Thursday we got to Singapore,
and we went through customs. I thought we were going to have a hard time
through it, but they just looked at my passport, stamped it, and done. I then got
my baggage, which really scared me. I found my one bag, but was missing
my other bag for about 20 minutes, finally it came through the baggage.
:) Then I met my mission president and his wife, who are super super
cool. I can't even describe how awesome they are. They are very relaxed
about things as far as some things go. Sister Mains is very nice, but
when she puts her mind on something, she goes overboard. She gave us all
a whistle to make sure that we would be safe from dogs, and she has a
huge book teaching us to use the correct pronouns in prayer like thy,
thine, thou, etc. President Mains really is cool. He doesn't know Malay,
but he has been so busy that he hasn't gotten the chance to yet. We then
went on the SMRT (which means "dead" in Czech) which is the transit
system, which is super super advanced. They have cards that we use to
access, but we don't even have to get them out of our wallets, they can
read them through our wallet and it will let us go through the little
gate thingy. We tried proselyting there for a while as we were going
back to the mission house, but we only placed one Book of Mormon, and
that was because some kid just came up and was really interested in the
church already, so I don't count that one. We are supposed to place one
each day, but I've been kind of failing at that so far...It's hard to
talk to people here, everybody is on their handphone, but I am starting
to figure out how to do it. So really, it's not that difficult, but I am
just having a difficult time getting used to the way people talk. I
sometimes have a hard time understanding what they are saying, but
getting better.
I met my new companion, Elder Dailey on Friday morning. He is
really nice. Met me by giving me a hug. We went out to lunch together at the mall in Singapore,
which is super super huge. I got a yam panggang which is something like
grilled chicken, but better. Everything is real here, so it has bones.
Of course there was rice. We tried for like 20 minutes to find a place
to sit, but it was literally impossible. Finally, a small Chinese lady
offered us to come sit by us and we talked to her, but she left before
we could talk to her about the church.
Most people are really friendly here, but since we are white,
they won't really talk to us unless we talk to them first. But, the
children are absolutely hilarious. I'll talk about them in a minute, but
first my first night at Singapore....wow, it was super hard. Most people
were asleep by 6:30 and they were zonked. You couldn't get them awake
if you kicked them in the head. But I knew that I had to pack my things,
even though I was about to pass out myself. This was a STUPID idea,
because when I got to Malaysia, I opened up my bag and I had absolutely
no white shirts. I left them in Singapore...ughhhhh so I was feeling
like an idiot about that for a really long time, but I was like "okay,
the Lord is just going to start my trials now. I can go through it." And
I did, I found another elder's shirts that I can use. They are a little
dirty, but I washed them and now I have 5 shirts I can use, which isn't
too good, but it will last me until I go back to Singapore.
Sorry, I'm jumping all over the place. So Friday, we had our
flight at 5:50 to KL, so we were at airport by 3. We changed out of our
dress shirts and put on a casual shirt to go through customs. We didn't get back into our normal clothes
until Saturday afternoon. As for my flight, it was 1 hours long and I
didn't feel like sleeping, so I talked to a Chinese man all
the way there. Really nice man, just not interested in the Church. Has a
friend though that he talks to that's Mormon. Anyway, we got to
Malaysia, through customs just fine, and got our baggage. not much to
say there. We rode a super long train to an area of KL called
Klang...and we stayed with Elder Stowell and another missionary there,
because Elder Dailey left his stuff in Klang. By the time we got there,
it was 12:30. I took a shower,
finally. I felt super gross. I hadn't shaved for maybe 4 days.
Then the next morning we got up, and we had a service
project to go to. (Saturday) We were going to meet a member and clean the church , and so we tried getting a
taxi. Nobody wanted to take our bags. Nobody...so we wasted an hour just
to have to call a cab to take us there. But as we were going there, a
group of Chinese high schoolers ran up to us and wanted to take a
picture with us. I guess no white person had ever talked to them before.
Then, when I started speaking to them in Malay (cuz i couldn't
understand their English) they started freaking out, and then took a
video of me speaking to them in Malay. It was really funny, which made
my day a little better. :)
We got to our the church about 12:40 and we missed the service
project, but we met the member and he took us out to lunch. I ate duck
with noodles. Yes, duck. Buahaha, I'm going to tell Ethan that. :) I was
still learning to understand people's accents, so I had a weird visit
with him. Then we went to our apartment, put our stuff away, and then
took another shower.
Which now I will take a break in writing, and tell you a few cultural
differences. Here there are toilets, but no toilet paper. I'll explain in a sec how that works. Every bathroom is about 10 centimeters
lower than the rest of the house. So there is a little step that you go
up when you get out of the bathroom. The shower is just a corner of the
bathroom with a shower nozzle on it, and tile descends a little so that
the water goes out, but there are not tubs or anything. There is hot
water, but you have to turn it on, and let it sit on there for a while.
As for the toilets, once you are done pooping, you take the hose, point
it up your butt, and get water literally EVERYWHERE. Simple as that.
Just don't wear pants, and it's all good. I actually don't mind it. I am
still learning how to use it, but it's alright. :P
Uhmm.....let's see...
This area we have no one to teach right now. The missionaries that came
before us wrote down nothing, so people they contacted are completely
gone. We just have to
go street contacting until we actually get a few investigators. Saturday
I was pretty upset about this, because I was hoping we would get
straight into the work, but right now we just have to do a lot of prep
work. Our district leader and his trainee gave us some people to
contact. We have another couple visits with people, but not too many.
We will just have really slow days for a while. Our numbers will be
super low, but hopefully within 6 months, we will be bosses. And I am
making sure that we write down everything, so that the next missionaries
have stuff to do.
Sunday, we went to
church at 10, and I was surprised that there was actually 80 people
there. It's a pretty big branch. There haven't been any baptisms since
December though, but the other companionship has an investigator of the
church that might be getting baptized in January. The people are sooooo
very nice! I love them all. I will talk about a couple of them. One of
them is a former missionary. He has a
learning disability, but he is very sweet. He wants to teach his
friends here, and so he has asked us to come with him to talk to them.
We are probably going to see one of them tomorrow, and then another one
probably Thursday or Friday...not sure. He walked around with us for a
while as we tried to talk to people, but Sunday really isn't a good day
to talk to people...not many people out at all. Then the other
member..is Japanese, and he speaks
very little English, so I used my Japanese that I have learned with him.
He invited us to come over to his house on Wednesday for lunch.
Hopefully I can become fluent in Japanese by then. :D :D
Most of what we have done is some training. Elder Dailey has
been training me on how to teach people and told me a lot about the
culture here. I have a lot of questions for him as I go throughout the
day, and he seems fine answering even the dumbest questions I have. By
the way, this is a left-side of the street country like I said, which is
really confusing sometimes. I will be looking for traffic to my left,
and realize that I should be looking right, but then there are some
one-way streets, which doesn't help matters.
At our apartment, we have a really really nice pool. I wish I
could go swimming in it for my morning exercise, but alas... tidak
boleh.
Anyway, that's about all
for my days in Malaysia. The first few days are going to be really rough
starting off, but I will make it fun. I have a good companion.
