Getting the Hang of Singapore

Wooo! Another week gone. 

I'm really getting the hang of Singapore, and developing some relationships with terrific people. The Ang Mo Kio ward is going to be my second home by the time I'm outta here. 

This week we had to take over the entire ward's investigators and less actives because the sister missionaries were taken out of Ang Mo Kio!! So now we've got a few more investigators and a couple of families. We're excited about that, and so this week we spent our time getting to know them, serving them, and we even went all Sister-missionary for a bit and made cookies for them. Dang it..... hahaha! One of them came to church this week because her little daughter said, "I want to go see gege (older brother in Chinese, which is what she called me after I visited once and loved me lol)!!" So she got her mom and younger sister to come even though they were 45 mintues late.  

Well, we have been going like crazy and trying to make the most of our time. I figure that if the Lord put me into a truly difficult area for the last bit of my mission, then I'd better show Him I'm serious about this whole Discipleship and enduring to the end thing and work as hard as I ever have. So many times I'll be at a bus stop and see people, not really wanting to go talk to them, and then I'll say to myself "I've got a message that is going to make you so flipping happy!" and I go talk to them. Hahah It's a lot of fun with a lot of rejections. But hey, like Cectpa C learned and taught so powerfully, rejection is a part of life. In fact, it's often a tool Heavenly Father uses to guide us to that which is better and best for us. 

Funny story for this week. Our church building is shared by 3 wards, Bedok, AMK, and the 4th Ward (one of the Expat wards). This week, each ward had a baptism! Bedok had a convert, and both AMK and 4th wards baptized 8 year olds. I was asked to speak at the baptism in AMK which was fun. :) But the real thing I wanted to share is that we WEREN'T informed that 4th ward had a baptism at 3:30. We had ours at 4, and Bedok at 11. So when we show up at 2:30 to fill the font, we saw that the Bedok ward had left it filled. No problem, draining it takes 30 minutes, filling takes another 45, great, we can do that in time for 4 o'clock. The water was cold and so we felt like switching it. So we did, and about 3:00, an expat walks in and asks if the font is full. Then we realize that WE DRAINED THE FONT AND THERE WASN'T ENOUGH TIME FOR THEIR BAPTISM AT 3 30. D'oh!! We blew it! But no one informed us!! hahah We felt terrible. SO, we got Ryan Lau (the baptizee) and his sibling to help us fill buckets with water and chuck it into the font as the pipes were filling it, too. hahah! It was a lot of fun, but our buckets actually hindered the water flow (the same pipe connected the faucets lol). We just left it running all the way until we started to see white people come down from the chapel, then we hurriedly shut off the pipe and hopeddddddddddd it was deep enough. Oh so funny.

Today for p-day I'm going to Pulau Ubin (a small island off the coast of Singapore) for my birthday excursion... :) I haven't mentioned to any of the missionaries that it's my birthday, but hopefully I can have a great time today!!

Well, life is good, I'm working hard and feeling great! I know this is all real. I know God loves us and is doing all things for our good - though what we can see from our limited perspectives might not give us the full picture.  

Love you all!!!

Elder Clay Coleman