good thing it wasn't the goldfish!

Hello everyone! Wow it has been an insane week! The Open House was so successful! They published an article on it in the newspaper the day after! You should look it up, it's in the Straits Times or something like that. Anyway, we had over a thousand non-members come during the day, over 300 people left their phone numbers, and about 40 left requests to learn more! That translates into Sister Howard and Sister Norton being assigned to the Ang Mo Kio Ward temporarily, on top of the Expat Ward! You wouldn't even believe how excited I am! We'll be so busy! It will be amazing! We met with our first appointment from all that yesterday, Gordon. He has such strong faith and he's excited to be meeting with us and learning about the gospel. It's amazing, if you open the avenue to talk about God and faith here in Singapore, some people jump right on that and just share so many tender things about their life with you. I feel so blessed to have had some of the conversations we've had with people here. Just like this wonderful lady we met on Monday night at Harbour Front. We were just going around talking to people as usual, and she opened up to us and told us about a lot of struggles in her life and we shared our beliefs and testimonies with her. We talked for almost a half hour and then had to leave, she wasn't interested in learning more about the gospel, but it was an amazing experience just to be able to talk to her. She shared her email address with me just so I could send her this amazing video: https://lds.org/pages/moments?lang=eng&cid=email-shared. (You should watch it too!) Hopefully we'll keep in touch.

Back to the Open House. It was exhausting. We were there from 8 am to 9 pm! I don't think I could have handled being a visitor center sister. Props to them, it's tough work! It is amazing to have people asking you about the gospel though. We had a lot of great lessons to people who were sincerely interested about our Church. And I'm not scared of singing in public anymore! It felt like I was singing ALL DAY. By the MRT to invite people, in the chapel as people came in, for a half hour before the VIP section...it was really neat.

Mmmm what else? Oh here's a step backwards...one of our investigators is not really learning anymore...her dad burned her copy of the Book of Mormon :( That was kind of rough. But the work goes on right? Hopefully she'll get the chance to learn more someday if she's still interested.

I still love being a missionary! I feel like I'm forgetting a thousand things to tell you all! But I love you and am so grateful for you and your support and examples to me! Jaga diri!

Sayang!

Sister Norton

HFI

Alison Wong and Sister Norton.

Alison is a WONDERFUL friend and recent convert who helped with the Open House.

have a good mormon night!

So I've developed this bad habit of holding bowls whenever I'm eating from one. Blame it on China, blame it on my current circumstance, whatever. It's just easier to shovel food in that way. I'm currently in a bet with an elder to see who can lose 5 kilos in a month so I was being so rajin this week and eating oatmeal for breakfast. I made myself a bowl with a deliciously ripe banana, blessed it, picked it up, and it fell right out of my hand, landing face down on the table. I didn't even get to eat any of it! So that explains the picture of the upside down bowl. I was just relieved that it didn't land on our handphone.

This week has been crazy. Frustrating, exhausting, exciting, busy...basically an average week. We're getting ready for the open house of the new Compassvale Chapel! We had printed somewhere over a thousand fliers in past weeks to pass out to members and their friends, so this week we decided to add in another 6,000 or so, and see where that gets us. We're getting a huge response from the community. The Straights Times even called the office the other day! It's going to be this Saturday from 10 am-8 pm. The missionaries are in charge of the baptismal font room. I had a cool idea for it and offered to help...bad idea! I am my mother's daughter. So my poor companion has had to endure through us being temporary "office sisters" this week. It's coming together though and we might have it ready by Saturday...hopefully. I'm just still waiting on the bonsai trees and bamboo lamps that I suggested to come in. Oh yeah, and the iPads. No one ever takes me seriously! I was also joking about a flat screen tv to play our Mormon Message on baptism, but I was informed that the Young Men have already reserved it for their room. Wha?! Singapore! It will be so cool though! The deputy prime minister of Singapore will be there! If not the prime minister himself! And I will be singing for them with Elder Nowland! I'm pretty excited about that.

As you'll see in the pictures, we laid back with a bit of kite flying and quidditch for p-day today. I don't think anyone thought we were crazy at all. We had quite the audience at that park.

Contacting on the MRT and in other parts of town is going at about the same pace. Sister Howard sat down next to a man the other day, said "hello", and he asked her, "What, do you just talk to people on the MRT all day for fun??" So uhhh we're still pushing for member referrals :) Honestly, it's been really tough. We decided to set our goals higher than we believed we could achieve after we talked to the zone leaders and it was amazing to see Heavenly Father helping us achieve them once we turned our plans over to Him. So, we've got three new investigators from this past week! Rose is from the Philippines. She was chatting with a member of the church online, they gave her the address of the church and told her to go check it out. So she showed up on Sunday and she LOVED it! We have appointments to teach her for the next few Sundays! Remember the man who we bumped into last week who had been praying and then we showed up at Harbour Front? Well he's on date to be baptized now! It's amazing how much truth he's already found on his own and to see it coming together for him in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that this church has the fullness of God's truth. I feel so lucky to be sharing that with people!

