This is a beautiful picture of the delicious food that was served to us for our "Other Thanksgiving" with our Masai Branch members.  The Malay people do not celebrate our American holiday of Thanksgiving and have no idea what it means and what Indians and Pilgrims are.  The elders put on a cute skit, but no one got it.
So, our branch president wanted to get some very expensive meat for our Thanksgiving Feast for the American elders and for us.  It was "octopus"!

When we got home, I couldn't wait to create the new "Other Thanksgiving" symbol for all future Thanksgiving's here in Malaysia.  The "Thanksgiving Octopus".   I took the smallest piece I could swallow down and lots of mi (noodles) and nasi (rice) to fill me up.  I began chewing the octopus and found that it was surprisingly delicious.  Everyone stands around to see if Linda and I will try the food and what we think, and the members were thrilled that we liked their Thanksgiving meal for us.

 Along with the Thanksgiving octopus, we had lots and lots of prawns.  I had about 6 of them and they take some work if you don't like eating the head, eye balls and shell.  Since that doesn't suit me as much, you have to twist off the head and eyes, then pull off the feet and finally get the shell off the back before eating the yummy meat.
Most Malay's just eat the entire thing, shell and all.  No thanks.  I finally got the octopus down and I don't think I want the experience of passing the shells a few days from now.

 A real big hit item out here is this lovely "tofu".  It looks like very nice pieces of chicken, but we have learned to only take one piece first and if you like it, go back for more.  I took my one trial piece and the inside is like white custard; all mushy and gross.  So, I at least tried it and went back for some more octopus.

The final meat item was sesame seed chicken.  That sounds great and really looks great, but you have to have the jaws of a cow for chewing the stuff and then you pick out all the little bones in every piece.  It was really some tough meat.
Pres. John, our branch president ordered enough food for 100 people and only about 20 showed up for our "Other Thanksgiving".  They had people lining up for the "left overs" to take home and Linda and I were not in line.  It truly was a memorable "Other Thanksgiving" feast.

Happy Thanksgiving from Malaysia.  Linda and I went online and found this cute little "vegetable turkey".  So we created it and set some ranch dip next to it.  Our elders would not touch the vegetable turkey because it looked so cute.  That was the only thing they didn't touch though.  This year, we were able to get a nice large turkey from Singapore and we made our traditional "Moroni Turkey" in marinated soy sauce, 7 Up and oil, with some garlic and horseradish added.  So good!  It was a big hit.

 Linda made a cherry pie, an apple pie and two pumpkin pies the night before and my job was to cut off all the turkey to marinate it.  We had mashed potatoes and filling, green beans, candied carrots, cranberry sauce and rolls, lots of veggies and dip and tons of marinated turkey.  Everything turned out just perfect and we only missed having yams this year.  We were greatly blessed to have our 8 elders over for Thanksgiving.  I still can't wait for 1% WalMart milk with my pie.  I can't stand any of the shelf milk here.  It's all powdered tasting to me.

Here's another shot of our little group in the JB District.  Four Chinese speaking elders and 4 bahasa speaking elders.  Right after we were all done cleaning up and doing the dishes, the two AP's (assistants to the president) showed up at our door and hoped that we had some food left over.  We knew they were coming and put away a plate for each of them.  Elder Wadsworth is one of the new AP's.  He was with us here a year ago and we loved serving with him in JB.  The whole group is coming back later tonight to finish up the pie and anything else they can find.

 Linda and I put on a RS "sewing workshop" for the sisters in the JB Branch.  We had tons of fun.  We bought 2 new Brother Sewing Machines and had an older Singer machine and taught the sisters how to make bed pillow cases and throw pillow cases.  Linda taught the bed pillow cases and I did the throw pillows.  One sister wanted to do a bed pillow case and everyone else did the throw pillow cases.  They thought if I could make one, anyone could do it.  We had Sis. Jessie start, then Sis. Meera, then Sis. Ng and Sis. Lily, Sis. Rachel, Sis. Amy and Sis. Ilene.

 Here is Sis. Ng creating her throw pillow.  She didn't want anyone helping her.  She wanted to do it on her own after watching.  We had a youtube video showing how to make each pillow case, but no one wanted to waste their time watching them.  So we just showed them, stitched up all four sides and usually, had to sew up one or two of the sides again, since the sister missed some of the material.  When we were all finished, these ladies had huge smiles of accomplishment.  Now, they can check out the machines to try sewing in their own homes.

This is the sweetest Muslim lady that we met in Johor Bahru.  She has been with us for the past 21 months of our mission.  Her name is Noor Shaidah.  She is the office assistant at the Molek Pine Apartment Offices.  Whenever we got a parcel in the mail, she would ring us and ask for "Mr. Elder".  When we went over to visit her, she would help us practice our "bahasa" and speak to us in Malay.  She would tell us about her little boy, Ash.  The new owners of the apartments have let her, all the old staff, go and hired new people.  We will miss her sweet smile and always being concerned for us.

