May 19, 2010

hey hey what's happenin today?
So spring/summer is finally approaching the States? wonderful news. I wish it would leave here. The other day I think it was a record high, I didn't have a thermometer but it seemed hotter than ever before. Good thing the dependable 4:00pm rain came to cool everything down.
Guess what. This week was epic in the history of the Singapore Mission. We are now allowed to wear our name tags in Malaysia! Crazy huh. We got the "go ahead" from President on Friday. We are longer trying to hide who we are. I think President Clark just has more guts than previous ones, I don't know, but he is tired of hiding I guess. I will admit, the first day wearing the name tag was very very weird and I did not like it. Everyone was staring at my neck...which I guess is the idea. We are getting use to it. Before we only were allowed to wear them inside the branch meeting house. Hopefully this is just one small step closer to building the kingdom in Malaysia.
Remember when I told the story about how the baptismal font didn't get filled up in time for the baptism? Well, we had a repeat. This time is was our baptism and not the Elders; but we were not to blame! Like responsible missionaries, we went to the church the night before the baptism (it was scheduled to occur after church) and turned on the water to allow it to run and fill all night. The font takes roughly 11 hours to fill so we were going to turn it off when we got to church the next morning. The next morning rolls around and we get a call from the Elders saying "You forgot to fill the font!" We couldn't believe it when they told us it was empty because we let it run all night! Now, the font has a pump that must be turned on in order for the water to be emptied out. This pump broke and during the week someone came to replace it; turns out, the pump was left running when it was replaced and the entire time the water was running, the pump was pumping it out, thus zero water Sunday morning day of the baptism. This is horrible. There is absolutely no way to fill the font fast. We tried hauling buckets again but when to turn on water from another faucet in the church the font stops running, and then all the water in the entire church stops running completely. It's like it runs out of water. Terrible plumbing system...stupid. We had to postpone the baptism to later Sunday night instead of right after church so we could somehow get the font filled. After church we found a spicket out by the road that had slightly more pressure than our church (still less than an average garden hose) so we emptied all the trash cans in the church and hauled them to the font one by one. It was hot, we were sweaty, it felt like a crowded day at hot yoga... BUT, we got the font filled enough to do a baptism. Moses was baptized on his scheduled baptism date! Didn't think it would happen. Baptisms are the most stressful part of this mission. How backwards is that! Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. The best part is that Moses called the night before saying he had to work and we would have to postpone the baptism. Sister Lim managed to talk him into coming by telling him the font was already full and people were already coming. The font was not full, and because the baptism was no longer right after church, nobody came. We are liars, but what can you do. Moses is baptized and happy so everything is good. Brother Kong asked if he could baptize him, I think he quite enjoys doing it. Moses speaks Malay so Kong practiced the prayer in Malay. I knelt by the glass and held up the prayer written on a piece of paper just in case though, good thing too because he read the whole thing :-).

Want to know something funny. In the restoration movie, the one we show everyone we teach, there are two scenes that just don't apply to people in this area. There is a scene of a kid picking blackberries, and one of the Smith family getting maple from trees to make syrup. Without fail, when these scenes come up the people here ask what are those? or what are they doing? Nobody knows what a blackberry is and definitely nobody has seen someone get maple from a tree before. Its awesome.

Welp, hope you all are doing fantastic. Thanks again for the letters. I love and miss you. Sorry this one is short, I have been having some computer troubles.

Sister Viehweg