Cody and Karli! I love you both so much and wish I could be there for your wedding this weekend! I know that you two have such a great life ahead of you! Welcome to the family, Karli! Although you know we've loved you just like you were already in it for awhile now :) Congratulations!

Hugs and kisses to all my family in town for the wedding. I love you all and will miss seeing you and spending time with you!

Hope you all have a great week! Thank you for your uplifting comments, emails, letters, pictures...I love them, and I love you!!

Sister Norton

HFI

you're crazy, wildcat!

My companion's high school mascot was a wildcat. I'll send an instant egg to whoever can guess which movie I'm quoting all the time!

WELCOME HOME ELDER LYONS!! I'm glad to hear that you're doing good :) I'm sure Wisconsin is already missing you!

So....remember how I've said I've got some humbling experiences ahead of me? We had some this past week! I can't tell you how many hours and cab fares were spent on trying to find less-active members and referrals from Salt Lake City that apparently don't exist anymore. My poor companion is sick too. After driving around in a cab for an hour in the middle of nowhere, I turned to her and apologized, because I think the lesson to be learned was a little bit of patience and humility for me. Poor Sister Howard, she had to come along on my fun lesson-learning ride.

I didn't go to KL with the trainers of course. Sister Jensen was pretty bummed and so was I. But, Sister Ferg and I got to be the greenies on the loose in Singapore for a few days! We tore up the place. Thursday had to be my favorite contacting day ever. I was proposed to by a man named George. He didn't believe that I was only 21. "You have got to be kidding me! You're older than that! 25 or 28 at least!" And he was not to happy that my purpose was to bring him unto Christ, not to marry him. We did get his number though! Handed it right over to the elders :)

That same night, as we were leaving a members house, I saw a cute cat that I started talking to. Sister Ferg is afraid of cats and was a bit distraught when this cat started following us, and she wasn't watching her steps so she tripped and sprained her ankle. I felt awful!

Alison was baptized on Saturday night! Elders Nowland and Ulrich had been teaching her but she has a pretty long history with the missionaries. She's been meeting with them for three years now, but hadn't had permission from her parents until she turned 21. That night was amazing!! She's already such a strong member.

Highlight of the week: On Sunday night, Sister Howard and I planned on going to Harbour Front to contact a bit. On the way there, we stopped at Clarke Quay, where we never go. There wasn't anything there for us, so we hopped back on the train and went to Harbour Front. The first guy we talked to wasn't so interested, but as we were talking to him, we saw a man staring at us, and when we finished, he basically flagged us down. We introduced ourselves and he told us to sit down. Then he proceeded to tell us that he had been praying for answers about God the night before, he came to the boardwalk to sit and think, and as he was sitting there, he looked over and saw us, "people of God." As you can imagine, I was in shock. Not only was someone not shutting us down completely, but he was telling us that we were an answer to his prayers! I wish I could include everything that we talked about, but I don't have time and I can't do it justice. It reaffirmed my faith that God is going before us, preparing people to hear the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. The message that we had to share with this man meant more than gold to him. He knew that it was special and before we could even ask him to pray to know of its truth, he said, "Well I will ask God tonight." Boom! We're meeting him again on Friday. The church is true baby.

I love you all. You're in my prayers everyday. HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to my daddy and to my Grandpa Merlin, Grandpa Stoney, and Grandpa Austen! I'm the luckiest granddaughter and daughter in the world :)

Love you!

Sister Norton

HFI

... were you aware that eating lots of curry could take years off of you? Yep, change your hair and eye color too!

... can you get pneumonia on the equator?

Hey Mom ~ Thanks for sending the comments you received from Grandma & Grandpa, Sister Molloy, Sister Wunderli, and Sister White. I love you all so much and appreciate your support and love! It's been a pretty hard week, so it was such a blessing to open up my email today and read all of your sweet comments. Grandma Dionne, I didn't know Grandma Zola liked to sing! You know how much I can't wait to meet her someday :) Diana, I am assigned to the Singapore 1st Expat ward. It's a pan-island assignment so I'm all over the place. In a usual day I'm out to Pasir Ris, over to Jurong East, up to the Woodlands, by Orchard, and then we live over by Little India in Boon Keng. Thank goodness for the MRT. Most importantly, Callie, whom I sang with at Michelle’s baptism, is amazing. Everyone needs to look her up on YouTube please! ~ Callie Moore, you'll love her too!

