us at Lya's baptism! yay. what a day.

my nice "artistic" photograph ... I bought some cacti the other day.  reminds me of my roots.  they sit on my window sill by my desk.  cute, kan?

this was taken this morning.  QUIIIITE the storm we had.  lightning and thunder and rain like you wouldn't believe!

drains, the old fashioned way!

so not too much time.
but a few cool stories.
the first. so it was when sister kubota came, and I was with her. we were going "faith finding". which is different from just "contacting" or what is it...proselyting? anyway. faith finding is just what it says, it involves faith. we say a prayer, ask God or tell God where we feel impressed to go, seek more guidance, we tell how long we will be there and things like that. make sure God knows we have the time, we're committed, we're trying to listen to any inspiration we receive, and we're dedicated to finding someone prepared. I'm not sure if that made sense but I'm gonna keep going. so after our prayer, an area popped in to my head. setiawangsa. however the elders who had our area before said not to go to that area, there is no one that we can teach that lives there. the whole area we can't teach. but that was the place that came to my mind. I told kubota, she said we just go. so we went, and there were rows and rows of nice nice terrace houses. we wandered and wandered, and sure enough, eeeeeeeeveryone was unteachable. all the houses. finally we stopped to ask this man if there were any christians or hindus or buddhists that lived in the area. he said there was one house at the very back that was chinese. so we walked straight there to find it. we knocked on his gate, turns out, it's a young chinese christian family that lives there. we had a very good conversation with them and are going back on saturday. the entire time in that area, we only found them that were teachable. but it was a miracle we found them. isn't it? I should share more experiences like that, I feel guilty sometimes because I feel like I've been out here so long sometimes I get more calloused about special experiences like that and don't share them. but I felt like sharing that one. and just saying, that miracles are constantly around us. that God listens to our prayers. and that he takes us to where we are needed.
another funny experience. so, lya, our most favorite investigator ever, got baptized on sunday. it was perfect. actually, the pre and post baptism were incredibly not perfect. but the baptism was perfect. so it was sunday after church, and sunday morning we got to the church to check on the font and all of that, and I look in, and there are two huge butcher knives at the bottom of the font. yeah. obviously the option to strip down and swim to the bottom to pick them up wasn't appropriate. so I ran and got a rake and it took about 15 minutes of me using my very uncoordinated hand-eye coordination skills to bring up the knives without them slipping through the wholes in the rake and plummeting to the bottom all over again. so that's how the baptism started. it finished by the drain being broken, making us have to take two hours, and countless trips of carrying buckets full of water and then throwing them out the window down the hall in the kitchen. by the time that was all over, I was so wet I might as well have taken a swim. it was exhausting, but also hysterical. we laughed a lot. I tripped/slipped a few times. very gracefully, of course. the miracle of that being that after hunching over and using very poor body mechanics to do it all, the next morning I wasn't even kindof sore. nothing on my body hurt. which is abnormal. abnormal, or miraculous. but aside from the two hiccups, it was the most beautiful baptism I've ever seen. lya is 26, she is indian from indonesia. she's incredibly smart, loud, charismatic, beautiful. her faith is so strong. she was a referral from a member and we only had to teach her one month. she started coming to church every week and she had no problem with word of wisdom, she had been paying tithing to her church her entire life so she already had a testimony about that. she was the most prepared person I have ever met. but anyway. after the baptism and she got changed, she bore her testimony. she said that before she walked into the font, she was in the bathroom waiting. and she knew that brother brown was waiting for her in the water. and she said she felt a power coming from the font. she said she prayed, and it just felt so light and bright and strong. and when she went in to the water, and came back out, she very literally felt like a new person. we had another investigator that was there, and she turned to me and said that lya's countenance was different when she came out of the water. and it was true. lya was glowing. more than I've ever seen someone glow after their baptism. 
it was amazing.
being a missionary is, just is. there aren't words. or I just haven't figured them out yet.
I love you all. 
it's getting scary that the p days seem to come faster and faster and I think I'm on single digits for the weeks left. 
aiyo.
but I love you.

Brother Johnson's whole family.  AH!! Words don't convey my love for them.  I hope you can meet them one day.  I love them, I love them.  They are holding the picture we gave them.  Originally the picture was very small and old, it was from a few days after their wedding like 15 years ago.  I guess it was one of those "1, 2, 3, surprise kiss her moments because it wasn't a staged picture and hearing them tell about it is soooo cute.  We saw the picture, I snuck it away and we got it blown up and got a frame and they were seriously so excited about it.  It made me want to cry.  It meant a lot to them I think for someone else to tell them how amazing it is that they love each other so much.  They have an incredible marriage.

