Funnies!

     On Mother’s Day, we had the wonderful opportunity to Skype with Elder Madsen.  A couple of hours of talking produced a lot more insightful stories than a weekly email.  What follows is some of the more humorous stories—the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

    We asked Elder Madsen if he would ever like to serve in the mission home in Singapore.  With a definite head shake of "No", he explained that other than the AP’s the only elders that serve in the mission home are those that have excellent computer skills.  The Singapore Mission covers more than a thousand miles, so keeping tract of housing and paying the bills is quite a chore—one best done by a computer geek (aka: someone under the age of 25).   Ostensibly, this is a well-known fact because none of the missionaries will admit to having computer skills!  Michael told the story of a new missionary who wasn’t aware of the computer geek potential and therefore let it slip that he was really good on the computer.  This elder was immediately transferred to the mission home and remained there for nine months.  He worked with the previous mission president for five months and then stayed on an additional four months to help the new mission president get acclimated to the daily business of running the mission.  Apparently, neither the new mission president nor the newly assigned senior couple were computer geeks; therefore, many errors were made which ended up financially enhancing certain Malay landlords’ bank accounts.   This humble elder did not want to point out the errors to his leaders, so after everyone went to bed, he would spend several hours each night hacking into mission accounts in order to make the corrections.  This elder told Michael that the four months he spent working with the new mission president were the most stressful months of his entire life!

      Elder Wong is a native missionary that Elder Madsen knew in Miri.  Elder Wong’s primary language is Chinese, but he practices his limited English skills on his American companions. Quite out of the blue, Elder Wong started randomly saying “end quote” at the end of his sentences.  This really confused the other elders as they had no idea why Elder Wong continually used that phrase. However, the light turned on as the missionaries were watching a videotape of general conference.  Elder Wong was simply imitating his church leaders; therefore, he thought that he was supposed to say “end quote” after every sentence!

      We asked Elder Madsen about his love for the tribal Iban people.  Once Michael stopped laughing, we learned that our pronunciation of Iban (which we unquestionably pronounced the same way one would pronounce “ipod” and “iTunes”) was completely incorrect.  The correct pronunciation is e(long e) ban(short a). Who knew?  Thanks to  Apple, I never considered that there would be any other way to pronounce a word beginning with the letter "i".  

     

     Although internet sources say that as of 1930 the Iban people no longer practice headhunting, one has to ask what to do with all those extra skulls laying around.  Skull chandelier anyone?

Martha