Stoney buddy! Bonjour! How is your French coming along? Hopefully better than mine...I love you bud. I'll send you some cool pictures soon. Jenna Douglass, send me your address please. And Kimmy Lane....what in the world?? I haven't heard from you since I left the MTC.

Ok. It's been a hard week like I said. We've been here for a little over five weeks now. It's been so wonderful to work with Michelle in helping her prepare for baptism and to be able to see that happen for her. Now we're helping Benjamin, and hopefully he'll be getting baptized at the end of the month. We've met so many wonderful people, but Singapore is a very interesting area...contacting, we are finding is not an affective use of time. (For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, this is where we go to public places, approach people, get to know them a little bit and share a little bit about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Then we ask them if they'd be interested in learning more. Usually they say they'll call us back if they're interested, and that never happens.) The members here are so strong, the people to whom they've extended an invitation to learn more are like a billion times more likely to progress towards baptism. There are some members who have been on fire with missionary work (Callie Moore and her husband included), but it's very hard to get referrals otherwise. What we'd like is to have no time to contact or "find" on the street because we're so busy teaching member's referrals :) It's not happening yet...but we've got plans….and it's going to happen :) And if anyone else has some great ideas about how to get referrals from members, feel free to send them this way.

In other news, it's not supposed to be rainy season, but it's rained non-stop this past week. We have to walk a good distance to get to the MRT and then from the MRT to church, so by the time I got there on Sunday, I honestly had to wring out my clothes. Three hours of air-con church...and I was frozen!! I'm gaining quite the reputation as the sister who is always freezing. I have a reserved part of the room for district meeting, far away from the air con. Oh ... and also I taught a short lesson on eternal families to a 6'1" Russian supermodel on the MRT a few days ago. Not intimidating at all.

We're still meeting with Michelle for her recent-convert lessons. We were quite worried for the week after her baptism because she kept canceling on us and we were pretty sure something was up. We finally were able to meet with her last night, and found out she's just been super stressed because she has moved up her date to move back to China...to JULY 10. So....we've got a lot of ground to cover. She's in the middle of packing and resigning from her job, but we were all so happy that we found time to meet last night, the Spirit was once again there in so much abundance, as it always is with Michelle. We were able to give her a book of remembrance to record the experiences of learning about the gospel, her baptism, and to get her started on her family history, getting her on track to go to the Hong Kong temple in one year. Temples are something that Michelle connects with so much. When we showed her the picture of the Hong Kong temple, her eyes lit up. "That's our temple?! Someday I think they'll have one in PRChina." Yeah yeah me too, Michelle! Oh it was so awesome. So, she'll move back to Chengdu soon, and then she'll move to Shanghai after a while to continue her studies. She is determined to stay strong in Chengdu, where she won't be able to attend a church service. She's such an inspiration to me. Her prayers are so full of faith. I still can't believe how blessed I am to have met her so soon in the mission. I've learned so much from her that has really built my faith.

Ready for the coolest story of my week? I bought a suitcase on the side of the street on the way home a few nights ago. The second I got it on the MRT, I started playing with the combo that locked the zippers. Of course I messed it up and locked it without seeing what the code was. The whole train was cracking up as I was standing there laughing so hard that I was almost in tears. I consider this quite the feat. No one shows emotion like that in public. Hello we're in ASIA. So, these two Chinese girls were laughing at me and Sister Howard started talking to them. They spoke no English so I hopped in and started talking to them about my broken suitcase. They of course wanted to know how I knew Mandarin and what I was doing there, so I pulled out our name card and showed them. It has a picture of Christ on it. One of the girls saw Christ and just flipped out, saying how she heard about how He died for us on the cross and how easy that makes her heart feel and how touching she thought it was and she wanted to learn more. CAN! I haven't been able to remember how to ask for a phone number in Chinese. So simple, so pathetic, I know. But of course I remembered just in time. She scribbled her number down as she was rushing to get off the train at her stop before they closed the doors. It was so killer! So, she's a referral for the Chinese elders now. Heaven knows I can't teach in Mandarin. But it was so cool to know that we were on that train with her at that time for a reason. And I bought the stupid suitcase and broke it for a reason. God has a plan for everything.

I love you all and hope you have the most incredible week!!

Sister Norton

HFI

Below are some very kind words received from Callie Moore last week regarding Mikelle's roll in Michelle's baptism. Thank you for keeping us updated Callie! Bless you!

