27 September 2015
Hello everyone!

This has been a good week! I would first like to share a story of how I know God is looking out for us. So on Friday we went out and started contacting. We were fasting that day and I could definitely tell that self mastery such as that is a blessing. We contacted quite a few houses and out of those contacted a few awesome folk that wanted a Book of Mormon so that was awesome, they were Chinese so we couldn't work with them but we got their number to give to the Chinese Elders. So one houses we went to was one of these big houses along the beach. We knocked on the gate (everyone's property is surrounded by a fence with a gate. That and adjacent houses. They're set for the zombie apocalypse) and waited. The people were in there, and were stubborn. They didn't come out but something else did. This little potato sized fluff ball comes wandering over from the far side of the yard. This little 2 week old puppy comes scampering over to the gate. Then what do you know, out of the corner of my eye I see more movement. 3 MORE came running over to the gate! All I was thinking was man. I wish I could hold these puppies. Well, I know there is a God in Heaven because next thing I know these babies pushed through the gate and popped out on the outside! Well. What else could I do besides collapse on the ground and hold them. Dang. I was so happy. I'll attach a picture to show my joy. These pups we're not the regular homeless dogs that chase you on your bikes. No. I can't even describe my joy over email. Holy cow. Anyway, we finally got the owner to come out and take them back over but they still didn't want to listen to us. They actually couldn't listen to us because they were Muslim. (Background info- it is illegal for us to teach Muslims about Christianity) Anyway. That boosted me for the day. The very next house we went to was the home of an Atheist who I must say had a very hard and closed heart. He came out with the intention of proving the Gospel of Jesus Christ wrong (even though we flipped his logic with true logic) What discouraged me the most was the fact that he said "the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is useless". It is not useless. It is actually the only thing that allows us to be truly happy in our lives. At that point we were just done. We knew his heart was closed and there was no way to get him to open it. It was hard. We just had to ask, one last time, do you want to learn about Jesus Christ, to which he answered no, and we were on our way. Now thinking back on that, I am really glad for that experience. First off, I figured out that us having that puppy attack was definitely a blessing and allowed me to emotionally overcome that haha, second, it actually STRENGTHENED my testimony of the Atonement because I had to testify before that man that it was a true aspect that our lives revolve around, and lastly, It was good for me to know that sometimes, people are just not ready. I can only hope that he softens his heart and allows himself to be changed. That's a huge thing I have learned.

On Sunday I taught a bunch of the kids how to play piano a little bit! I guess that's a part of the end of church now haha.

Another huge event this week was my companions birthday! Dang. The Ibans know how to make birthday cakes and celebrate birthdays. We did some sick floating lanterns which we found very cheap at a market (because it was the lantern and kite festival this week) and they were so awesome. Only 3 ringit. That's like 60 cents. Not. Bad. At. All. We had a HUGE abundance of food at multiple occasions. One was like a branch party for my comp and there was SO much food there. These Iban people only want to see how much the white man can eat. It gets quite difficult. It was way fun though! One of the members

is way close to the same age as me and we're like best friends now. He is gonna start working on his mission papers soon so I'm way pumped for him! It has been a bit of a better week. More people came to church, and I am adjusting more to the life here. It's an adventure. Try Malaysia sometime. It's so awesome. Except right now Indonesia is on fire and it is SO hazy. We have to wear these super uncomfortable masks. But it's all good. Life is way good. "Death has no sting" is my favorite quote of this week. I love all of you! 

Elder Hanks  

21 September 2015


Hello folks!

This has been a crazy fast week. We started out, last P-day after email, going to the a crocodile farm! The a farm was about 3 hours away from here. Holy cow. I have never been blown away in my life by any place. Mainly because I discovered how flippin lazy crocodiles are. If you look at the pictures I posted, you'll see that they are all just sprawled out everywhere. They barely moved. However, one of the zookeepers came, threw a chicken in there and.. well... it got pretty lively. Those crocs move so fast. But they're like really lazy dogs is how I see it. This chicken would go past them and they would try to go for it but if they missed, they would just give up and sit there. Man. Those things are so lazy. After the crocodile pit, we went all around the area. They had way more than crocs there! They had a sunbear you could hold, all sorts of snakes, and MONKEYS! I loved those monkeys! I gave one a stick and went and sat down right next to him and started making the monkey noises I have been practicing my whole life. This monkey looked me straight in the eyes, lifted his eyebrows in a sort of way which I interpreted as him understanding me, and then puckered his lips at me! Well, the thing is, this was a super sassy monkey, and I think he knew the rules of a missionary (not being allowed to kiss or really touch girls besides a handshake so you) because the second after he did that, gave me a super goofy and toothy smile and then he took off and started doing parkour through the trees! That was quite an experience. I also saw two monkeys wrestling but this wasn't like MMA, this was like Jason Borne and the Man of Steel going at it in this giant cage. They flew around and climbed all over the place, while fighting. I was amazed. That wasn't rehearsed. These two baby monkeys were doing this with instinct. I wish I was a monkey sometimes.

