Miracles Happen, Thanksgiving at Wendy's, Stake Conference

Hello everyone! This week was pretty cool and also went by super fast! Oh yeah and happy Thanksgiving everyone! I almost forgot it was thanksgiving last Thursday until late afternoon and I was like woah it is Thanksgiving today! So we had a small expensive feast at Wendy's (110,000 Rupiahs = 7.95 US). It was nothing like my past Thanksgiving meals but it was sufficient.

So I will share a few experiences this week. My bike broke and we tried to get it fixed so for a few days we were stuck walking all over. One time we were walking home from an appointment kinda far away and while we were walking this guy tried to pass us by on his motor bike but it broke down right in front of us. We kept walking though and he fixed it and tried to pass up again but it broke down again as he tried to pass us. This happened three times and then we decided to talk to him and he was a really cool guy and was immediately interested in the Book of Mormon and wants to learn.

A month or two ago we meet this girl at a mall who did an exchange trip to Utah and met Mormons there and entered into a church once. Her English is perfect and she sounds like an American. She thought it was cool to see Elders again and took our picture to show her Utah friends and then left. Then a few days ago we met her again at another place and she came up to us. She told us that she actually wants to learn about our church now and wants to meet with us some time. She told us that her father is Muslim and her mother is Christian and they want here to decide on a religion for herself soon. She has already learned about Muslims and Buddhist, but she wants to learn about Mormons before she chooses. We were supposed to meet last Saturday but she couldn't at the last second so hopefully we meet again soon.

We meet with another investigator named Pak P., he is great and always reads the Book of Mormon and prays but has had a tough time coming to church. A few days ago we taught him the law of Chastity and the Spirit was really strong. After that he decided to right away buy himself a new white shirt, tie, shoes, and socks so he can come to church with us the next day.

Yesterday was stake conference at a big place in Jakarta. It was really good and Pak Pri came with us and he really liked it. Conference was great and there was some talks about becoming perfect in Christ, having hope, and unity in family. Elder Gong from the Seventy came to conference and gave a great talk, I shook his hand at then end and he said we look like a fine group of missionaries.

Well we played basketball with the district this morning for P-day and the rest of the day we will just eat and chill.

Have a great week!
- Elder Hymas

Thanksgiving at Wendy's

Elder Anderson

Stake Conference

Cancled appointments, and proselyting

Hello, this week was good. We have had many appointments scheduled for this week and then pretty much all of them for some reason got canceled haha so that was fun. So Elder McKeon and I spent a lot of our time proselyting around and we had okay success but this week was a bit slow.

It is starting to rain here most of the days so that is kinda nice. Last P-day we played paintball at an arena near our house with my district and the Jakarta district. It was pretty fun and I got a few battle wounds. Today for P-day we don't really have much planned. I have to fix my bike for the 5th time because the back tire always goes flat and it is rather annoying.

 Sathees from Sri Lanka decided to get baptized on the 6th of December so hopefully that one goes through. That is really about it this week! I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

- Elder Hymas

More splits, new temporary companion, training complete. Happy birthday to me!

Hello y'all,
How has everyone's week been? Mine has been good like usual. Well this week started off good, I gave a lesson in our district meeting about obedience and I felt like it got everyone pumped. But then after that meeting there has been a slight problem in one of the companionships and now I have been with Elder McKeon this last week and this upcoming week. Elder McKeon and I had a good time together and worked hard. I also went on some splits this week. I went on a split with one of my Zone leaders Elder Hansen last Wednesday and it was great. We meet some new people that have good potential and worked hard. Then last Friday I went on another split with one of the new missionaries Elder Supriadi. I went to his area and we rode our bikes far and had some failures and it rained on us a lot but Elder Supriadi kept a good attitude and we had a great day all in all.

Yesterday was the last day of training for Elder Anderson and Elder McKeon! So now they are all grown up and ready to serve!

Yesterday was also my birthday! Thanks to everyone who already wished me a happy birthday! I had a great day. We went to church and went to the farewell meeting of 2 future missionaries in my ward who are leaving on their missions in a few days. Brother Timmy is going to Japan and Sister Mongan is going to Australia. It was an awesome meeting and the spirit was really strong. The 8 missionaries in Tangerang sang the Army of Helaman song at the meeting.

