August 25, 2010

Hello

That is strange to think that everyone is going back to school. Seems like I just left and everyone was going back to school then too. Next week I will be one year old. I hope everything is working out for you in the working world. Sounds like sports are keeping a lot of you guys busy. Thats always fun. The children at home keep dwindling. So weird.

Singapore is beautiful as ever. All the sisters are staying and President's house. It has been a blast. We sisters never get to see each other so we go a little crazy when we all get together. SLEEP OVER!!! I love em all. My flight on Sunday didn't land until 830pm so most of the sisters were already at President's house when we got there. I took a taxi from the airport to their place. Alone. ya, cool huh. When I got there I met a few sisters that I had not yet seen that are very nice. And of course Sister Lim and I are together again, it's been great. There are two new sisters that arrived today along with 8 elders. We will meet them tonight when we go back home. President and the assistants have a lot of things planned for them today that we companions are not involved in. So we are enjoying our P-day and I'll meet my new companion tonight. I have already been told she is ABC (american born chinese...yes that is an everyday term here) from California. It should be fun.

And yes, they pulled all the missionaries from the entire mission in to Singapore for this conference. It has been awesome to see everyone again. I have especially loved seeing all the people from my same MTC group. We were all very close in the MTC and had a lot of fun. The best is seeing how much these Elders that I came out with have changed. It has been about a year since I have seen many of them and they grew up. Just from the comments they have made in our discussions during the conference and from talking with them, I have seen some pretty cool changes. Missions are great things. They have scattered us missionaries all throughout singapore. Like I said, the sisters are staying with President, there are three different apartments for the elders serving here in Singapore that are housing Elders, and then the Office couple has about 20 Elders staying with them. This couple stays in quite a large home; before the church building was built it was where they met for church. So ya, they have found places for us all to stay.

The training we have recieved has been incredible. They have taken us back to the very very basics of our missionary work. President has told us that the Brethren feel missionaries are not doing these things, but President is pleased because these things we are being trained on are nothing different than the training we have been recieving in our zone conferences. Monday we talked all day about the atonement and the gospel of Jesus Christ. We read from the scriptures for hours about faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the holy ghost, and enduring to the end. Over and over again Jesus Christ teaches these steps. We have spent hours getting trained simply on Love. Yesterday we had training all day long on Revelation; receiving personal revelation, revelation from the Book of Mormon, receiving revelation when we got to church, teaching others how to recognize revelation, etc. The training we are getting is nothing new. It's the very most important part of our missionary work that tends to be pushed to the back and replaced with worries like, what are we teaching them, learning language, numbers, etc. Throughout this conference President has stressed over and over again,''we aren't teaching lessons, we're teaching people". Ah man, this training has seriously been awesome. We start at 8:30am and go until about 5:00pm and then we hit the streets of Singapore and practice what we learned. Which is no easy task because people here have no time to stop and talk. Everybody is rushing everywhere, people are making money as they walk by... But as I have talked to people these past few evenings I have noticed a difference in the feelings I have toward them as I teach there on the street. It's cool to spend all day learning, practice what we learn on fellow missionaries, role play, learn some more, and then go out and do it for real.

This training goes until Friday. So the new missionaries with jump right in. Then Friday afternoon everyone who is not training goes back to their areas. Us trainers and our newbies stay one extra day so the newbies can get their new missionary training also. So, I head back saturday night and get to Miri just in time to run around and try and find everyone we haven't seen all week in an effort to get them all to come to church the following day. should be fun.

This training is the first of four trainings. This is the only one with the whole mission though. The others will be divided into east and west malaysia I believe.

This evening we have a few appointments with members from the ex-pat ward. The Elders serving in Singapore have been busy. They have arranged members from the four wards here in Singapore to take missionaries (80 missionaries) out tonight and meet less active members or nonmembers. It should be fun.

I am exhausted. We have been getting up an hour earlier than we usually do and I will admit, we have been getting to bed WAY later than we usually do (it's a house of 10 sister!). Plus last night and Monday night we were waiting at the office for awhile. We were waiting for President because he takes us all home in a van each night, there is no public transport that goes to their place. sometimes president has to stay pretty late in that office

loves!'

bye!

got 30 seconds!!!

sis v