Letter Home

April 21, 2013

Today was our first official day of church meetings. Our day started off with an early 8am meeting with a newly called Area Seventy, Elder Woo. He was just called at General Conference and is still serving as a counselor in the Singapore Mission Presidency. Next I sat around while Elder Schollenberger (sounds funny) had a meeting with the Branch Presidency and Elder Woo. Now it is finally time to start our 3 hour block. We are scheduled to be 2 of the 3 speakers. Now the fun part comes. As we are sitting there the General Authority (GA) comes down and tells Elder Schollenberger he doesn't have to speak, the GA will take his spot. After the sacrament is over the first speaker gets up and starts to speak in English. We have three languages in our branch, English, Malay or bahasa, and Chinese. They stop the program and get one of the missionaries to interpret. So now she speaks a sentence the elder interprets it into bahasa. We have no Chinese elders so the Chinese are out of luck unless they can speak bahasa or English. So now her 10 min talk takes 20 min. The Branch Pres. now gets off the stand and comes to me and asks if its ok if I speak another time. (YEAH!!!). Of course I politely say of course. Elder Woo is last speaker.
Next is Sunday School. Someone hands a book to an Australian couple and says would you teach the English group. He did a great job by the way.
For Relief Society I decided to be brave and go with the basha group but they have no teacher so we combine. The Relief Society Pres. is going to teach. She has had her call for 2 weeks. She and her one counselor are trying to speak in English, Chinese and bahasa. Needless to say only a few points of the Lorenzo Snow lesson were given.
After the 3 hour block we get to attend a Branch council meeting. It was very interesting. They are trying to plan a branch activity and wanted to know what kinds of things they could do. The Branch Pres. has only been called for about a month and is not sure what to do. He has a good heart so all will go well.
This is only one of the branches we are over. The other branch is in Masai. They only have one language there, bahasa! We haven't been to see them yet.
Also in 2 weeks is District (Stake) Conference. They have no District President so I think we are in charge...... oh my!
Pray hard for us. I think we will need a lot of inspiration.