2 Sister Missionaries were hit on their bikes

Greetings from Singapore,

We hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving week. We have so much to be thankful for. We had a Thanksgiving dinner here for our local Elders/Sisters, the Johor Bahru Elders, Elder & Sister Gregory (from JB), and President & Sister Clark. We had 16 Elders and 3 Sisters, plus 6 Seniors at our home for a total of 25. It was wonderful! Both Sister Clark and I cooked an 18-20 lb turkey. We had all the traditional foods. You can not believe all the food 16 young men can eat! We then had 7 of the Singapore missionaries over the next night for leftovers and they ate almost as much! What fun to see them eat like that. I'm sure it reminded all of them of home. We did, however, miss all our family!

This week brought some sadness as we had two of our Sisters in Kuching, East Malaysia, hit on their bicycles by a motorbike. It was dark and raining, however they had on bright yellow raincoats and lights on their bikes. He said he didn't see them. One Sister was knocked down, but not hurt (just a few scratches). The other Sister (Sister Song) didn't have any scratches, but she did have a compression fracture on her spine. We brought her in to Singapore yesterday to see a specialist. He said it will heal, but she must stay down for at least 2 weeks and wear a back brace for 6 weeks. She is from Singapore, so she will stay with her parents for two weeks and then we'll see if she can go back to her area. She cried and cried at the hospital because she doesn't want to leave her area. She is the only Missionary in Kuching who speaks Chinese and she is working with several people who she hopes will be baptized. We transferred one of our Sisters from Singapore to Kuching to replace her temporarily but she only speaks English and Malay. How these missionaries love the people they work with!

This will be a hard week as transfers occur tomorrow. One of our Office Elders, who we have worked with for 8 months is being transferred to Sandakan, East Malaysia. How we will miss him. He has been so helpful to us. He is also the only Elder in the mission who is authorized by the Mission President to drive the mission van/car when we can't make the trip or we need to use both vehicles. The Elder replacing him is one of the new missionaries who has only been here 2 months. We only met him once, although I'm sure we will love him too.

Today we went to JB for church. This was the first Sunday that the Masai Branch met in their new building. It is a shop-lot building, but it is really nice although it is not yet completely finished. They had 76 people at church! The average attendance is usually only in the 40's! Next week both Branches will meet together at the new building and they will become a District under the Mission instead of being a part of the Singapore Stake. We are all excited about it. After Sacrament Meeting, we went back to the JB Branch for the last hour of meetings and then stayed after for Choir practice (Dave -not me!) and to help decorate the Christmas tree. This coming week, the Australian couple are coming over to spend the night with us and to go see the Christmas lights in Singapore. The Gregory's also may come over. Later this week, the Johnsons (serving in Butterworth, W. Malaysia) are bringing a new missionary and his family down to stay with us a couple of nights while he gets his Patriarcial Blessing before going to the MTC in Manila. He will be serving in India if he gets his visa (which is looking doubtful). We also get one new missionary from the States. He is a Mandarin speaking Elder. We're not sure why only one as we usually get many at one time, but we will gladly accept him.

We can hardly wait to go see the Christmas decorations at night. They are absolutely beautiful in the daytime, but we understand it is like a fairyland when they are lit up at night. In this country of so many different religions, you hear all our familiar religious Christmas songs being played in all the stores. It is wonderful. People here are very tolerant of each other's beliefs. They love to celebrate everyone's holidays!

Well we need to close as it is almost time to head to the airport to pick up the President, his wife and the AP's from their latest trip!

We love serving a mission for our Heavenly Father and we love every one of you!

Elder and Sister Garrett, mom & dad, grandma & grandpa, relatives, and friends