Christmas and the New Year

Well, this week's email will have to do for the last two weeks because I was skyping home one week ago from today. We (Elder Rogers and I) decided to do our Skype home on Monday morning because that was the best time for us and our families within the restraints that come from being in a country that his 15 hours ahead. It was great to see my family, and it was definitely strange to see how normal everything looks at home. Malaysia has started to become fairly normal for me, and it is crazy to look at the inside of my home again :).

The week preceding Christmas was fairly normal, and we had a decent amount of lessons, along with a lot of "potential investigators" (people who we contact and they say that they want to learn more). The mall (we only have one real mall that is available to us in Klang) was really packed, and there were a ton of people shopping on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas day. Some people who we stop and talk to are like "I don't celebrate Christmas," which is surprising because I know that if I didn't celebrate Christmas, I wouldn't want to go to an area that was that busy. Regardless, we had a lot of success contacting people on that week preceding Christmas.

Christmas day was a pretty low-key thing for us in Klang. We woke up and opened Christmas presents, and then went to Church. Our Church service included us watching the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, and then a lunch with our branch. It was definitely not a traditional-styled Christmas dinner, and I had noodles, rice, and some chicken nuggets as part of my Christmas-day feast. The rest of our zone went to a Member's house at the capitol of Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) and had dinner together. We were not invited because we live too far away :). Therefore, we spent the rest of our day teaching people at a couple of our appointments, and then hanging out on Christmas night.

This week we had a ton of appointments (we taught more lessons this week than we ever have), and ended up with 16 lessons that came through). Our New Years Day celebration was also pretty low key this week, and the only real celebrations that were done were performed by other people - lots of fireworks at midnight. I hear that the real celebration comes during Chinese New Year. That being said, I am sure that our celebrations will be no -where near as fantastic as those had by my friends in Taiwan and Hong Kong. We are all ready starting to see the "push back" from investigators/contacts in general: people telling us that they are too busy to meet because of Chinese New Year.

The scriptures are true, and they can bring a lot of power into our lives. One neat aspect of the scriptures is the ability that they have to bring the spirit into our lives. Preach My Gospel states something similar to the effect of "we can learn what the spirit feels like when we read the scriptures." I know that this is true, and I know that as we learn to listen, and keep the spirit in our lives by reading the scriptures, singing hymns, saying prayers, and other activities, we will be more happy, confident, and hopeful in our lives. The Savior truly is the greatest gift of the Christmas season, and one of the fruits of that is hope.

Sincerely,

Elder Allen