A New Year

hey guys...happy new year!

     it was kind of lonely without you guys ha ha but we had fun.  sabar dulu.  your email was interesting.  all of our ap's served for their last few months so they die as ap.  your schedule was pretty similair to ours.  its interesting.  we don't get out as early as you did. and our meal times are very flexible.  thanks for the camera info mama.  i'm thinking i'll go with the sony one...maybe.  its like 400 sing dollar or something.  maybe less.  i don't know how that compares.  your new years party sounded fun.  

     well to be honest this week had it's ups and downs.  in one day we lost all of our best investigators.  they just texted us and told us that "the mormons" wasn't for them.  so we didn't even get a chance to really talk it out with them which is frustrating.  it was way sad.  very depressing.  ahhhhhh man.  so we had terrible numbers this week.  but it helped motivate us to do better.  seriously we made a resolve to do good this next week.  we just put a 16 year old named Melvin on baptismal date.  so that is good.

     right now we are working on a project commisioned by President Clark.  we are retranslating about 30 primary songs from indo to Malay.  a lot of the indo translations are fine for malay, but a lot of them have changed meanings and have better words in malay.  so me and elder dass are going through and working on that.  when we are done they are going to be sung and recorded to give to every branch in the mission.  its way cool.  i'm glad i get to help.  and i've re-realized that the primary songs are so awesome.  i love them.  i get distracted when we are working because i just start to go off singing them.  on saturday we went to another ward's baptismal service.  for the closing song we sang "i'm trying to be like Jesus".  it was so good.  primary songs are just so simple yet profound.  so simple a primary kid can understand it yet so deep that they explain clearly all gospel principles.  and they are all catchy.  they're great.  i don't know how you can't feel the spirit when singing some of them like "a child's prayer" or "i'm trying to be like jesus" or "he sent his son" or many more.  awesome.

     so on new year's eve we had a lesson at marina bay at 7:00.  after that we were in the heart of the sinapore parties so we went and checked it out.  now singapore had some dirty parties to be sure.  but where we went was open to the public and kind of family driven.



we went to that huge bay where i sent pictures before. there is the merlion and the casino that looks like 3 towers with a boat on top and the singapore flyer and beautiful city skyline.  

in the huge bay there were about 20,000 white inflatable balls floating on the water.  throughout december people could write their wishes for 2011 on them.  they shined lights on all of the buildings and also on these balls that would later coordinate with the fireworks.  we stayed there till about 9:00.  we were seriously considering staying till 12:00.  we hadn't heard that we couldn't





and the show was supposed to be huge.  but we decided it could get crazy and themrtwould be way crowded after so we headed home.  at home we had sparkling cider as a gift from one of the members.  so right before 12:00 you could hear people in their homes saying happy new year! because everyone's watches are different.  but when it was 12:00 on my watch (i did my own countdown) i opened our window and yelled as loud as i could and banged a pot with a big spoon.  ha ha ha you can see many towers of the condo complex and lots of people went to their window to see who was making so much noise.  elder dass was so surprised.  ha i was dang loud.  i guess its not a big thing to yell here.anyways then we went down to our pool and sat on the pool chairs and made a toast to 2011.  we went month by month and said the highlights of 2010.  it was good times. 2010 was such a huge year for me and for our family.  2011 will be 12 solid months on the mission and i want it to be amazing.  i'm looking forward to this year. 

     so thats the news here.  did you get my picture cd from elder garrett? did you ever get a movie from the mission office?  have a happy new year.  what time is church?  say bye to james for me.  jaynanne, give him a kiss from me...ha ha. i emailed him today.  he will be great.  how are the jazz? oskar update me. let me know if anything crazy cool happens.  kalau say mati sebelum kita berjumpa, saya mau kamu membakar semua barang ku.  bye!

elder petersen