like, when we first ran into her she was
not open at all and we were like “Are you kidding me.. do you think God
doesn’t talk to us like he did in the Bible, that would mean God has
changed. And if God has changed, then God has ceased to be God. So then
she was like, whoa, ok..she was kind of like.. ok, I’ll read the Book of
Mormon and pray about it and we were like, Wooo!” It was exciting.
And
then “saptoo”, that’s “Saturday”… I’m learning Malay!! We ended up
teaching…let’s see… a lot of these lessons fell through I realize, let’s
see which ones actually happened. Oh, G* and M* happened… so
then we ended up being able to teach Brother M* at Brother W*'s
house and he’s amazing and he’s like “Yeah, okay, but Sunday I don’t want
to go to your church again, because I’ve been going to the Catholic
church for the past 7 years and I feel like I should tell my priest what
I’ve been learning and see what thoughts he’s had” and of course, like
always, we’re like, “what? that seems like kind of a silly idea, we all
know what your priest is gonna say, like he’s gonna say like stay in his
church, it’s like been 7 years… bla bla bla… “ok, fine, we’ll letcha do
it. And so we did it and we prayed really hard, and then yesterday we
talked to him and his priest was actually cool with it, and he was like
“it’s your choice” and we were like, “woohoo!” and so… we’re excited,
because we’re pretty sure we know what his choice is going to be. (clicking
sound with the side of his mouth like people do when they then point
after… like some people do and wink at the same time they point… haha.) BAPTISM!!
Then…
after that, brother G*, we taught brother G* again and he’s
been doing well, he has his work figured out and stuff, he should be able
to come to church more… um, so that is exciting. Sunday we taught
Sister Em* from Indonesia again- it was a really good lesson, and then
after the lesson, she gave us nine referrals who are also Indonesian
and Christian so that’s amazing. Only 2 or 3 of them are in our area,
but that’s still amazing nonetheless. And then we also were able to
teach Brother Y*, who is a recent convert who came back from Brunei
and then we were able to meet with Ro*, which
is always amazing. Then we came back… Oh, and then Sister Ri* ended
up coming church, which was so good, because her phone has been having
problems, so we haven’t been able to contact her and I’ve been waaay
stressed about Sister Ri*, but she ended up being able to come to
church, but she came with the 2 kids even though they live out
in Compassvale, and we were able to go teach her and her husband later last
night, down in- not in Compassvale, down in Queenstown and I guess they’re only
going to be there for the month, then they’ll come back to Izhevsk, then we’ll be able to meet with them again. So we’re excited.
Um, yeah, so that was our week! Love you all!! Be good. Bye!!
Elder AveryAn AWESOME Week - August 21, 2016
A Rough Week, But A Good Week - August 7, 2016
