Merry Christmas!

Halo keluarga saya,

I can't believe I'm writing home again already! The weeks here have really started to pick up and things are going better everyday. I guess the first piece of exciting news is that Elder Merrill and I should be having our first baptism on Saturday! Hooray! Her name is M***, and she's super awesome. She's a Singaporean here in her twenties. Really friendly and very funny. She's been learning for over a year now, but she's finally made the decision to go ahead and be baptized. It's so exciting to see how excited she is about it, and to be looking forward to performing my first baptism ever this weekend. So it looks like everything is going to go through alright. Very, very exciting.

I've had a good week besides that as well! The people we taught this week first of all were a lot more consistent in showing up for appointments, but were also just some of the very most receptive people I've met the whole time I've been here. One of the most notable is a Myanmar lady named R ***. We met her through J***, our other investigator from Myanmar, and so far she's been on fire. Just a week ago she hadn't heard anything at all about the church, and now she's reading the Book of Mormon everyday (even taking it to work to read on breaks) and meeting with us a couple of times every week. Sometimes it just looks like people are ready for the gospel. She's actually a nurse too, Mom, which kind of feels like a connection back home. Her life has been really tough lately (both of her parents are very ill, one in the last stages of cancer, another with kidney failure. Her brother who stays here in Singapore just got married to someone she doesn't really get along with, and she's having some trouble finding a place to stay here at all), but instead of letting all those things make her bitter, she's tried to just turn everything over to God. It's awesome, and it looks like she's just ready. So we'll see where things go with her. Very exciting.

It's beginning to feel a lot more like Christmas here, although you wouldn't know it by just looking around here in Singapore. It's a much smaller deal than I thought before here in Singapore. In fact, it seems like whatever decorations there are put up anywhere are just designed to advertise sales happening at one of the many, many malls here. You'd think it'd be a bigger deal here with all the revenue it's bound to bring in for all the malls, but apparently most people just don't celebrate.

I'm picking up little pieces of Singaporean slang now. The big word I've started using now is "can." A lot of times here, the affirmative answer instead of being "yes", will just be "can," as in the sentence, "Hey, do you want to go to the park today? Can!" "Will you take this picture for me? Can!" or, "Would it be alright if we met on Thursday? Yeah, can, can!" It actually sounds kind of nice. One we should consider bringing home.

Anyway, things are still going awesome here. I'm working hard and learning more everyday. We're meeting people to teach, and our teaching is going better. Aaaand we have our first baptism this weekend. Awesome!

Hey, thanks to everybody out there who sent me Christmas letters. It makes suuuch a difference to hear from you all, and I really, really do appreciate it. It may take me a little while to get back to you all, but I'm planning on it! Thanks so much. I love you all so so much! Hope everything is still going well! Talk to you soon!

Love,Elder Blissett (Kevin)

P.S. Hey! I did meet Sister Nielson! Awesome to have a connection back home!