Mom,

         I got transferred this week to Sandakan in Sabah!! It is a way cool place, but it is just four of us missionaries out here; the closest other missionaries are several hours away from us in KK (Kota Kinabalu), so that part is kind of hard, but so far I love it! The Malay here is quite a bit different than in Sarawak, so I am still trying to get used to it.  The branch is great, they already tricked me hard core.  On my first day in Sandakan, we went to go see an "investigator" (who happened to be the branch mission leader and had served a mission several years ago), but at the time, I thought he was an investigator. We went to see our “investigator” and he told me, "Elder great news, I prayed last night and I got an answer that your church is true!  I want to be baptized!"  I was way pumped and asked him to tell us what happened. Our “investigator” went on to tell us that he had been praying to God and had not been getting an answer, so he thought God was very busy and therefore, he decided to try praying to the Mother Mary and BOOM, he got an answer that this was the true church! (You can only imagine my reaction!) I sat in dead silence for a couple minutes and did my best to explain to him that it was great that he felt the church was true, but that he should probably pray to God not Mary.  He then turned around and bore his testimony to me that he knew his answer from the Mother Mary was true and that if I was telling him that it wasn't true, then he didn't want to get baptized...I went home that night so worried that we had lost him!!  Then I saw him the next day at

Three Elders and "Investigator" Jason

church and he got up and gave a talk about how he had tricked me!! They even had a hidden camera!! So that was my welcome to the branch--haha!

     Sabah is wayy nice.  It is famous for all of its wonderful beaches. We don’t ride bikes here, only ghetto pimped out buses that blast techno music 24/7--so that makes traveling exciting. I was really sad to leave my old area. I was there for seven months and really loved the people there, but it’s okay. On Sunday after church, we went out with Jason--the returned missionary that pretended to be our “investigator”-- and we took a ghetto van several miles away to see some less actives.   The only problem was that it was pouring down rain and the buses stop coming at 7 pm. We lost track of time and ended up being stuck several miles from our house in the pouring down rain at 9 at night. I for sure thought that we were going to have a couple hour walk home in the pouring down rain, but we just sat under a shelter and tried to wait it out.  I am sure we all said a prayer in our hearts so we wouldn't have to walk forever in the jungle rain and after an hour of waiting, the Branch President drove by!!  We ran after him and flagged him down and he gave us a ride home!  The church is true!

     But with five months left, I have been very dedicated to working out hard core every morning and eating healthy (except when members force feed me rice).  So soon I will come home JACKED! But that is all for this month LOVE YOU MOM!

Elder Madsen