Me and Sister Fauzia.  She is the greatest person I have met in my entire life.  I love her with  my whole heart.  I'm wearing traditional clothes from Pakistan.  She loved that:)

The baptism!  Man and Aung, and then us and Elder Meister.

they seek the cure of cancer!

heeeeeeeey family.
so, for the present conditions, sister kubota and sister.....blast. I don't remember her name. scratch that I just asked rhodesy, sister burtis. are here from singapore to go on splits with us this week. I had burtis yesterday. I get kubota tomorrow. I might have a story or two next week, but bottom line, I love sister rhodes. I've got two months left, I'm praying I just get to stay with her until the end. 
so for the highlights of this week. I'll start with the most exciting, a couple that we have been teaching got baptized!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yay! it was a beautiful baptism. their names are man and aung. they are refuges from myanmar. did I tell you about them already? I feel like I did. but if I didn't, a cool little tidbit. aung's family used to be the royal family or the family in charge in myanmar before the military stepped in. his pictures of his dad and grandpa and stuff they are always in front of valentino stores and posing in front of a line of sports cars. now they live in a one bedroom apartment in KL. quite the change. and another cool thing about him, he was actually buddhist. sister man has always been christian. but they are refuges because in myanmar, he wanted to go to church with his wife. and I guess they didn't like that. so they threw him in jail a lot and made all sorts of crazy threats. so they're refuges because he was buddhist, wanted to go to church. and now they are baptized. it was so adorable. all the pictures we took they were holding hands. after the baptism when they both had an opportunity to bare their testimonies, they decided to do it in myanmese. so only those two could understand. but the spirit was so strong, and the love was so obvious. they both stood up for quite a while, and both times as one was speaking, the other was smiling and crying. it was precious. they are moving to america in a few weeks, so we get to talk to them a lot about preparing to go to the temple and they get amped. ahhhhhhh I love missionary work. 
this week we also had a lot of very stressful/funny moments with members telling our investigators things. for example, in the middle of a lesson on the restoration (which we had already prepared the member for, told them what we WOULD be talking about, and what we WOULD NOT be talking about) and regardless, two times with two different members they cut in right as we were talking about prophets, and added their interjections on the church's stance on homosexuality, coffee, and later, the three kingdoms of glory. one of the members, bless his heart, even pulled out an ancient little picture flipbook I'm sure missionaries used long ago. courtesy of said book, it was very easy for him to go from God, to joseph smith, to word of wisdom, to kingdoms of glory in 45 seconds or less and with just a few flicks of the hand. the lessons were both epic fails. rhodesy was getting very red in the face, and I was having a hard time keeping a straight face. aiyo. bless their hearts! as mom would say....
something else cool. so sunday night, we were going over our schedule for the next day, and we didn't have anything to do early afternoon. which is also a rotten time to try to go knocking because no one is home. so I pulled out the phone and called sister mckinley, and expat member who is in the process of moving to singapore now. I told her we had an hour or two to spare and we wanted to come help her with whatever she needed to pack or clean for their move. so the next day she picked us up and had to run to the grocery store on the way. we go in to the grocery store, rhodesy helped her carry her basket and I was contacting some of the malaysian workers that worked there. I think she noticed and like that, because when she was checking out, she looks at me and goes, "this is raj kumar. he has helped me every time I have come in here. you should teach him." and then she goes "raj, this is sister jensen. she is incredible. you meet with her and she will tell you how to be happy." later she told me she had never thought of referring him to the missionaries, but standing there she realized he would be perfect. and just like that, we had a referral from an expat (which most missionaries say is impossible) and a new investigator. we're meeting him next week. sweet! but after that we went home and helped her scrub her kitchen down and it was really cool because she just shared words of wisdom with us the whole time. she's an incredible lady with an incredible story and it was really cool to sit and talk with her. one of my favorite things she said was, "sister jensen, you're a bit eccentric. you need to marry someone eccentric too." and so I was like what! I'm already crazy, don't I need someone to balance me out? and she goes nope, you need someone just as crazy as you. your life will be fun. hahaha. I liked that. we'll see.
and unfortunately this email is going to be a bit dry for you guys this week. sorry. I'm lacking on funny stories and the creative juices to dress up not super funny stories. maybe next week.
but I love you all?
I love you all so much. 
oh ps.
the subject line of this email is a direct quote from this crazy lady who was yelling at me about all the reasons that her church was the true church. that one was my favorite.

too busy to buy toilet paper ......

