Letter #67 - Week of 13 May 2009 - "You're the third child, aren't you?"

Well, I'm not quite sure what to say, having spoken to you on Sunday.

I guess, since you were curious what a typical day was like, I'll describe what yesterday was like, with more details than you probably wanted to know.
I woke up at 6:57, prayed, and went to the bathroom.

Elder Shipp left some of his CD's, so I put one of them on and started my dumbbell routine.

At 7:40, I ate the raisin bran and UHT milk Elder Shipp left. I don't know if I ever told you about the milk and eggs here. They process the milk and eggs and recombine them such that they don't need to be refrigerated. When you go to the grocery store and buy milk, it's sitting on the shelf, and it has an expiration date like a year in the future.

At 8:30 I started personal study. I read about personal revelation in preparation for the district meeting training I would give later. At 9:30 I started language study. I took an old english conference Ensign and read a talk aloud in malay. At 10:30 we went over to the home of Elder and Sister Spanos for our district meeting. Our district is just myself, Elder Hall, and Elder and Sister Spanos. We had planned on having them show us the way to a less active member's flat after district meeting, but they said that would be easier accomplished beforehand, so we went and rode around for a little while. It is amazing how little I know Ipoh. I know Ipoh very well on the map, but my brain has no connection from map to reality. Elder Hall almost knows Ipoh as well as I do.

After that, we got back and started our district meeting. After an opening hymn, prayer, and spiritual thought, we introduced ourselves so everyone was better acquainted. Speaking of, I should mention that on Monday, when I was waiting for Elder Hall, I spent a lot of time shooting the breeze with the Spanos's. One of the conversations went like this: Sister Spanos asked "Elder Muffler, how many siblings do you have?"
"3."
"You're the third child, aren't you?"
"Yup... How'd you know?"
"Oh, I used to be a social worker."
Besides wondering what behavior signalled my place in the family, that situation really made me laugh. I'm proud to be a number 3 child.

While I have broken off my narrative, I want to tell you about a strange call that I recieved this morning that makes me marvel. At 10:30 I picked up the phone "Hello, this is Elder Muffler." A confident voice said at the end of the line "This is Elder Richards from the hit program Who wants to be a scriptorian? I'm here with Elder Parker right now who has a question which you will have 30 seconds to answer." Another Voice said "Elder Muffler, which prophet said the following 'And now remember, remember my brethren, that whosever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosever doeth iniquity, doeth in unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves.' Was it Samuel the Lamanite, Abraham, Moses, or Mormon?" It all happened so fast. I thought they were doing some sort of survey or playing a joke on me. I muttered that it sounded like Lehi, but gave him the answer, Samuel the Lamanite. He continued "How sure are you? What percentage?" I said 60. He was saying something else when the time ran up and the phone call ended. After looking up the scripture to confirm that I was right (it was distressing not to be sure on something like that), it took a few minutes to realize I was the Phone a Friend and they were playing a game. Once I realized, I started laughing. That is such a funny idea. I will never cease to be amazed at some of the activities and games Mormons come up with. That's one of them. I'm not sure if they were playing for zone conference, or just because it's P-Day, or maybe they are making a movie (it sounded very rehearsed: maybe they play every week). What confuses me is I don't know either Elder Richards or Elder Parker. I do, however, know Elder Pace, and I'll bet he's the one that put it together and had them call us.

I might never get back to my day. On Saturday, Elder Shipp and I found a book full of idioms and proverbs in malay. We found out later that every student has classes on those, so everyone knows them to some degree. I have had so much fun learning those. I really like using figures of speech in english, and it just magnifies it to use the malay ones. It's a good exercise for the brain. I remember words so much easier that way. Anyway, some of my favorite ones so far are "Ada ubi ada batas ada budi ada balas", which literally means "Every potato has a root, every good deed has a consequence."

I also like "Nasi sudah menjadi bubur." The rice already became porridge. There's nothing more you can do about that. "Anjing diberi nasi, bilakan kenyang." When dogs are given rice, he says he's full. That means bad people won't accept advice.

I can just see a future Elder Muffler, sitting on the back row of institute, slouching, with his arms folded, commenting "You know, in Malaysia they have a saying ... " and then using one of my beloved proverbs.

Actually, I got sick of describing my day. Suffice it to say, we worked really hard trying to find people, with a little success. We met a less active member, and one of her neighbors came up and was angrily talking to her (we weren't sure about what: they were speaking Tamil) It was obvious he at least started the conversation about us, but he didn't seem to look at us or say anything. We suspected it was about the woman's husband. She had been super nice to us before that and wanted us to come back and meet the whole family. But after waiting for them to finish, it didn't seem like they would stop talking anytime soon, so we took off. I asked if we could come back tomorrow, and she told us no, that if she wanted to meet us again she would call us. That was sad. While I was trying to persuade her to meet us again, Elder Hall tried to shake the hand of the angry man, who had cooled down ... well, he got angry again and told Elder Hall "I am very hot now! Go!"
We went. And that man is still "hot".

Sunday was one of the best days of my mission, and really my life. It wasn't due to outstanding or unusually great circumstances. Because of district conference last week, our fast sunday was moved to this past sunday. Saturday, I was reading a bit about fasting in True to the Faith. The entry there mentioned that other than fasting in asking for special blessings, we could also fast in gratitude for blessings. I decided to try that, not expecting much out of it, because that would be kind of contrary to just being thankful. But throughout sunday, I really felt more grateful. I felt more happy. I can't describe it very well, but after talking with you, I appreciated how blessed we all are now. Andrew just graduated and is looking for his first job. Dan is doing well and will be stationed somewhere else soon. Ben is living it up with volleyball winding down and efy and high adventure camp on the way, and knows what he wants to do for college. Mom planted a garden and will be taking care of Tyler for a few weeks and Dad still has his job and has found the time to volunteer in the temple cafeteria. I'm on a mission. Heavenly Father has given us a lot.

Love,
Elder Muffler