Hi! My name is Callie Moore. I am a ward missionary in the Singapore 1st ward where your lovely daughter is serving her mission :). First off, I just want to tell you that Sister Norton is an absolutely amazing missionary! You have so much to be proud of! When I sat through a discussion with her teaching an investigator for the first time I thought she had been out on her mission for a long time. I can't believe this is her first area of only a month or so. Her thoughts and insight are so beautiful and her testimony is so strong and pure.

We have been teaching a girl named Michelle for the last month. She is from China and came to the church with very little knowledge of any of the doctrine. Sister Norton always gives visual examples and analogies that make perfect sense and explains things in such a clear way. Several times I could see Michelle's face as a concept that she had a hard time understanding just clicked after Sister Norton would explain it. The last discussion before Michelle's baptism date was about the prophet Joseph Smith. The sisters explained the story and answered her questions. After thinking for a few minutes, Michelle asked "Do you really believe this happened?" with a hint of surprise. We all briefly explained that we really do believe it happened. Then Sister Norton proceeded to bear a beautiful testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, saying that everything in the church comes down to this. If Joseph Smith lied about what he saw, then nothing in the church is valid. If he told the truth, then this is the everlasting gospel and the only full truth on earth. She talked about how many people may think she is crazy for giving up her personal life and ambitions for 18 months to serve a mission, but that she is making that sacrifice because she knows without a doubt that this gospel is true and that Joseph Smith saw what he said he saw. After hearing all of this Michelle thought to herself for a moment, then the sisters asked her if it made sense to her and if she thought this story could possibly be true. What she said was "I trust what Sister Norton said. She is making this sacrifice because she believes it, and I trust her. I hope that I can come to believe as well." What a beautiful act of faith inspired by a sincere testimony!

Last Saturday Michelle was baptized and I was asked to sing for her baptism. I love singing and I always prefer harmonies over performing solo. By now the rumor has spread far and wide that Sister Norton has a lovely voice! :) So I asked her to sing with me. Here is the video! ♡ Callie

(Note from Mikelle's Mom: Sorry, I am unable to load the video "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" in the format in which it was received ... just know that Callie has an amazing voice and Sister Norton did a beautiful job harmonizing with her :) Thanks again Callie! (You can check out Callie Moore on youtube.com! )

good thing there was a banana!

...it was late at night. I don't know why I said that about an area where we had been contacting all day.

I just got back from a great p-day at Pulau Ubin! It's this jungly island place right off the coast. We went biking there today and it was so beautiful! I got a little bike training "Singapore Mission" style. Basically, dodge wild dogs, boars, children....and then there's the side kick to fend off the aforementioned dogs, boars, children...it's great fun!

It's been the best week! MICHELLE'S BAPTISM WENT THROUGH!!! Oh it was the happiest day ever. Seriously. I'm learning that the bad days make you appreciate the good ones, and the good ones make you completely forget about the bad ones. This was one of those. The whole week leading up to it was a little stressful. There was a lot of fasting and praying for Michelle to feel the truthfulness of the message of the Restoration. And she did. Enough to get to the next step at least. We knew that her faith would result in an even greater witness after the baptism and boy were we right. The program was wonderful. The Hancock's spoke, Callie and I sang (did she send you the video?) and Brother Webb baptized her. When she came up out of the font, she was glowing. We went back to talk to her and she said, "I feel so fresh! Like I'm born again!" And then here was my favorite quote from her that night...we gave her a picture of Christ in a frame and letters of our testimonies and our love for her. When Michelle saw the picture, she froze, and with tears in her eyes said, "I feel so peaceful when I look at this. I feel like He loves me." It was the best!!! Seriously. Just a rush of pure joy. I know that He does love her, that's why it's so great! She finally felt what we've felt about His love for her this whole time! It totally solidified my belief in Ether 12:6. I know that faith is huge. And it has to be acted on. But if we act on that faith, that hope for something better, we will receive a witness and know of the truth.

We have a few new investigators too! Mr. Yong! He's hilarious. This little old Chinese guy. And Tomoko. She's a girl from Thailand about our age. And Sikiel! Oh we love Sikiel. I got to teach in Malay for the first time because of him. He's from Sabah and he's just like a little angel. We're really excited about all of them. There's more to tell obviously, but I can't ever think of what to write in the time I have, so sorry you'll just be stuck with a tiny little glimpse every week. It's like 10x better than this email. Maybe even more. I just don't have time. Sorry. I love being a missionary! I love everyone of you too! Hope that all is well.

Kasih,

Sister Norton

HFI

PS ~ The bishop in my ward is Bishop Nef. He has a son returning from a mission this week whose name is Kelson Nef. Kelson Nef was in my freshman ward at BYU! Crazy!!

My first baptism! Michelle is so incredible!

lemonade stand la

(speaking Singlish: everything ends in la :)

Sister Jensen and I in KL