Letter #3 Week of 26 Feb 2008 - Arrival in Singapore

Hey parents,

We got into Singapore today (I realize it's late at night there, but I'm feeling pretty good). The plane ride really wasn't too bad. I thought it would be really hard to completely change when I am supposed to be awake and all, but I'm feeling pretty good. I stayed up until 2 or 3 in the morning Utah time, and got probably 8 hours of sleep total, and I stopped sleeping around 3 am local time. So, instead of spending an extra day on the plane, it felt like I only spent a really long night, and now it's 2:30 in the afternoon and I'm feeling pretty good.

Singapore is absolutely gorgeous. It's amazing. Even the guardrails on the highways are lined with flowers.

Our plane just touched down about 2 hours ago. We got off, went through immigration really quick, and met up with the mission president's assistants after getting our baggage. They drove us to where they are living and dropped that off. Then, we went to a food court for lunch. That was fun. There was all sorts of interesting asian food. (There are plenty of American restaurants also, but they wanted to take us somewhere we couldn't eat anything American.) I ate some Pakistani chicken. It was kind of like a Mexican dish. It was spicy and came with a flatbread and a spicy sauce to dip everything in. I kind of wish I would have seen another restaurant earlier. There was a chinese place where they had some ducks roasting. They looked tasty. Oh, I forgot to tell you what I had to drink. I drank aloe vera juice. It had chunks of aloe vera right in the can. I thought it tasted okay at first, but by the time I was finished, I thought it was pretty gross.

From what we could glean from the AP's, we will be laying low for today. The mission president is flying in tomorrow, and we'll have an orientation and interviews with him all of tomorrow. We also get our assignments then and will fly out on Friday. There are 6 different zones in the mission: 1 in Singapore and 5 in Malaysia. All of the new missionaries will be going to Malaysia for our first zone. We don't know exactly where until tomorrow. It's pretty much a gauruntee, though, that I will learn malay. There are some people in West Malaysia that speak English, but there are virtually none in East Malaysia that do. So we'll find out on Friday how well the whole gift of tongues thing works out for me.

It's really not too hot out right now. At the airport, they said it was 85, but it really doesn't feel too bad. I would much rather be here then somewhere I would get cold, because when I get cold, I get tired. That's not an issue here.
Singapore has a lot of quirks. Since there is virtually no space here, everything is built very close together, and there isn't a whole lot of room to walk anywhere. I haven't yet seen a building that isn't at least 4 stories. Most of the buildings are closer to thirty.

Well, I don't have a whole lot else to say that I can think of. I think the best (and worst) is yet to come.

Sincerely,
Elder Muffler

Letter #2 Week of 19 Feb 2008 - Referral Center and Flight Plans

Salamat tegi hari, (that's malay for good day- my companion helped me with that one), Things keep on getting better at the MTC. I'm not sure if I mentioned this in my last email, but it feels like I've been here forever. After you get used to the schedule and everything associated with the MTC, it's easy to forget what things used to be like.
My favorite part of the last week was going to the referral center. On 4 days a week, we go to this building where we sit down in front of this telephone/computer system. When people call the numbers on the pass-along cards, that's where it's answered. I've only actually gotten two inbound calls. Most of the time is spent on making outbound calls. We call to make sure that people recieved the video or book they requested, then we talk about it and try to get them to accept a missionary visit (if they didn't request one to begin with). Well, my first 2 visits were kind of wasted, because I'm shy. I would call them up, an say something like "Hey, did you get your DVD? Did you like it? Do you want missionaries? No? Thanks, bye." After that, though, I started getting over my reluctance to talk to people. I realize that whether or not people know it, they really do want to hear our message, and so I need to be persistant in making sure that they do that. So on Friday night, I called one lady who was about the nicest lady I've ever talked to. I asked for Sandra (or whatever her name is), and the lady that answered asked who was calling. I told her that it's Adam from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints, then she said "Oh, this is Sandra. I'm sorry. I was just screening my phone calls because I have a friend over for dinner, and she made pierogies, and I wanted to get on with talking to her." I was like, "I love pierogies." Then I talked to her for a minute or so. She was so excited to have our missionaries over, and so happy that we would care enough to call her. Being at the referral center really convinces me how many people are kept from the truth only because they don't know where to find it.
On Saturday morning, I finally got the chance to take 2 inbound calls. The first was this hillbilly-sounding guy from South Carolina calling for a free Bible. I asked him if it would be okay if some representatives would bring it to him, and he said that would be fine. I asked if there was a good time to visit him and he said in his very southern accent "I'm home just about all the time, 'cept when I go to the grocery store." He made me laugh just a little. It was kind of hard getting his address and such so that the missionaries could find him because, well, he didn't know it. He had to wait a few minutes for his wife to get home to give it to me.
There was another lady who called in on Saturday morning. She was ordering the Joy to the World DVD for her son, who recently got back from Iraq with 12 gunshot wounds. She said she was watching television this morning and saw one of our commercials and really felt like a nice DVD like that would bring him some peace.
Tell Ben happy birthday for me. I know I'm a little late, but the email program shuts itself off after 30 minutes, and I ran out of time last week. If I know my little brother, he's already gotten a date (unless all the girls competing for him aren't sixteen yet, I'm not quite sure).
I got my flight itineraries and such this last week. On Monday the 25th, I'll be flying out of Salt Lake about 7:30PM. From there, I go to Las Angeles and spend a few hours there. We leave about 11 PM (local time) from Las Angeles and fly to Taipei, Taiwan. After spending an hour in Taipei, we fly to Singapore. We arrive on Wednesday at Noon (Singapore time). So I'm only really spending like 24 hours travelling, but it's taking me two days to get there. It will be a very exhausting week, I'm sure.
President Boon had some very interesting stories last week. It sounds like I will be learning Malay as I go (in the future, missionaries going to Singapore will be learning it at the MTC. It currently isn't offered. I'm hoping I'll be able to come here and teach it some day). I'll be able to bring as much luggage as I want into Singapore, but once there, every three months I'll be transferring between Malaysia and Singapore (due to visa restrictions), and will only be able to carry 20 kilos. The mission home has a room I can store extra clothing, so I'm thinking of putting 4 or 5 of my shirts and a couple pairs of pants, as well as anything else extra I have there, and I can pick it up whenever I'm back in Singapore again.
I really need to get going. Things have been going a lot better lately. I feel great,
Elder Muffler

