Elder Brennan Baer: Singapore Mission: Zone conference and past pictures

Hi I'm online, just waiting for transfer news this morning. AAAUGH the suspense!!

Love you all,

Brennan

September 22, 2014

Dear Allayalls,

This week was taken up mostly by Zone Conference. We left on Wednesday at some hour of the morning, which my eyes were too blurry to distinguish on a clock. We got to Singapore with several hours to spare, so we celebrated Elder Christensen (my AMAZING district leader)'s birthday at Baja Fresh, eating the tastiest Mexican food I can remember. We contacted people all along the way to the Stake Center, then to Little India, where I finally found some of my favorite 0.1 size pens! Yay! I realized on the third day in Singapore that I'd written the wrong phone number on the pass-along cards I gave out with the Singapore Chinese Elders' names on them. Hopefully, nobody who calls will be scared away by speaking to the Chinese Sisters instead.

It was great to see old friends, like Elder Wang, Elder Tzeng, Elder Wadsworth, and many others at Zone Conference, but my favorite parts were the trainings we received. I just feel so Spiritually recharged after hearing from President and Sister Mains and their assistants. I had several questions about what to do in certain situations (with a companion, in a lesson, in my studies, etc.) that were answered so well by what I learned at Zone Conference. The coolest thing is that I believe I was doing something right because I learned more from what I felt than from what the speakers said.

Training has been going very well lately. I've been making so much progress and I'm sure Elder South is proud of me. I'm not the best learner, at times, but Elder South is a fantastic trainer!! If I've learned one thing this transfer, it's that obedience is key! I don't know how many times the Lord has tried to get it through my thick skull that He's completely willing to bless me and the people I work with as long as I'm obedient. I felt that I was totally convinced of that at the beginning of my mission, but that I'd slowly been losing sight of the fact. I've not been blatantly disobedient, but Elder South has helped me realize some of my bad habits, and is truly helping me to overcome them. xI like being his companion because he doesn't just help me see where I can improve, but he actively builds me up and is right there with me as I try to repent and become better. He has fixed firmly in his mind a vision of the person he wants to be and the companionship we have the potential to become, and we are working toward it together!

What Else do you want to know? I'm happy to write to you, but in the sweat of emailing and suspense of waiting for transfer news, I'm prone to forget. let me know!

Love,

Brennan

Photos:

Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrated at Family Home Evening by lighting lanterns. We also floated the kind of lanterns that you see in Tangled, but I couldn't get any good pictures of those. Sorry!

Oh yeah, we went to Kapit, this little jungle town down about 3 hours upriver of Sibu last Monday. It was quite an adventure to take the express river boats, try not to get distracted by the Kung Fu movies playing on board, arrive at a dock along the forested river bank, walk through a crowded market full of things I thought no one would ever buy, pack into a "bus," travel through the mountains (mountains, what?! okay, they were tall hills), and teach a long-time member family at their room in a longhouse in the jungle!

Here are few pictures of the trip!

Scenes of riverside life in Sarawak