HELLO!
yes, that is correct. we were too busy to run to the store to buy toilet paper. it was about a week that we were sans. good thing for the nice hoses by the side of every toilet. hahahaha. 
gross. just kidding. but only slightly. 
so a few funny things happened that I have yet to tell you about. 
1. sister rhodes and I enter the LRT. I sit down on one side by some people, she sits on the other. I start chatting with my neighbor, when not much more than 30 seconds pass when I hear the lady sitting next to rhodesy yell, "PRAISE THE LORD SISTER! I AM REBORN!!" hahahaha. turns out, all rhodes said was the whole "I am a missionary from the church of jesus christ of latter day saints........" 
2. so we are teaching my favorite family a lesson on the ten commandments. asher and faris are 9 and 10 so we were teaching it in a more fun way with hand actions to help them remember them all. so commandment number three is about using the lords name in vain. so you put three fingers together, and hold your pinky down with your thumb. and then you put it over your mouth. and that was our cute little way to remember that one. well, at the end, we were doing a quiz where we would do the sign and they would have to say what the commandment was. they were acing them all until I did that sign, and put my fingers over my mouth. asher immediately yells "SHUT YOUR MOUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and jumps up off the floor. you see, he was trying to beat his brother faris and it was getting close. so he was quite in to it. too bad he was wrong! I gave him a half a point though because I couldn't stop laughing for the rest of the night. haha.
3. this is just a grace of the heavens story. so a while ago we met these boys from somalia. they were of the religion that we can't teach. of course. but it didn't stop me from having a very good conversation with them about other things. we were laughing so hard, they were fun. they reminded me of people I'd be friends with at home. so then after about thirty minutes we parted ways and that was that. well, last night, rhodes and I were on a very crowded LRT going home for the night, and I was kindof smooshed in the back. well in walks our friends, abdul 1 and abdul 2. abdul 1 looks at me and his mouth immediately opens huge in a shocked grin type of deal. then abdul 2 sees me seconds later and with his arms outstretched (smacking the people around him) yells "jensen!!!!!" haha. it was brilliant reunion with some old friends. I might just even facebook friend them when I get home. 
and one other cool story, I'll end with. rhodes and I were coming home late one night after an appointment (I feel like all stories happen at night.....) but our investigator had bought us tons and tons of food from the night market to take home. as we were walking, we saw quite a few homeless people begging for money. so we started to give them all part of our food. we got to this one old lady, who was muslim. she had her hair covered and everything. I asked her, "sudah makan?" she replied with "belum ada makanan." so I asked if she had eaten, she said she didn't have any food. so we hand her part of the popiah spring rolls we had. no big deal. but what she did was pretty special. she looks up at us, with these big teary eyes, and all she did was make the sign for the cross like the catholics do and start to pray. we were both a bit at a loss for words, but it was a really special moment. I love situations like that. it is when our race, our religion, our age, our wealth all disappears and its just us, being united because we're all family. all God's children. I also thought it was cool that she recognized we were christians. or she at least felt the need to do the "christian" sign. it was sweet.
I'm running our of time, but one other cool tidbit, we met a sultan from saudi arabia. he asked me for lunch. 
oh!!! and even coooooooooooooooooooooler!!!!!!!!!!!!! we have a couple getting baptized this weekend. men and bryan. they are from myanmar and they are increeeeeeedible. yay yay yay!!!!!!!!!
life is brilliant.
love you all so much.

Me and Sister Rhodes in a nice apartment with a nice view of the city lights!

Falling asleep during morning exercise .......

My first companion and my last!!!  We decided that Sister Norton is Sister Rhodes (my daughter) auntie.

Taken from our balcony.  This is KL.

Me and Sis Rhodes were going home late and we were the ONLY ONES ON THE LRT!  It was sooo tight.  That never happens.

A penjabi suit!  I showed Sister Fauzia, who is from Pakistan and they wear the same things, and her and Brother Johnson mocked me for a while because of how I was standing.  Apparently you're supposed to have your body kind of enclosed because you're supposed to be very "shy shy".  They made fun of me because they said I looked too confident and fierce. HA! but a pretty outfit, no?

