MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Christmas will finally be here in just two more days, Malaysian time or three more days if you live in the states.  We'll let you all know how Christmas is so you won't have to get up early and wonder. One of the advantages of being almost a day ahead of you in the states.  We know the future before you do.

We had a wonderful conference in Singapore.  Singapore is decorated a whole lot for Christmas.  It can really get you in the Christmas spirit if it weren't for the fact that you are wiping sweat off your face every two minutes and the air is so think with humidity a frog would strangle.  Other than that, you would think you were right back home in the cold and snow.  While at the conference we were able to meet Elder Wiberg from Roy!!!  His grandparents are Dean and Beverly Wiberg whom some of you might remember.

Elder Wiberg is just fresh off the plane.  He is a member of our niece Michelle Rich's ward and had warned, oops, advised us off his coming.  It was so good to see a Royite.  Welcome to the Singapore mission Elder Wiberg.

We were in charge of a senior service project for the senior missionaries while we were there.  We made some fleece lap blankets.  Do you know how hard it is to find fleece in Malaysia?  They look at you like "why in the world would you want anything made of fleece here".  Couldn't find any in Malaysia but was able to find some in Singapore, on sale even for 1/2 price (I think they wanted to get rid of fleece) and then they gave me an extra 15% off of that price to take it off their hands.  Good deal for us.

This is Elder and Sister Yeates from Virginia holding up some of the finished blankets.    Here we are delivering them to the rest home which was right next door to out church:

LtoR:  Elder and Sister Read, Elder and Sister Yeates, Elder and Sister Hodder (from Canada eh), Sister Crookston (don't know what happened to Elder Crookston), Elder and Sister Lee, Sister Howell (don't know what happened to Elder Howell, must be with Elder Crookston) and Elder and Sister Marteeny from Malad Idaho.

Some of the residents of the rest home.  Don't they look just thrilled to see us.  They had been waiting for us to come for over an hour.  Communication in time broke down between English and Singaporean.

We also put together some goodie kits for the children in the cancer unit of the big hospital there:

Most of the Elders took on this task as they didn't think they could tie knots in the blankets.

We had two parties to attend last night, Saturday.  The first one was for Cheshire Homes, a home for the physically and mentally challenged.  LDS Charities supplies wheelchairs for several of their homes throughout Malaysia.

This is a shot of the Cheshire Homes buildings and grounds.  They had invited a lot of people, I guess the families of the residents and others.  There were a lot of children running around and they had a whole lot of food, games and fun.  In the bottom shot, you can see some of the goodies they gave everyone:  a real cool santa hat with a flashing light, a glow stick with three different colors and you could change the lights from flashing, to blinking to running.  Kind of a neat little glow stick I thought.  The girl next to me wasn't as excited about her glow stick as I was about mine.

We had to leave this party early to go to the KK1 Branch Christmas party.  They had a program before eating:

The Relief Society singing their Christmas number.  And then the Elders' Quorum put on a skit about the first Christmas and sang:

Sorry.  Don't know why it came out on its side.  The skit was hilarious.  I couldn't decide if it was too sacreligious or not, but it was funny and everyone got a big kick out of it.

Everyone brought goodies to share.  This is what we took:

A big plate of cookies and candies, a big bowl of caramel corn and some bags of rice.  The rice was given to us by the good village people of Budok Bui, about 30# of it.  We decided to share cause there's no way we are going to eat 30# of rice.  Besides, it's the kind of rice you use for porridge and I don't make rice porridge.

The lady in the middle is Sis. Josie.  She makes the most amazing cakes.  In fact, that is her business and livelihood.  She made this cake for the party.  It is a smaller version of her most famous Chocolate cake.  The bigger version has 48 eggs in it.  This one only had 30.  It is soooo goooood.  On the left is Sis. Cabella and on the right is Sis. Dorcas.

Well we want to wish everyone a
     Very Merry Christmas.  We miss you all so very much especially at this time of year.  We are quite homesick right now.  Drop us a line if you get the chance.  Love you all  E/S Read