Gawai Parties and Exchanges 

On Mon, May 22, 2017

Parker Thompson : PThompson@MyLDSMail.net wrote:

Hello one and all once again! Another down in the books here and yeah, here's the highlights and what not:

Probably the best experience this week that was not really missionary related would be the other branche's 'Gawai Party,' of which we had a performance in. Yes we went all out. Would you expect anything less. Just imagine a bunch of huge white dudes all dressed up in swimming and scuba diving equipment doing a mix of ballet and cheer leading stunts to some nice classical music. It was so much fun. It's kind of a sad thing that most of the people here don't really know what swimming is, or even how to do it, but it still worked. So worth it. 

I also got to go on an exchange with my district leader here, Elder Mickelson. We had a fun day of walking around the smallest area in the mission, and very well could be the smallest in the world. Within about a 5 minutes walk there are like 20 flat building just stocked full of majority, Iban. There was lots of stair climbing and a lot of obnoxious Gawai music blasting everywhere you went. Ah, feels like home. 

So also, we were going to teach our investigators and we have known that one of them has been missing out because his mom won't allow him to learn. Well we went to visit the house and ask politely. We ended up talking to the father and before we got too far I wanted to know his name. He's like, "Sion." Yeah. Zion. If there is another indicator greater than this for an elect person to teach, then I don't know what it is.  His name is literally, Zion. Like, we found Zion. Hopefully he works out!

Other than that, anything and everything that happens here in Bintulu is done in Iban, their tribal language.  I absolutely love it and have found myself more comfortable in Iban than in Malay at points in the day. I think when I committed myself to becoming Iban early on in my mission I might have been in over my head. But hey, if we aren't in over our heads, how can we know how tall we are? That was a short joke, Ibans are way short and stubby haha. I love these people.

Love you all!

Elder Thompson