Today, Monday, Nov. 24th, we got delivered to our door a 24 lb. Butterball turkey for Thanksgiving.  This is Sis. Davies and her husband from Singapore.  They are the mission housing directors.  We begged them to try to get us a turkey for Thanksgiving and they found one for us and made the arrangement to come over to JB and do some elders apartment inspections and drop off our turkey at the same time.  This year, our turkey cost us 220 ringgit or about $65.  Now we are almost ready for feeding 10 of our elders for Thanksgiving.  We are so excited.

 Here is am, as Pharaoh of Egypt, with my two court magicians by my side and Aaron to the far left.  It was our monthly Zone Meeting and the elders wanted to do another "role play".  Usually, our role plays are between each companionship, with one partner being the missionary and the other being the investigator.  Mother and I do as we are asked, but it never applies to us and I hate "role plays".  But this one was a riot.  We re-enacted the story of Moses and the plagues of Egypt.  When the Zone Leaders asked me to play the part of pharaoh, I went right to work.  I got

the computer and looked for patterns of pharaoh's headdress.  I found one and ran it off, got on my blue "sarong" and made a black beard.
I held up my two trusty toilet brushes and was ready for my part.  Elder Moala was Moses, Elder Spurrier played the part of Aaron and Elder Bester and Wright were my court magicians.  The other elders helped with the plagues.  Elder Pun is holding an inflatable dinosaur, representing the plague of frogs.  Then the flies and locust were balloons thrown at us.  Finally, the Zone Leaders related all this to missionary work.  It was a real stretch.

On Sat. and Sun, Nov. 15/16, we held our final District Conference for the JB District.  We had Elder Freddie Chan, and Area Authority 70 preside, along with Pres. & Sis. Mains and Pres. Victor Chen of the mission presidency.  This will be our last District Conference of our mission.  It was very unique, since we had no help and Linda and I put everything together.  My only counselor was diagnosed with a serious disease affecting his eyes and couldn't help.  The District RS President is in the Philippines, so Linda and I arranged all the music, got all the prayers, came up with all the subjects and speakers, and I conducted all three sessions of conference.  I hate conducting.  We also had Elder Chan and his son stay at our apartment for two days.  Beside all that, Linda and I made all the arrangements for a luncheon for all those who attended, (about 80 people), after the last session of the conference.  Linda made a big batch of "sloppy joe", we bought lots of buns and bags of chips and some other members brought food for a pot luck luncheon.   The Lord blessed us greatly and we made it through our 4th and final District Conference.  The talks were wonderful and we all felt the Spirit strongly.  You don't realize how blessed we were, back at BYU, when we had our Stake Conferences and had so much support from your counselors and high council, along with a Stake RS Presidency to arrange for the food and refreshments.  We sure appreciate it now!

 On Friday, Oct. 31st, Linda and I flew to Kuala Lumpur, for our very first CCM (Coordinating Council Meeting with 2 Area Authories and Pres. Mains.  Left to right: Pres. Victor Chen is the 1st Counselor to Pres. Mains, then Elder Freddie Chan and Elder Woo, Area Authorities, then my head, then Pres. Mains in front center.  Behind him is a counselor in the KL District Presidency and the 3 men in white shirts are the District Presidency from Ipoh District.  It was a great meeting and I handled the plane flights very well.

 We purchased 2 new sewing machines to teach the sisters how to sew.  Linda and I made pillow cases to show them.  Linda sewed the big bed pillow, with a cute yellow strip and blue opening.  I sewed, all by myself, the little 14 inch throw pillow.  It was easier than I thought and we just followed two simple YouTube videos that we found online.  Now, the sisters in R.S. will sign up for the pillow they want to try to sew and they bring the material and we provide the training and the machines.  We are trying to eventually have the sisters check out the machines and make clothing projects at home.

 An absolute necessity, here in Malaysia, is to have your air conditioning working correctly.  Each room usually has a wall unit like this one that sends out the cool air.  We have one in each of our two bedrooms and one in our little study.  This one is in our living room, dining room and kitchen areas.  It now only sends out warm air, which we can just go outside to get that.  We called the landlord and he will send someone to fix it, we hope.  Luckily, we have a ceiling fan running.  We are so pampered.  There is no Malay home that has air conditioning. 

Here is the other half to the air con system, the compressor.  This is what apparently malfunctioned.  The air con people have been to our apartment 5 or 6 times now, trying to repair or service our four machines.  The man told us, just last week, that this compressor has seen its last days and will not work for more than a year or so.  It lasted 2 more days!  We are trying to get it fixed before we have the General Authority staying at our apartment for two days and then the senior couple before us, the Beards, coming a week later to stay the weekend.  Hopefully we can get things repaired in time.  If not, we just live in our air conditioned car.