It's Conference Time

Greetings Saudara and Saudari -  we have had a very interesting and fun week.  Senior Conference is one of our favorite mission activities.  They occur every three months.  We have to have them every three months in order to get our VISA's chopped for another 90 days.  All the senior missionaries in the Singapore mission meet for 1 1/2 days of instruction and FUN.  We flew into Singapore on Monday.  On Tuesday we had a conference with all the missionaries in the KK, KL and Ipoh districts.  It was fun to see old friends and former young missionaries who served in KK again:

 This is Sis. Wilson.  She is the trained opera singer and stayed with us in our apartment with her companion for about 3 weeks til they could get in their own apartment.  She will be leaving in May and will be attending BYU for a masters in Opera Performance.  What a voice!

A fellow Royal -- Elder Wyberg from Roy.  Michelle and Wendell will definitely recognize him.  Tell his mother he is doing great and looking so fine.

 Pizza for lunch.  Box after box after box of pizza.  All gone in about 15 minutes.  We really enjoyed the pizza though too.  Very very close to American pizza.  When cleaning up, I saw this sign in the kitchen:

I just laughed and laughed as I imagined someone standing out there with their big bag of garbage and swinging it around and around their head and then letting it fly at the big bin.  Some things suffer in translation.

Sorry for the angle.  This is the Singapore Stake Center where we hold our meetings.  It has four floors and two chapels.  When the church first bought this building for a stake center, it was just a one story "needing lots of work" building.  Now it is big and lovely.  The Singapore Stake has 28 missionaries serving.  WOW!  Good for them.

For the evening fun a group of us went to Arab Street.  It is such a quaint street.  The architecture is all old Arabian.  At the end of the street is this beautiful mosque:

Last time in Singapore we ate on this street and had Arabian food.  This time we ate on this street again, (well we didn't actually eat ON the street.  We did show some American class and actually ate in a restaurant on this street).  This time we chose a Turkish restaurant and the food was really wonderful.

Down the left side:  Elder and Sis. Boyd (people are always stopping her in airports and asking if she is Elizabeth Taylor.  Does look like her I think); Elder Beard and Sis. Kelsey.  Right side:  Elder and Sis. Read, Sis. and Elder Crookston, Sis. Beard and Sis. Huff.

The next morning we went with E/S Crookston to Sentosa Island.  Sentosa Island is a big playground/disney type area.  They have many different activities to do over there including a miniature Universal Studios.  We took these tram cars over to the island:

Riding the tram car with E/S Crookston

A view of Singapore from the tram car.  Singapore is such an amazing city and this is just a part of the skyline and the harbor area.

This is the Merlion, the symbol of Singapore.  Of course we had to go into the Merlion.  It is about 14 stories tall and you can see forever up on top.  That's me in the white shirt in the back with Sis. Crookston in front in the blue shirt.

 Here we are on the top of the Merlion's head with the Singapore harbor in the background.

Now we are in the Merlion's mouth.  There are actually 38 teeth inside this mouth, but I didn't know that til I was out and I didn't want to hike back up to count lion teeth.  I'll just take their word for it.

This is a scary dragon.  See his red eyes behind us, see how frightened and terrified I am.  I got over it and had a great time on Sentosa Island.  We look forward to our next trip to Singapore in June.

We have a busy week coming up.  On Tuesday we will have district meeting with all our elders and sisters.  On Thursday and Friday Elder Hong with the 70 will be coming.  Sis. Mains has asked that I feed 12 people on Thursday night and the prepare a snack break for everyone (about 35 people) on Friday and pack 6 sack lunches for Pres and Sis Mains, Elder and Sis Hong and the AP's to take with them when they leave the meeting Friday at 1.  We're going shopping tomorrow to buy everything we will need.  It's a good thing I like cooking and it is the one thing I can do semi-right on this mission.

We  of course love and miss you all. God bless you all.  Please send us emails.  E/S Read