Here is my lovely wife, teaching our new Family History Consultant how to get into FamilySearch.org.  We are sitting at a McDonald's, in the middle of a large mall, using their free wi-fi service.  It may have been free, but it took forever to get into the program.  While they worked, I had a cheeseburger and chicken nuggets.  Linda looks too interested at this point.  Our little Family History Consultant is a 13 year old in our Chinese/English Branch in JB.  We were at least able to communicate since she spoke good English from her schooling.

 This week, I tried my own stir/fry.  We went to our favorite veggie and meat store, Jusco.  It has great vegetables and fruits and a nice selection of meats.  We are always able to get real beef there, which when cooked, actually turns brown.  The Malaysian beef stays red and will not brown up.
Here are the fresh prawns that I bought.  You first have to twist off their heads, then you carefully pull off the tail and make sure you take the long vein with it.  It has all the "poop" inside of it.  Then you have to get the hard shell off the large tail section and you finally have your prawn ready to put in the stir/fry.  It was great.

 I added some peppers, onions, pea pods, mushrooms, broccoli and cauliflower in some pure olive oil, then the prawns turn orange and look like shrimp and then I mixed in oyster sauce.  It was yummy, but the oyster sauce was too salty tasting.  I'll have to go on line and figure the oyster sauce part for next time.
Here is a picture of 2 of our 3 districts in our zone.  We have 10 elders locally and 4 more up in Melacca, about 2 1/2 hours north of us.  Elder Crum next to me, Elder Harr next to Linda, Elder Earl, Jin, Robins, Takin, Thatcher and Cook in front and Fabiano and McCarthy standing. 

 We really love these kids and get very close to them.  Elder Cook is a great young missionary who has been in our area for the past 3 transfers.  We've gotten pretty close to him.
The next 2 pictures are this unique phenomenon
that happens each year in May.  We have hundreds of these moth/butterfly creatures everywhere.  The white pointy part is really the back end of their tails.  In our little apartment complex, there are hundreds of them flying around the inside courtyard where the elevators are.  They are on all the walls and floors and trees and just about everywhere. 

Interestingly, they only live a short time, laying their eggs and then dying.  You see their bodies laying all over the place.  When you come out of the apartment, they startle you when they all take off flying and hit you in the face and fly off.  You try to scan your key card to let you out of the building and they are sitting on the key pad and on the walls and in the plants and anywhere they decide to land.  We came home the other night and lots of dead bodies were lying all around the front entrance to our apartment.  

 We had to take a picture of this site, which happens up in Masai in a parking lot every Saturday evening.  It looks exactly like "Halloween Trunk or Treat", which we do back home in America, but hundreds of cars line up in a row and open up their trunks and sell their items from the back of their cars.  Most of the cars are selling hand woven dresses and clothing items.  We are standing up on the side of a large hill, where the McDonalds, Burger King and SubWay Sandwich places are.  We eat at one of them every Sat. night before we teach Seminary.

Our final picture for this week is the monthly "birthday celebration" that the Masai Branch does.  At both branches, on the 4th Sunday after church, we have "Linger Longer".  Everyone brings their favorite dish, (which they made sometime that morning and then we eat everything cold) and we all get together and eat a meal.  We always bring something that is already cold, like brownies or pineapple upside down cake or muffins or cookies.  One time, we actually brought some macaroni salad, which we kept in the fridge.  We are always amazed that we don't get sick.  All food in Masai is served stone cold.  You get used to it.  Anyone who had a birthday in the month of May, which is my beautiful wife, gets to come up and is sung to and then they cut the cakes that the branch purchases.  Sister Norma is in red by Linda and Sister Barbara is in blue.  The three make up the District Relief Society Presidency.  Elder Crum had a birthday also in May, and little Eddie, always gets in line first for a piece of cake.  His birthday must be every month.

 We had the wonderful opportunity to have 2 dear friends come and visit us here in Malaysia.
Ted and Kaye Davies, from Spanish Fork, were on a Southeast Asia holiday and decided to spend a few hours with us.  What a great honor.
Ted was one of the greatest bishops I served with up at BYU and Kaye works in the finance dept. at Nebo School District.  We made arrangements to have them come for part of a day, but their plans changed and we could only have them with us for 2 hours.  We went out to a breakfast cafe with them and enjoyed our time together.

 Their trip began as they flew into Changi Airport in Singapore last Monday, then they stayed with some friends in Singapore and toured the sights there on Tuesday.  Then on Wednesday, we visited with them from 8 AM to 10 AM.  The Davies had their neighbors travel with them, Roman and Ann Takasaki.  It was fun talking to them about our mission and the many differences between here and back in America.
They had a driver come pick them up and then they headed off to Melaca, then to Kuala Lumpur and finally they ended up in Bangkok, Thailand.

 This is a great picture of one of our torrential rain storms that we have almost daily, always around 5 to 6 pm.  All through April and May, it rains daily for about an hour and floods everything and everywhere.  This is looking out our little back patio and yard.  When you pass through the gate, it leads to the large swimming pool in our apartment complex.  We did swim the first few months of our mission, since it's 85 to 90 everyday here, but now, we just stay inside and exercise to one of our videos with the air conditioner running.  So nice!

 Almost all the hotels and stores and especially, in all government buildings and banks, you see these pictures hanging inside of them.  It is the king and queen and son of Malaysia.  The government is similar to the British form, where they have a king and queen, but the prime minister really runs the show and is usually seen on TV and in the news.  The only time we have ever seen the king and queen was once on TV, at the National Day events, when they appeared for a few moments.  Still, the people love their monarch and revere him by hanging his picture in their places of business.

 This is Yan Hao's clay car.  This little 5 year old, that I teach every Tuesday and Friday, is the sharpest little guy ever.  We have received hundreds of books from our grandson and other books from local schools back in America.  He has read them all.  He is here to learn better English, but he is very sharp.  So, I went out and bought modeling clay.  Every Tuesday, we build something in the clay, take a picture and then on Friday, we write a story about it.  This has finally held his attention and he loves to play with the clay.  His car is called "Shakespear" from Saturn.

 I had to add these last two pictures.  This is the typical road, in front of all the shop lots or "kedai's" here in Malaysia.  There are thousands and thousands of little stores and markets and little shops.  Our two church buildings are within these shop lots in two different cities in Johor.
During the day and in the very busy shop lot areas, this is the typical driving and car parking that goes on.  It drives me absolutely crazy.  If a person wants to go into a shop and purchase something, or if a person needs to stop by the bank and make a deposit, you simply pull your
car up to the front of the shop and park it, right in front of another parked car.  If the driver of the vertically parked car needs to get out, they simply begin honking their horn until the owner the the car behind them hears the horn and comes out to move their car.  They park this way everywhere.
Sometimes, you can't even fit between the cars to get through the street because they double park, then triple park and sometimes even quadruple park.  How stupid are they.  The elders tell me to try it, but I just don't have the nerve.  When a delivery man drops off water or supplies or equipment to any business, they just pull their lori up in front of the store, blocking the cars that are already parked there and unload their stuff.  Now, to drive down the road, you have to go around them in the other lane.  The fun part is when another store is across from them and a driver does the same thing, completely blocking off the road.  You just have to sit and honk you horn until they move; if they move.  So frustrating.  And, you may ask, where are the police?  They drive right by it and ignore it.