Zone Conference!

This week we went to Zone Conference in Singapore! 

Shout out to Elder Todd in Calgary for sending me a letter. I was pretty surprised to 1. get a letter  2. have that letter be from Elder Todd and 3. find what I found inside the letter. Check out the picture to see the awesome Elder Nugget name tag!

Last Monday, when Elder Gould and I took a two hour bus ride to get up to a city called Ipoh where the Zone Leaders stay, we went to a cool castle built by some British man a long time ago as well as went to a cave that had some cool Buddhist statues. I am not sure why we went up to Ipoh so that we could stay there for all of Monday, but we did what our Zone Leaders asked us to and we had a great time.

We flew out of Ipoh on Tuesday Morning (it was a super small airport that only has one plane going at a time, I got to walk right up to the plane and get on it instead of going through some tunnel like you do in big airports). We then flew into Singapore and spent part of the day on an exchange with the only pair of Chinese Elders based in Singapore, and then started our zone conference that night.

We spent a lot of time going over the missionary broadcast that was sent out about a month ago from Salt Lake City that talks about Teaching Repentance and Baptizing converts, as well as the new missionary schedule changes. I really liked the training that we received on teaching the Doctrine of Christ, and applying it into our own lives.

One fun part of Zone Conference is getting to stay in the Pasir Panjung house (I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but the church has bought a fairly large house that basically just houses missionaries when they come in for conference.) That means that we get real cereal and real milk for to nights - quite a commodity for Elders living in Malaysia.

One quick thought from one of the things that Elder Bednar mentioned in the training that was given for the world-wide broadcast. He talked about fear, and how the main effect of fear is for us to not do anything - to not take action. Therefore, as we learn to recognize when we are fear, we can decide to act and so begin to conquer our fears by not heeding them.

Nathan's Zone in Ipoh at Kellie's Castle with Sister Koh and her son

Mary's Notes: Construction on Kellie's Castle, in Ipoh, began in 1915 and ended abruptly in 1926 with the death of Scotchman William Kellie Smith. Some believe the castle is haunted.

About half an hour way from Kellie's Castle is the Kek Lok Tong Cave Temple, also in Ipoh. It was used as early as 1920 as a place of worship. In 1960, the cave became part of an iron mining site and is now a tourist attraction.

Ipoh is the capital of Perak state in west Malaysia.

Nathan got Matt's letter when he got to Singapore on Tuesday. How in the world did he get an Elder Nugget name tag?