Let's see. One of my favorite things to witness happens around 6 o'clock. As we ride our bikes through a street market, the muslim call to pray is going on. All the Muslims start heading to the Mosques and it's quite a sight to see two white Mormon missionaries riding bikes through an Iban market flocked by Muslims. The Muslim call to prayer is something I definitely thought I would never witness. Now, I heard it 5 times a day. Its so cool because it just echos through out the whole city. Dang. Malaysia is so cool. You all need to come here sometime.

Yesterday in Church, I was on the piano. Since there's still some lack of organization ( and since sometimes I dont always understand what is being said) I would just watch our chorister for whenever she would stand up to know when to play. Her name is Maggie, she is Iban, 18, and awesome. So I was sitting at the piano, I knew that the next hymn was coming up, so I was getting ready and watching for her to stand up to know when to start. So she stands up. I go ahead and start playing the introduction to the next hymn, and then I look up to see what her tempo is, and she's not at the music stand... no. She is at the pulpit. She was speaking that day and I didn't hear that. So I guess it was nice because I gave her a little bit of an intro to her talk but man. I was so embarrassed. 

I love all of you guys! 

Thank you for all you do!

Love,
Elder Hanks   

Elder Matthew Mitchel Hanks

253 Bukit Timah Rd.

5th Floor

Singapore, 259690

Singapore

Hello everyone!

Boy this was a crazy week. To start out I got my hair cut... since my language skills are slowly improving.... I have no idea what I told the lady to do to my hair... I told her a mix of English and Malay trying to get my point across on what I wanted. I got really nervous as she went to work with this very confused face. However, it turned out very nicely! I think it looks pretty nice! 

Church was better this week! We had about 50 people turn up! Including a ton of less-active members that we have been working with! It was so exciting! Also we got our carpets cleaned and the walls painted so now the building is SO clean. The missionaries organized the library and all of the materials too so it looks so nice! It looked terrible before in all honesty haha. Our District President is named Ethan and he is SO awesome. He's a 28 year old Chinese man, married to a woman named Esther, they have a son named Travis, and all of them are SO cool. Ethan has been working with us a lot to figure out how we can help the people here and help get the church strong again and it has been a huge help for him to work with us. They're going to the temple in a month which is like a HUGE deal here. So excited!

So on Friday, Elder Trudo got a flat tire, so, therefore, we were walking our bikes around while doing contacting. We saw a car pulled over on the side of the road and as we started to come around, I saw a guy bent over in his trunk and his wife was standing off to the side of the road. I figured they had a flat at first, but as we came around I saw a gas can, so then I thought they ran out of gas. But no.. the gas can was all cut open and was rigged up to this contraption and his wife was holding one of those long pool nets. I went over and asked if we could help him with anything and he said no but he was super excited to talk to two "orang putih" because we're always on bikes and going too fast but now he wanted to talk to us and said he wanted to learn about our church! But besides that, we asked him what he was doing and he said he was fishing. but a different kind of fishing. He called it "his kind of fishing". What he was doing was sticking this contraption that was hooked up to a car battery, electrocuting the water in the canal (There's huge canals everywhere because it rains so much) and killing the fish, and then his wife would use this pool net and lift the dead fish out of the water. This guy knows how to do it. He was pulling up tons of fish. He told us also that he had some traps in the swampy fields around the area to catch these giant lizard things called Biawaks. We saw one while we were contacting and these things are like the children of komodo dragons. HUGE! They scared me so bad because they just pop out of nowhere. 

Also if you look in my dropbox, there will be a video of a chihuahua I found at a house and I was SO excited. I started talking to it like I talk to my baby dogs at home and it listened to me haha it was so cute.

