Baptism!

Micah for got to mention that they have their first baptism planned soon.  Now here for a picture update.

Monkeying around on P Day

This next story is quite a good one.  It was my P-day today so we thought that we would go around Sandakan area and see some of the tourist spots.  One of the most popular spots is call Sepilok Orang Utan Rehabilitation center.  The center is amazing.  It has a lot of Orang Utans that are in the in between stages of rehab and back in the wild.  Basically it consists of taking a short hike on a plank board walk into the jungle and visiting one of the feeding grounds.  The sight was absolutely amazing.  seeing these monkeys flying through the trees so close to you, with no barrier or anything.  After we had spent our time at the feeding ground we started making our way back to the rest area we started at.  By this time all of the people that came to see the monkeys were pretty much gone, so there was only a few people left.  As we were walking on the bridge this family of monkeys came running towards us.  These were not Orang Utans, they were a smaller monkey similar to a baboon.  They were very cute, they would stop and stare at us, just a foot away from you.  We thought this was so cool!  Toward the end of the train of monkeys came the alpha male of the group, about three times the size of the female and with huge teeth.  This one was not so cute, but I decided to take a picture of it anyway.  Once it got close enough I took a picture, then I made the mistake of looking it in the eye.  Within seconds it jumped at me!  Luckily I had enough time to  turn around, so it grabbed onto my back instead of my face.  I tried shaking it off and after about 10 seconds, it was off my back, I started running and it started chasing me.  I was terrified, a monkey had just attacked me.  Because I was ahead of the group when this happened, I was able to run back fast enough to get behind the rest of the group before it jumped at me again.  Instead it jumped at one of my fellow missionaries and missed.  Now we all were about 10 feet away from the thing now.  Four missionaries, and this middle aged British couple.  The British lady was practically in tears she kept on saying "No Bill!  I won’t go any further, I’m mortified."  She was shaking so hard all we could do was laugh quietly, her husband was just laughing out loud.  After a little more of a stare down the monkey left of plank bridge and went off into the jungle.  It was one of the coolest experiences of my mission.  I can now say that I was assaulted by a baboon.  I will share pictures of this next week!

New Talents

It was just last week that elder Browne and I decided that we would travel outside of the city limits and visit some families out there.  We took with us our favorite Filipino buddy and off we went on the bus.  Now the place is not too far, maybe only 30 minutes by bus.  But of course, you have to add in the walking time from the bus stop to the final destination.  Neither Elder Browne nor I know where these people live, just Ednel, the Filipino. We started this trip thinking we would spend about 2 hours round trip... it took a lot longer than that.  Anyway, we get off the bus at mile 8 and then start the long and very hot hot walk in a direction that Ednel picks.  We are walking for 10 minutes when Ednel says he is not sure where we are, but he assures us that we should just continue walking and hopefully we will get there.  We agree and walk for another 20 minutes.  But the further we walk the further we get to the middle of nowhere.  We see something ahead that looks like a bus stop so we set our course for it.  When we get there we find out that it is a Pirate stop.  A very dingy little rest stop for people waiting for illegal taxis and buses.  At this point we know that we are not going in the right direction so we sit and wait for a Pirate.  20 minutes pass and there is no Pirate, the flies are swarming this trash dump of a stop, and I am thirsty!  We cut our losses and start walking back.  It’s even hotter than the way there.  Finally I had enough and I flag down a card and politely asked for a ride.  This would be the beginning of my very long and successful streak of hitchhiking.  I don’t want to brag but I am very good at this particular skill, there is something magical about my hands.  On this day alone we would have to hitchhike a total of 5 times to get to our final destination.  But this is not all, one of those five rides happens to be a semi truck, yes, I that is right, I was able to flag down a semi truck and get a ride... for free.  Well, after 3 hours of trying to find this place we finally got to the "gated" community.  When I say gated I mean, people sitting at the head of the road trying to get money from white guys.  At this point we are tired and angry so we leave a message with the "security" and then go home.  We will never do that again, it was miserable. Moral of the story, even in a crappy situation you can learn new talents, like hitchhiking.

