Glad to hear you got flight plans, britt would NOT stop buggin about it :-). Just kiddin britt. I got no such email, but I did get a call from the office this week telling me they sent them out to you. Fantastic. Now lets forget about it..... not likely. The ward chirstmas party you described sounds wonderful. Way to go Shannon and Bryson! The stars of the show.
While I'm thinking about this, how do you all want to work the call on Christmas this year? The past two calls we've had issues, but macsen seemed to have a good system last time around.... Also I usually talked to you on you're holiday, but since christmas is Saturday this year that would be a sunday for me and Sunday mornings can be quite busy rounding up all the investigators and getting them to church. Will you be around Christmas eve evening? I guess I would always get up earlier on Sunday no biggy. Let me know.
Oh, your letter makes me yearn for snow. I did a taste cold all last night, though not the kind I like. We were in Kuching this week and traveld back last night. We left Kuching at 9:00pm last night and arrived at Miri at 11:00am this morning. What a miserable night. The AC was on full and we froze in that bus. Air conditioning is such an uncommon luxury here that when they do have, they don't know how to control. I guess I got what I was wishing for, cold cold cold. I don't know why our Zone Leaders bought tickets to travel all night. I guess they wanted to get back to our area as fast as we could but I am beat right now. All night long I watched all the Elders, all 18 of them, passed out on their seats, sound asleep wondering why I couldn't sleep. I can't sleep on buses that are freezing. I'm pretty tired right now, but what else is new?
Kuching was fun, We had two full days of training and then interviews in the evening. I wish I got to see more of the city than just the inside of the 5th floor shop lot chapel they rent; but sight seeing wasn't the purpose of our trip I guess. From the windows, Kuching looks like a beautiful city. It is a whole lot bigger than Miri and it has peculiar shaped hills throughout. It's not totally flat.
I have loved these training meetings because we get to be together with a bunch of missionaries. It's always so fun to see the Elders and Sisters from my MTC group. There was one Elder from my original MTC group that went home only after a few days in the MTC. But he is back now and serving in Miri. He got here 3 weeks ago and it was so cool to see him again. I'm glad he made it back.
I don't have much to talk about since we spent so much time in training this week. Last Saturday Jantai, his wife Eda and their son Venna were all baptized. The baptism went very smoothly I thought. They were all very excited. They picked Elder Evanson to baptize him because A. they wanted a white man to baptize them, and B. They saw him baptize someone else the other week and liked the volume of his voice. The locals are pretty timid baptizers but Elder Evanson dunks em good. Maybe I should have encouraged them more to pick a ward member but oh well, Elder Evanson was flattered. Their little girl Viviana was shouting, laughing, and clapping every time someone went under the water. She thought it was so funny. She is 2 years old. This is the family that said their next daughter is going to be named Viehweg; Their kids will be Venna, Viviana, and Viehweg....poor child. I tried to talk them into maybe Vie instead but I dunno. I have to laugh every time they tell me.
I hope you are all loving this Chirstmas season. I little girl (11 years old) was talking to me the other day when we were at their house about Santa Clause. She said, "In America you guys have Santa Clause right? And he visits every girl and boy" I said, "right". Then she said, "Santa doesn't come to the kids in Malaysia, only the kids in America". That made me stop and think for a minute. I remember hearing as a kid Santa makes time to visit every single kid in the whole word in one night. The kids here hear a different story,that Santa only visits the kids in America. It makes me think about Christmas differently.
I love the holidays. Here for Christmas people travel from house to house of friends and family all day for the few days before and after Christmas, eating all the way. It's like everybody is having an open house. I'm not sure how it works because it seems that if everbody went calling on other homes, nobody would be home. We'll see how it all plays out.
We are loving the people we teach right now, and yes, we have managed to find a few girls to teach too. If only we could keep all the new members, the church would be huge here. They fall so fast, partly because the church is so new here they don't know what to do with all the new members. Ah growing pains.
love you guys
see you later
sis v
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