Hello family,
This week went very well. It was also very, very fast. Time goes very fast when you're doing pretty much the same things all day every day.
I think I told you last week about the Wong children. Maybe not. We were far from home and it was dark and we were waiting for a taxi for a few minutes, and the only other house around was a house across the street with red altars near the doors indicating buddhists, who we never had any sort of success with. I told Elder Dhillon that we might as well try it: it's better to do something and fail than just sit there and wait. So, when we went, there ended up being seven children from a couple families between the ages of 10 and 16 who had all been attending the Christian church across the street for years, and they invited us in and we got a return appointment.
Our third appointment with them was on Saturday. We were teaching the restoration again. The children understood very little malay or english, so we had the first counsellor in our branch presidency come to translate into chinese for us. Near the end of the lesson, the dog started barking, so a couple of the children went to the window to see who was coming. One of them ran downstairs (their living room was on the second floor), and came back up very excited. Elder Dhillon said "snake", then got the children settled down and finished the lesson. After the lesson, we all went downstairs to see the snake. Elder Dhillon had gone ahead of me while I tied my shoes, and when he could see around the corner where everyone was gathered, he told me "Hurry! Come see this now" I was thinking maybe a five foot snake. I took my time. I walked to the corner of the house. I looked up. The owners of the house had set up two poles with a crossbar. The poles were about the height of a basketball hoop. It took me a while to realize what I was seeing, because it seemed very unreal. Tied to the crossbar on top of the poles was the head of the snake. It still was opening and closing its mouth, and wriggling a little. The body of the python touched the ground with a few feet to spare. I figure it was 15 or 16 feet long. I watched three men working with the snake. One was dealing with the rope to raise and lower the snake. Another held a very bright light for the third, who was in the process of skinning the snake alive. Chinese people love snake meat. It was so cool to watch. After they had skinned the top half and chopped off the head, they seperated the bottom half, and started pulling stuff out of the stomach. They pulled a couple of chickens (I wonder if they'll eat the chickens too) and about thirty eggs out. It was gruesome. I'm sending pictures. I actually didn't have my camera, but the guy that came with us, Brother Voo, had his cell phone and printed some pictures for us.
I don't know if you remember, but after they took my braces , they put a permanent retainer across my bottom front teeth. About a year ago, not too long before I went to BYU, part of it came loose, and caused some pain, and I got it fixed. I told the nurse who fixed it that I would be leaving soon, and that I might be going to a place with absolutely no dental care, and asked if there was a possibility that it would break again. She said no. No way. It's permanent. It won't break again. It broke last Wednesday. I asked Sister Skelton, the mission president's wife, about it, and she told me I could have it fixed here if I could find someone to do it, or I could have it taken off. I went ahead and had it taken off. I don't think it will cause me any problems. Actually, the dentist I went to also did orthodontic work. I told him that I wanted it taken off. There were actually two things broken on it: one came off a long time ago. I told him about that, and he said that the thing that came off a long time ago already made those teeth go a little crooked, and that they have almost surely settled already, so taking it off completely probably won't do anything.
We got a fax from the mission office the other day. It seems there have been a lot of problems lately with getting visas. Actually, the senior couple here in sandakan only got a 7 day visa last time they came through, so they will have to finish their mission 3 months early in Singapore. The old procedure for visa runs in Sabah (the state I am in) is that I would take a flight at night to Brunei, stay the night at a hotel, and fly back in the morning. The missionaries in West Malaysia usually would walk through immigration, stay a few hours, then walk right back and get their visas. They have had problems with that, so from now on, all missionaries will have to fly to Singapore, stay at least two nights, then fly back. That will be kind of fun.
I got the letters from the youth this week. It looks like it only takes 7-10 days for letters to get to Singapore, then they get sent from Singapore every saturday, and arrive here on Thursday. To be honest, I thought they were primary letters until I started looking at the names. I appreciated Ben's depiction of UNLV and BYU.
Thanks for shipping my scriptures. That will be nice.
General conference this week was very enjoyable and uplifting. We got to watch all 5 sessions, and we watched them at the same times that we would watch them in the U.S., except that we watched the priesthood session on sunday instead of saturday.
Just remember what Elder Bednar said: missionaries are called to be full time teachers. Members are the full time finders. Everyone should always be looking for people who the missionaries could be teaching.
Sincerely,
Elder Muffler
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