I, Duncan Horne, married Fidelia Michael in the London England temple on Saturday 13th May, 2006. We landed in Kuantan to begin our married life on Wednesday 24th May, 2006. But before that, I had served as a full-time missionary for 2 years in Singapore and Malaysia.
An important part of my work as a full-time missionary involved visiting those who lived far away.
Under the guidance of my trainer, Elder Judd, I ventured to Seremban from PJ to visit a member. We spent a whole day travelling and meeting with her and it made for a memorable experience.
As part of our weekly goals, we frequently set a target of making 150 contacts, which meant talking to 150 people about the church and passing on our contact card to them - even better if we could get their contact number too. Spending an entire day travelling all distances to visit one person or family did not help in our weekly goals, but I concluded that focusing on people was more important than pursuing numbers. And it wasn't that I actively sought journeying to the edge of boundaries and beyond, but the longer I was in the job, I started learning about the members and where they lived, making plans to visit those who lived further away from the meetinghouse and regular fellowship.
While I was serving in Subang, I decided to go and visit the Rama family out in Klang. We had to wait for a bus, at times for up to an hour, and then endure an hour bus journey to Klang. Oftentimes, the bus was full and we spent the journey standing, cramped like sardines. We had great times with the Rama family in Klang and I personally grew very close to them during my eight months serving in the Klang branch.
Later on when I was serving in Kuching, I came across other church members who made long journeys from Kota Samarahan into Kuching for church every Sunday. It took us about an hour to cycle there, but cycle there we did. We set aside one night each week to pay a visit to two families, the Senen family and the Albert Sup family, and again had some highly memorable moments with them. We made time in our busy schedules to visit those who were far away. We grew to appreciate these people who made sacrifices to be at church each week.
Another family I became attached to was Sister Ling and her wonderful family who lived in Sitiawan. They travelled to Ipoh town every Sunday for around 90 minutes there and 90 minutes again going back home. Myself and three other fellow missionaries decided to spend every other Saturday in Sitiawan with Sister Ling's family and the Lee family, who also lived there. We took an old creaking bus from Ipoh to Sitiawan with no air-conditioning. We were just excited to be reaching out to those far away. The days we spent in Sitiawan are amongst the most golden memories I have of my three months service in the Ipoh branch. Perhaps in some small part to our efforts in making Sitiawan a firm and important part of our Ipoh schedule, these two great founding families in Sitiawan later had a branch of the church right where they live! A wonderful blessing for them indeed! Due to diminishing numbers, they now travel to Ipoh once more for church, as they faithfully used to.
It was extremely difficult for me to say goodbye to all of the people I befriended and loved at various times on my mission when it was time to move on to a new area of service. There were many tears and choked-up strains of the heart. This was most significantly true for those whom Jesus would term "the lost sheep." Though they were not always lost in a sense of spiritual belonging, they were lost regarding their isolation from the church and other members in terms of distance and fellowship on days other than Sundays. I am glad that my companions and I went to seek out those who were far away and administered to them by testimony and friendship.
Well, two years after I completed my missionary service, I found myself living with my wife in Kuantan, around 4 hours away from the nearest meetinghouse. I am now in the same shoes as those to whom I administered during my missionary service. We now savour visits from faraway church members who reach out to us.
It is quite fitting, really.
And yet we have discovered church members here in Kuantan who have been even more lost and isolated than us, and again, we have done everything in our power to reach out, bless, and bring them to church with us in our home.
There is always someone we can go the extra mile for, someone who is feeling lonely or lost or needs a friendly company. In ministering to such, we are doing Jesus Christ’s work.
