Week 15 -- A very, very sad time in the Singapore Mission.

I assumed you'd hear from other sources, so I'll tell you that there was an elder this week who died due to injuries he received when hit by a car. We had a Malaysia/Singapore wide fast yesterday for him, but he passed on last night to serve as a missionary on the other side. It's been very sad for our whole mission, and I'm sure much worse for his family. Luckily, the mission president was in East Malaysia at the time. He is a truly great man. He has so many responsibilities, and he handles them all spectacularly. We have been praying constantly for his family, for his companion and for everyone involved in this sad situation. Anyway, although other things, right now, seem so trivial. I guess I can talk about the rest of the week. We taught some new people, put another guy on date, and even taught an English lesson this week. It was great, but very hard (he's been dropped before), and I did almost all the teaching. We also got a chance to do a service project at a home for disabled people, which was super great. I'm glad we had that opportunity. We painted. One funny thing that happened was I started talking to a Pakistani, and said in Urdu "I know a little Urdu" mostly to make him laugh, so we could talk more, but he just talked to me in Urdu a ton, and I was really confused. There is a cool guy in our branch who has been waiting on a visa to go to his assigned mission in Australia, but it has taken so long, that he'll be starting his mission here this week, along with two Chinese Elders we knew in the MTC and one from Mainland China, I believe. We just got word about transfers, and my friend Elder Mitchell is going to Miri. Elder Frey is opening up Sitiawan with a trainee. Super exciting! Well, I'm looking forward to another week here, and hopefully it'll be great again! Thanks for being such a great family and support to me. Pray for the family of the elder who passed on. -Elder Earl