Letter #1 Week of 12 Feb 2008 - Life in the MTC

Hello family of mine,
It turns out that email here is a lot easier than I thought it would be, and they really encourage us to use email whenever possible, so here I am.

I'm really enjoying life here at the MTC. I'm almost completely better from my cold. That first day after I got here was really tough. I only got two or three hours of sleep on Wednesday night, and we were in class nearly all day, and I was exhausted and coughing and sneezing all over the place and had a pretty decent headache, but thankfully Thursday night I slept all night, and things have been much better since then.

My companion is a very enthusastic guy. On Saturday, we had our first weekly planning session, and we're deciding how we can focus more and better use our time, and he said to me "How about let's start running everywhere we go." Sometimes he's a little too enthusiastic. His name is Elder Hall. He spent two semesters at BYU, studying international relations. He took a mandarin class, and languages are his big love in life, so I think he's going to the right mission.

Every Sunday, for sacrament meeting, every elder is supposed to write a talk on a given subject, and the speakers for sacrament meeting are chosen on the spot. Guess who got chosen on his first Sunday. I like speaking in sacrament meeting normally, but it's a little intimidating when I'm speaking right before the best known CES religion teacher in the world. It's a lot of fun to have Brother Bott in my branch presidency. He gives a lot of the same lessons to us as he gave in class, which is nice, because I understand them better.

Thanks for the cinnamon rolls, but please don't send anything more. I'm getting fat. They would be nice if I could share them with everyone, but the problem is that on any given day, everyone in my district and all of my roommates have plenty of treats that they got in the mail, in addition to the delicious meals we get at the cafeteria.

Missionary life really isn't too bad, especially here at the MTC where you just kind of sit in class and read the scriptures all day. It's a little hard to concentrate sometimes: those white walls are so much more appealing than whatever you're reading. But overall, I think I think I've gotten a good start in adjusting to being a missionary.. A lot of adjustments I needed to make I fixed pretty well at BYU by volunteering here and learning the lessons, tutoring and learning how to explain things very simply and clearly, and living with people who were hard to live with sometimes.

I really like the elders and sisters in my district. There are 6 elders and 2 sisters in my district. We all have the same schedule and class, and are with each other pretty much all day. Our district leader, Elder Pace, is from Arizona and is the only missionary other than my companion and myself in my district heading to singapore. Other than my district leader and myself, everybody else in my district is from Utah.

Elder Pace, Elder Hall (my companion), and I all have an appointment with the MTC president tomorrow to talk about Singapore.

Today has been a great day. We got to go to the temple this morning.

Oh. I just remembered. I would really appreciate if you could send me the USB cord to my camera. In my laptop case (I'm not quite sure where mom put it. It was on the floor when I left), there are a few different cords, and the part that connects to my camera (not the computer) should be of two different sizes. I need the smaller one. If there aren't two different sizes in there, you can compare whatever cord I have to the one mom's MP3 player uses. The one mom uses is bigger than the one I need. If there aren't any in the laptop case, there should be one in my tupperware containers.

Love,
Adam Muffler