Just kicking it!

soo....a few things. NORTON IS HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my life is complete. norton, rhodes, can life get better? still love my life in KL. I don't ever want to leave. I'm starting to pick up a bit of arabic. we live in a very....hm. a very strong arabic area. that didn't make sense, but what I mean are a ton of the people that live around us are from the arabic countries. anyway, I pick up a little bit of arabic here and there. I love it. I kindof want to study it after. it's a very interesting language. and culture. the funny thing is, I have asked some arabic students a few times in the last few days what country I come from. (cause they ask) and it has been uzbekistan 5 or 6 times, followed by khazakstan, and then three times said sweden or somewhere scandinavia. success! funny they automatically think I'm some kind of russian. when I say america they don't believe me for a while. also very interesting, I randomly talked to a women from istandbul the other day, she was insanely beautiful. beautiful person inside too. I loved her. her name was faeza. and then the other day I contacted a catholic boy originally from poland, who lives in malaysia. he had the most blue eyes I've ever seen. very interesting conversation. because we are always on LRT to go to and from our places every day, I get the opportunity to talk to a ton of people. it's always interesting to see who I'm gonna get next. but to add to my last, in the last week I met people from: Turkey Poland Chad Mali Russia Costa Rica Tunisia pretty wild place I live in! now for a cool story. about...two weeks ago? maybe three? we went faith finding in the apartment building behind ours. we got let in to this really cool hindu families house, and then as we were leaving, we met this ADORABLE 10 year old indian boy in the elevator. I spoke to him a bit, and then we left. well last week we went back to try to get back in to the first families house. but while trying to find their flat, we walked past the flat of the cute little indian boy. obviously we didn't know he lived there, but he came sprinting out of his flat yelling "KAKAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" which means older sister. so he invited us in to his flat, where we met his adorable grandma who raised him. they're hindu, but this little boy, his name is garam, loves christ. whenever I would say something about him, or show him a picture, his face would light up. not even kidding. this little boy already loves christ, even though he doesn't know who he is yet. so before we left I taught him how to pray, and explained to him about prayer, how he had a father in heaven that loves him so much and listens to him every time he prays to him. and he was listening soooooo intently. then we went back a few days later, and I asked if he had prayed. with this huge proud smile on his face he goes yep! and we had a really really sweet talk about prayer again with him and his grandma. before we left he said the sweetest little closing prayer that we would be safe and people would be nice to us. seriously, he eats my heart out every time I see him. also something interesting about him, he can't read super well. like can read, but really really slowly and poorly. so I promised him if every single day he would read the book of mormon, even if he could only read a few words a day and he really couldn't understand them, if he'd consistently read every day, and pray every day for God to help him to read, I promised him he would learn to read. the Spirit was so strong in my heart and I had huge tears in my eyes while I was talking to him but I told him if he did that, and he learned to read, and he'd go to church, his entire life would change and his kids and his grandkids lives would also change. it was a long story, too long to write even a fraction of what we talked about at their house, but I suddenly just saw his future so clearly, if he would just start to read the book of mormon, and pray, and go to church. and it's incredible that I could say without any hesitation if he did that his life would be better than he could even imagine. I know that's true. and I love him! oh man. next time I'll try to send a picture. he's the sweetest little boy ever. did I mention his grandma had a stroke and so she can't move super well so he does everything to take care of her? and he gives his lunch away a lot because he sees beggers and wants to give it to them? he is going places. another funny story about him, later that night on the day we met him, he calls us. he only speaks tamil and malay so sister rhodes handed me the phone to talk, and as soon as I say hi he yells "KAKAK! BUKA LAMPU KAMU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" which means turn on your light. at first I was extraordinarily confused. but then I realized why he wanted me to so we turned the light on our balcony and stood out to look towards his apartment and we see this cuuuuute cute little boy jumping up and down, yelling, "KAKAK SAYA NAMPAK KAMU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" or, I see you. :) he was so adorable. I'll close on one cool little epiphany thing I had. so we were watching the longer joseph smith movie with a part member family the other day. they had a lot of questions about him and so we brought the movie for them to see how everything kindof played out. I always get pretty emotional during it, but there was this one particular part where joseph smith was trying to comfort emma and he said something like, "we trust in God and go on." and that was all he said. and I'm not sure why, but it really stuck out to me. and basically every day since then I have thought about that. we trust in God and go on. a while ago I may have thought a phrase like that was kindof silly. or just taking the easy way out to explain or find a solution for a problem. but the longer I've been on my mission, the longer I've realized that to really be true. we can't control how life is going to go, where it's going to take us. we don't have the power to control everything. I can't see the future and even though I have a thousand and 85 questions about what I need to do or what I should do next, especially when I get home, I know I need to take that bit of advice. trust in God. go on. so, I'm going to start trying to do that. do everything I can to do what I need to do right now, which is be a missionary in KL, and have trust in God that whatever happens is gonna be what happens. and leave it at that. hey, I think I get to talk to you guys soon on the phone, right? like two weeks? yay! I'm excited. I love you all so much. thanks for everything you do for me. I've felt your prayers this week. did you pray for me? cause I felt a little something. love you love you. p.s. the subject line is an inside joke between sister rhodes and I and our security guards. one day I will show the movie.