Mormons in Malaysia.

Sorry – there may be a lot of lingo you might not get if you’re not LDS

This might make me sound even WEIRDER! But, oh well. :D

I attended a district counsel meeting today. I think that’s what it was. The training we got from Elder Tan, patriarch or the Singapore stake and Area Authority, was great. It really inspired all of us to do our part.

Here are some things he talked about:

We need 1900 members to form a stake from our district.
We currently have 554 members in our 6 branches.

To form a stake, we need a minimum of 15 FULL TITHE PAYER, Melchizedek Priesthood holders X 5 units

That makes 75 + 24 more to be stake officers.
We need a total of 99 of them.

In our district, we have 61 Melchizedek Priesthood holders.
If you average about 60% paying a full tithe, that leaves us 36 of them.

That’s it?! That’s only a mean average of 6 of them per branch! 6 worthy men out of the 92 members per branch.

And the Church has been around in our country for 34 years now.

Oh man. We’re never going to get a temple here!!!

Granted, we are a Muslim country and until they ease up a bit with the religious freedom, that won’t happen anytime too soon.

Our district covers 2 states. Selangor (Including Kuala Lumpur, the federal territory) and Malacca. Malacca is a small state with a small town and a tiny branch. They started out on their own.

5 of the 6 branches are within KL (Kuala Lumpur) or its suburb, PJ (Petaling Jaya). We started from one branch the KL branch (which I am STILL in!) and we just grew and multiplied.

We have 2 meeting places. I meet in the KL chapel – which is just a big house – with the Cheras Branch. The PJ1, PJ2 and the Klang Branch meet in PJ in a 4 story shop lot. It’s fancy on the inside, but it sure doesn’t look like a church from the outside. Especially since we’re not allowed to put signs up with the Church name on it (missionaries aren’t even allowed to wear their tags! Sucky.)

So we’re small in numbers. But what we don’t have in quantity, we make up for in quantity. The members that do attend our meetings regularly are SO strong. Because we aren’t the majority here, we really have to make a stand in what we believe in. There are more callings than people, so everyone gets to serve, hold responsible positions and grow immensely in a short amount of time.

We have 2 temples that service our area. One is in Manila, Philippines, and the other is in Hong Kong. Both are 4-hour plane flights away. I lived 10 minutes away from the temple in Hawaii – it’s so easy to take what you have for granted. I spent nearly every Sunday on the temple grounds but only went in there a couple of times. I regret that now.

I love my district. I hope we’ll all buck up. I’m going to pray about who I can share the gospel with tonight. With the extra 4 months I’ve been given, I have no excuse not to.

So, who wants to come to church with me?