Bathroom Finding

These last few days have been pretty difficult as far as finding new people goes. When you live in an area where 90% of the people are Muslim it makes it really difficult.  And because Malaysian law says that it is illegal to approach or teach Muslims, our pool of potential investigators is small.  We go knocking, we ask people where Christians live, we see people in Pasars and try to talk to them, but most of the time it just doesn't work.  So yesterday my companion and I heard of this brand new way of meeting people.  So revolutionary and so effective that it would work anywhere, even here in Sandakan.  The method is called bathroom finding. It involves, the missionary, me, needing to use the bathroom but having no public restrooms.  We find a nice looking neighborhood and knock on the first promising door.  What happens after than is i make a very pained expression and say "Maaf gangu tapi saya perlu guna tandas! Boleh kah saya gunu tandas mu skejap sajah?"  They look at you like what are you doing, but you keep on talking before they can say no.  You quickly say, "skajap sajah, saya dari Amerika and tak tahu di mana ada tandas, minta!"  Then they say, OK.  You go use their restroom while your companion has a prime time to talk to them.  You take your time take a look around the house to make sure they arn't Muslim and then make your way back to the front door.  If they aren't Muslim its a thumbs up and you continue talking to them for as long as they will let you.  This does work!  We were able to talk to these two ladies for over 30 minutes, and they were Christian!

Hello from Malaysia

Two Stories

1.

So this week was an interesting week.  We were given a referral from someone in the ward.  And like all referrals we are excited and ready to contact them as soon as possible.  The only information about the person we had was that he was a he, and his address.  We didn't have a name or anything.  So we took the bus to his flat and went up to the 4th floor where he lived. His door was open so we peeked in an said "apa khabar?"  as we do this, he comes rushing to the door and quickly lets us in without even asking who we are.  We were taken aback a couple of reasons.  First, the man had no idea who we were and still he ushered us into his house like he knew us.  And second, he was wearing nothing but a pair of very skimpy underwear briefs.  So, Elder Browne and I enter with a little bit of apprehension.  As we go in we recognize that there are two other people in the room, a boy and a girl, both in their teenage years.  they are all sitting and talking, so we join the conversation and tell them why we are here.  About 5 minutes into the conversation the older man (the referral) tells the girl to go make drinks and prepare of plate of crackers.  She looks at him like... ok... but goes and does it.  Once she has made the drink mix she places everything in front of us.  The older man then proceeds to tell her to pour the drink for us.  By this time she looks a little uncomfortable and maybe a little angry, but she does it anyway.  The drink mix by the way was durrian, the vilest of all fruits on the planet.  It has an initial taste of terrible and then an aftertaste of rotten eggs.  So this drink is hardly palatable and extremely difficult to finish. So as I am trying not to dry heave and politely eat the crackers, we teach about the church.  At the end of the discussion we give him a Book of Mormon and ask him to read.  He said he will but tells us that sometimes he has a difficult time reading.  so we politely ask the girl if maybe she would be willing to help him read each night. she looks at us and says yes, in fact she even opens the book to make sure she can read what’s in it.  Then after she puts the book down and proceeds to tell us that she isn't his daughter or even a relative, and that she does not live in his flat.  She and the other guy were maintenance workers checking the quality of the old guy's water.  they had been in the apartment for maybe 10 minutes longer than we had.  So... all of the strange looks from the girl and everything made sense. 

Pictures!

These are some pictures of the compongs.  They are absolutely terrible living conditions.  the houses are built in tidal pools so they have to be built on stilts.  The tide come in and washes away the garbage they throw... or that's the idea at least, what actually happens is the garbage builds up along with other stuff...  So the whole place is a network of wooden bridges to get from house to house.  The smells are something special, let me tell you.  A mixture of dead ocean smell mixed in with dying animals, raw garbage and human waste.  and people live here!  A lot of people live here!  Anyway, this isn't even the worst compong.