This week, President Simmons called me concerning some news about my brother, Justin's, health. What I have heard is that there is a new growth of cancer. He has gone through many other surgeries and has been a stud through this huge trial. I couldn't help but feel a bit discouraged and honestly really distraught. I got this call right before my personal study in the morning so after thinking about the situation a little bit, I prayed asking for comfort and things similar to that and how I could help the situation. Then I closed and began my personal study. The first scripture I read was in Mosiah chapter 3 verse 3 and 4. I wanna share these because they really helped me gain hope and trust in God from these.  3 And he said unto me: Awake, and hear the words which I shall tell thee; for behold, I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy.

 4 For the Lord hath heard thy prayers, and hath judged of thy righteousness, and hath sent me to declare unto thee that thou mayest rejoice; and that thou mayest declare unto thy people, that they may also be filled with joy.

So yeah, part of what I got out of this was really telling me about being diligent and reminds me of one of my favorite scriptures in Doctrine and Coventants 104:82 Which is

"And inasmuch as ye are humble and faithful and call upon my name, behold I will give you the victory"

I dont know if the word victory is ever used in the scriptures but I have always found comfort and hope from this scripture. Humbling yourself and trusting in the will of the Lord is a huge part of your journey through life. The will of the Lord is for you to become happy. He knows how you can be the happiest so that's why you have trials. That's what I believe and what I learn from the scriptures, you can gain SO much comfort and strength by understanding simple concepts like that.

So this week has been huge, honestly a huge growth week for me. When they say trust in the Lord, they mean it because that's the true path to full happiness. I am so thankful for all of your support and I will talk to you all next week!

I love you all

Elder Hanks

Elder Hanks

Singapore Mission

Hello folks,

I looked up pictures of the Fort Collins Temple online earlier! Thats so flippin exciting!

I've noticed lately that my English skills are starting to deplete. I am going to apologize now.

This was a great week but it was really revealed to me how missions can be so stressful. But a great thing for growing mentally and spiritually.

Everyone here has their jungle trekking car here. All decked out ready for adventure and whatnot. I remember someone saying that you can't deck out a Honda CR-V because they're too much of a dad car or something like that. We'll they're wrong. I have seen CR-Vs here with snorkels, light bars, 8 inch lifts and huge mud tires. It's possible. Dont let the world crush you dreams of decking out your CR-V. Also, there's all sorts of mid-sized trucks here. Chevy Colorados are here and it makes me so happy to see Colorado here! Really weird at the same time though.

So for food this week, I had black peppered squid and it was so. good. Chewy but good. I also had durian this week. That stuff tastes like pure gasoline. I was afraid to take my contacts out after touching it because I thought I would burn my eyes. It's taste was pretty gross too.. really good way to expereience the culture.

Theres this river that splits our area, and we usually dont go to the other side because it's a huge Muslim population but we went over the other day just to see what it's like and it was so awesome! We took this ghetto ferry across  and it was so dope! (Look at dropbox there's a few pictures) It was 50 sent to get across haha which is like 20 cents in america. In america a ferry like that would be like 30 bucks. The best part was, we got to hang sit out in the front and the back, like in america there would be some safety precaution about that but here they dont care haha SO COOL. Also we are going to get prayer rugs today, those are so sweet, I am so pumped. 

I had a pretty cool experience this week. So Elder Trudo and I were in this store talking to these two women about Jesus Christ and what not, we gave them a Book of Mormon and were on our way browsing the store. Then this sweet Indonesian woman came up to us, on the brink of tears, and asked us is she could have one of our books ( I usually bring two but I felt earlier that I should bring three today) so I pulled out my extra one and gave it to her. We talked about how the book could bless her life and about Jesus Christ and all of that good stuff. Then we swapped numbers and were on our way. so then, Saturday night, her husband calls us, said he had read the whole book and he wanted us to come and teach them both! So we are going over there on Wednesday to teach her. It's so cool, they talk about how you gain a love for these people and I can see that already. I couldn't stop thinking about this sweet humble woman who obviously had something troubling her and all I want to do is help her because I know what she needs! She needs the Gospel! So yeah I was so pumped when her husband called us. It was so exciting. That's pretty much it for this week. This is definitely a life changing experience.

I love you all!

Elder Matthew Hanks

253 Bukit Timah Rd. 5th Floor

Singapore 259690

Singapore