Sathees is progressing great and loves the church, his plan is go get baptized this next Sunday! He just needs to make more friends in the ward.

Well I hope everyone has a great week! Bye!

- Elder Hymas

Sathees and I

my birthday lunch

Military fair, and rainy season might have started?

Selamat Pagi semuanya!

This week has been pretty good. I guess nothing really too exciting happened this week. We just have been meeting with some investigators and members. We have a couple investigators that are really close to baptism they just have to show some faith and come to church with us and keep their commitments. Hopefully soon we shall have some success with them. One thing I want to start focusing on is working more with the members and getting their support. Missionary work is a lot harder then it needs to be when you don't get help from the members. If all the members got excited about missionary work and helped us more the work here would maju!

So it rained a tiny bit last Saturday and it rained a good amount yesterday. So I think/hope that the rainy season is starting here in Tangerang. They tell me that it should have started like a month and a half ago, so it is pretty late this year. The rain has it's ups and downs. The good thing is that it gets a lot cooler and it feels really nice. The bad things are that we get really wet and have to wear rain jackets. And also lots of people will cancel on us because it is raining and that isn't too fun. .

Well Elder Anderson and I are doing great. He is on his 12th week of training so that means that this is his last week and we will be an official missionary trained by Elder Hymas. That is quite an achievement.

Right now we have one investigator with a baptismal date for the 13th of December. If he just goes to church and the members are nice to him I am sure that he can get baptized. Also Sathees (which is the other companionship's investigator) is doing awesome! I love that guy so much. His plan is to get baptized on the 22 of November.

We had a zone meeting in Bogor last Friday and it was great. We learned that we should be more brave and open our mouth more and contact more. So we had a "Real-Play" which is like a role-play but real. they told us to all go outside for like 20 minutes and try to get a contact. Elder Anderson and I got 4 contacts in those 20 minutes, pretty cool. We got the most by the way too. It was cool to see that if we really try, we can gave a lot more success, who knew?

So in at one of the malls in my area there was a military fair thing. So I took a few pictures with the tanks and guns they had there and talked to some people. It is pretty cool, they give people free tank joy rides so maybe I can get one later.

Okay well that is about it for this week I think, I love you guys!

- Penatua Hymas

Splits and Mall Cops

Hello all,
This week was good. We weren't able to get much appointments in with people because some things just didn't work out this week, that's okay. We spent some time proselyting in malls. Proselyting in malls is pretty tough sometimes, but it is air-conditioned so that is nice. Sometimes I wish I could go door to door and knock on everyone's door like they do in America and other places. I is tough to proselyte here sometimes. We just gotta find or make opportunities to talk to random people but we can't make it look to obvious and we gotta be careful. The other day we got in trouble with some guards at a mall because one of the Elders in my house left a Book of Mormon at the ATM in the mall and the management of that mall was not happy at all about it. They accused us of planting it there for people to find and this and that and other trickery. It was just an accident but they didn't believe us. I don't even see how it is wrong if we did want to plant it there in the first place, who cares? All that it is going to do is save souls. Anyway so the management told us that we are not allowed to do that anymore at that mall but I don't care and I still go because I am cool with some of the guards and that is my favorite mall to proselyte in. I think it is pretty silly how people can get just so upset about what we are doing here. Once I gave a flyer for our free English class to a lady after talking with here. Then I went on the escalator to go upstairs. While I was on the escalator I saw this guard running over full speed to that lady and took the flyer from her hand and questioned her a bit, he looked mad too. It was just an FREE ENGLISH CLASS FLYER for goodness sakes. This kind of stuff happens all the time just because some people hate, and if you haven't noticed I don't like it haha. Well anyway this is supposed to be a religiously free country so they can't stop me.

I also went on some splits this week because I am the district leader and that's what they do. I went on a spit with Elder Chou on Friday and we have a fun day. We rode our bikes like mad men but we had a few lessons and met with some members. we probably rode our bikes like 25 miles that day. On Saturday I went on another split with another Elder because he wasn't getting along with is companion and needed some time to get himself together.

Oh yeah and apparently there was a bomb in one of the malls we usually go to at the same time we were there. It didn't go off I think but I heard that someone died. We got pretty lucky. So there is like no one in that mall right now because of that scare haha.

Okay I hope everyone has a great week!

- Elder Hymas