Hello from Singapore,
This has been a fairly uneventful week, at least until yesterday. President Clark was in town for the first Saturday in months. He had a kidney stone attack last night and was in so much pain. Dave and the office elders went to the hospital to give him a blessing. The pain medication he was given worked wonders and he was able to go home. He will see a urologist tomorrow for tests. Hopefully he will recover quickly.
This is going to be a busy week. Last November one of our Elders in East Malaysia was hit head-on on his bicycle as he went around a corner by a driver going the wrong way on a one way street. He was severly inured, with multiple broken bones, a head injury, his aorta was spurting blood, and other internal injuries. There were so many miracles involved after that. There was a doctor who lived across the street from where the accident happened, and police and an ambulance were within a couple of blocks of the accident. He was in the emergency room being treated within 15 minutes. His companion was amazing. He immediately contacted the President and the closest senior couple. The president and Sister Clark checked his record and found that he had o positive blood (rare). They went through all the records and found that only 3 people in the entire mission had that type blood and two of them were in the emergency ward at the time (his companion and one other Elder). The third one was one of the Senior Elders about 2 hours away (and this is in a mission where Elders are spread over a huge area). This young man was not expected to live. He was given a blessing immediately and his care was amazing - especially for Malaysia (this happened in West Malaysia). The Clarks got on the next plane and were able to get there relatively fast. There were many other miracles over the next couple of weeks in the hospital. There was always a Priesthood holder with him 24 hrs a day watching out for him. He was able to fly home after about a month. He has been recouperating ever since. He wanted to come back to finish his mission, but no one thought there was even a small chance that he would be sent back to the Singapore Mission. They said that if he were to go back out it would have to be in the US where he could receive all the care he needed. Well, we were notified last week that he is now well enough to be sent back out and he is coming back to this mission. He will be kept in Singapore - not Malaysia, but what a miracle that he is able to return (he had only been here about a month when the accident happened). All the Singapore zone will meet him at the airport on Tuesday with banners, etc. to welcome him back! Since this happened before we arrived, we are anxious to meet him. He is going to be serving as one of the office elders so we will be working closely with him. (The sad part is that Elder Brodie is being transferred out to make room for him!).
On Wednesday, we have a zone conference and will have Elder Perkins, the Area President and Elder Osgutherope, the General Sunday School President, visiting with all of us in a meeting from two to four and then holding a fireside for the entire stake at 6 p.m. Everyone is excited as it is always such a blessing to hear from visitors from Salt Lake and Hong Kong.
Two of our local Sisters had a convert baptism today at 4:30 and we told them we would be there. After church in JB today the Gregory's had us and Brother Allen (the High Councilman who often goes with us to JB) over for lunch. We left in what we thought was plenty of time to get back, but it took us 3 hours to get back to Singapore (only 1 hr to get there). The traffic at immigration was a nightmare! This week is also a holiday. The Muslims end Ramadan on Tuesday, which is another holiday here (they celebrate everyones holiday) - it is Hari Raya Pussa. It ends their month of fasting from sunup to sundown. In Malaysia the Muslims are fined $2000 if they are caught eating during the day. The times of the fast is calculated down to the minute! Also, the Chinese have been celebrating all month something regarding ghosts. They have little alters along the streets where they light fires and burn pictures of food, paper money, etc for the ghosts! Everyone here is very entrenched in traditions!
We have been having some interesting food at the Ho's (our institute teacher) for the past several weeks. We always have a dessert (Chinese). They are very interesting to say the least. Nothing even remotely resembling American desserts. We have had a sweet black bean soup, a sweet potato soup, yam cake (compressed and steamed rice), and then this last week we had a bean curd and ginko nut soup! All the soups are made with a sugar water broth. We can hardly wait to see what we will have this week! The Chinese in the class all love them! We'll take our American desserts any day! We think they are doing this in our honor so we can experience their culture - it is very sweet of them. All the people we have met here have been so kind to us and we love them.
The Lord is blessing us to have the energy and abilities to keep up with all we have to do each week. We are all promised that when we are called to serve, we will be blessed to be able to do the work. The Lord is certainly blessing and qualifying us to be able to complete the responsibilities we have been given. Plus working with all the young Elders and Sisters is keeping us young! As a plaque in our office states "It is better to serve a senior mission than to stay home and watch your birth certificate expire".
That is it for this week from beautiful Singapore. Remember, we love each of you and always keep you in our prayers. We love hearing from you. We apologize that we are not always able to answer your e-mails, but we appreciate them so much.
With love,
Elder and Sister Garrett (mom & dad, grandma & grandpa, relatives and friends)
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