how are you?
I received your letters the other day, thanks for sending them. I love letters. also I laughed for a very long time about melissa's blog post. way too much information, like always:) I am bummed I missed the drama. and pour lijy. I am pretty good at catching vomit--miss if you are going to give birth again, wait for me to get there!
also, tomas has a BIRTHDAY TOMORROW! adoi! I can't believe he is 16. I sent him a package a few weeks ago, they promised it'd get to him before the big day. let me know if that rings true. 

so, as sister clark has now informed you, we have typhoid:) ha. very fun. we were pretty sick for a few weeks before we figured it out. then we went to the hospital, got a test, they slapped us with some very intense antibiotics, and we've been taking those and basically sleeping all day since. we have tried a few times to toughen up and try to go out, (one on sunday, stories to follow) and every time, we get so wasted. come back and take a four or five hour nap. it has been challenging because we want to work. however, it has been good. sister hite and I have spent a lot of time bonding:) haha. to say the least! basically there are no boundary lines between us anymore! that's what happens when you get sick. but really, it has been good. we've grown stronger as companions. and I'm so grateful for her--if you had to get sick and stuck in an apartment with someone for a week, you'd want it to be her! we still laugh and do stupid things to stay entertained. also, it has been really cool to see how many people rally around us. seriously, the senior couple here the larson's check in on us every day, so does sister clark, the area doctor in hong kong, the doctor in the united states, ward members, the elders run us errands and make visits with our people all the time. we are so spoiled. there are a lot of amazing people here. but we are sick of being sick. hopefully we can finish out this week with work instead of sleep:)

this is a good story though, of one of the days we actually went out. sunday!! so sister hite mentioned that she has never missed a sunday on her mission. and I wanted to go to church, we had an investigator coming, I wanted to take the sacrament (hello, most important thing of the week!!) so even though we both seriously looked and felt like death, we slapped some makeup on our faces and out we were. on the walk to the bus stop, I felt like I was on something. my brain was floating and it was a very weird sensation to be walking...I don't know. it was weird. I was delirious. but off in the distance, far distance (plus I'm blind:) ) I see a man. don't know why I even really noticed him, there are plenty of men in KK haha. but I saw him and I was like, who is he? so we get a little closer and I can see that he is different, but I couldn't see why. he was a bit taller, still dark, but I just thought he looked different. so I'm freaking out. yes, it was weird, and yes keep in mind we were still in the throngs of our illness haha. but anyway, so we get close enough to see and I FROZE! I froze, and I put my hands on my heart and I just stood there. he was AFRICAN!!!!! hahahaha. I hadn't seen an african the whole time I've been here, they don't live in KK. so I was like oh my gosh sister hite! he's african!!! haha it was actually kind of ridiculous, but please keep in mind how sick we were and how long we had been inside! so anyway, he like walks away and we kept walking and my heart was literally pounding. like thub dub thub dubbing! and I was like, I have to find him!! but he was gone! and we were meeting our investigator at the bus stop! but I just had to find him. so I go back to go look, and I see that there was actually four of them!! four of my africans!! so I like look at them and freeze, I'm thinking...what language do I speak to them in!!? do I shoot for a swahili greeting and yell mambo? do I try out my nigerian pigeon I learned? do I speak malay? english? chinese? (except the only chinese phrase I can remember sister norton taught me, it means handsome boy! haha. she would.) so I was like panicking for a second, trying to decide, when one of them walks up to me and says hello! (english, phew) so we start chatting. they were from KL (Kuala Lumpur), students, perfect english, very poised, very serious, very african. ahhhhh I was so stoked talking to them. so I gave them a pamphlet and a little run through of the restoration, typical contacting style, and they left. I wish they lived here so we had a chance to teach them! but still. it was so rad. I was beaming and floating all the way to church. seriously, I was so happy. I cried about it later. wow, writing this now is helping me realize how out of it I was...haha sorry. so we get our investigator and finally get to church, and I sat next to my favorite person in the ward, sister josie. who is very loud, very phillipino. she is rad. and she just like yacked my ear off, making fun of one of the boys on the stand, and it was just funny. just hyyyyysterical for some reason. I could not stop laughing. and my head was seriously spinning. so between the african, sis josie, and the spinning, I was just out of my mind. it was a great experience. the only sad thing that quickly sobered me up-- there was a young white family there and they had a daughter. that had tessbabe blond hair. and huge brown eyes, also like tessbabe. and she was a little hefer, and misbehaving. and she kept making eyes at me. that was too much for me to handle. I couldn't even look at the little girl without crying. moral of the story, I love the malaysian babies, but the white babies that look like my darling girls at home is too much for my little heart to bare. the wound is still a bit too fresh!

I finished the book of mormon a few days ago. WOW! seriously, I know I am a missionary and this is what I do, but whoever is reading this right now. pick up a book of mormon. if you don't have one, email me and I'll get one for you (we even have them in tamil and mongolian here!) seriously though, pick it up and read it. this last time just blew my mind. never has it had that strong of an effect on me. of course I have read it before, of course I knew it was truth, but when you feast upon the words and the stories and the people and the testimonies, it changes everything. at times it felt like I was fighting next to the nephites and crying with the prophets. amazing. I remember one morning in particular, it was really early and I couldn't sleep, and it was raaaaining. so I was there, reading in mormon, kindof just blown away at where I was. sitting on a deck, overlooking the ocean, on the other side of the world, eastmalaysia, reading my book of mormon. I read in chapter 6, verse 17-19 and I just started crying. how sad! I felt like I could feel the sorrow that he had. "ye fair ones, how is it that ye could have fallen!" I'm not sure why, but that was giving me a sakit hati. and then in verse 20, I think probably one of the saddest verses in the whole book of mormon, "but behold, ye are gone, and my sorrows cannot bring your return." does that kill you as much as it did me? I'm sure we have all felt like that at some point in our lives. we realize how out of control we are sometimes, how people have their own agency and their own right to choose. and we have all seen people choose heartache, we have all seen people with heartache because of what others have done. I choose heartache sometimes too! and right there, our sorrows cannot bring their return. I started crying quite uncontrollably (again, I am sick!) but it really hit me harder than I think it ever had before: God is. He lives. He created everything that we see, wherever we are. He created us. He knows us. He loves us. and I wonder if times he has felt the feeling described in verse 20 as well. it was all a lot for me to handle, but I vowed then and there to be more conscious about my decisions and my actions and more diligent about loving. loving these people, loving you guys, loving God. 

on a lighter note, a few days ago the elders brought us a VCR player and some VHS's to watch. included was every mormon movie made in the last thirty years, including.....JOHNNY LINGO!!!! haaha. the old one. the goooooood one. we have watched, no doubt, 15 times. I hope my husband pays eight cows for me. a girl can dream:) it was a weird sensation though, trying to remember how to work the machine. rewind-stop-rewind makes it rewind super super fast. remember that? haha. wow time is such a weird thing. 

anyway. I assure you, I feel better today. and never was I on the borders of death or anything. we mostly just slept. slept slept slept. we are taking good care of ourselves, and as you know, we have many other people taking care of us as well. thank you so much for your prayers and your concerns, I know they have helped. no doubt they have! but like it says in Mosiah 13:3, "...for I have not delivered the message which the Lord sent me to deliver....therefore, God will not suffer that I shall be destroyed at this time." granted abinadi didn't have typhoid...but I think the comparison is still there. we are fighters. and we are almost healed. thank you all so much.

I love you all more than I can say, and I hope everything is going well! send pictures of the rival! I will cry, but I want to see them. love you love you.