To Singapore in Style. . .

MOM!

     Singapore was amazing of course!   We got to the Kuching airport sixty minutes before the flight took off--it was at like 5 a.m.--what do you expect? The baggage lines were soooo long.  They refuse to speak Malay on the announcements and will only speak broken English, so we can never understand what they are saying. They announced that the flight was closing and that if anyone was in line, they needed to come up to the front of the line right now.  We, of course, didn’t understand that part!  SO, by the time we got to the front of the line, we had just 15 minutes before the flight was set to leave. They told us that the flight was closed and that we had to go to the ticket lady to get a new ticket. After talking to the ticket lady, she said that she wanted 350 RM for a "no show fee", 150 RM for a “switch fee”, and 50 RM because the new ticket was more expensive. WHAT!!!!  Something that I've learned on my mission is to ask questions that cause the investigators to have to ponder the question. So, very calmly I asked, "Wait, you want us to pay all that extra money, because you made poor announcements that we couldn’t understand.  Plus, you only had three people working when you should have had ten people working, so the lines were out the door. Does that seem fair to you?" The lady looked at me for a little bit and then was like "No, it’s not very fair…" So, guess what happened?? We got to fly Business Class to Singapore! I got to sit in a big fluffy blue chair and they fed me lamb stew with steamed veggies and Pepsi WITH lime.  Then they gave me a hot towel--I didn’t know what to do with it...but it was still nice!!

   This week was good. We don’t really have any investigators to teach in our new area and we were in Singapore for our meeting, so we didn’t have a lot of time to work in our area.  We did work a lot with some of the less active members this week and that went pretty well. We got four less active members to come to church, so that was pretty good! On Saturday, the APs came for splits and we rode to some apartment flats that were a ways away.  We got hit with some of the hardest rain I have ever been in. It hurt when it hit my face and I could not see a thing! It was pretty crazy! Other than that, nothing too exciting has happened! I'm loving life in Kuching; it’s a great place to be!! Hopefully I will be here a while! I love you mom and miss you!

Elder Madsen

P.S.  I want the skull pic as my plaque picture....(I asked Mike what picture he wanted on his missionary plaque—yes, it is still not done—and this is the picture he wants. Martha)

 

Brings a whole new meaning to "Bored to death!"