Here is another "first" in our mission.  Leonard Kasi anak Jimmy is the very first missionary to receive a mission call from our JB District and from the Masai Branch.  He was called to serve in the Singapore Mission and speak Malay.  He reports to the Philippines MTC for 2 weeks on August 1st.  Many have taken much time to prepare Leonard for serving as a full time missionary.  He is super excited and we were privileged to be there, at this home, to see him open his mission call.  It will be fun to see Elder Jimmy in future Zone Conferences.

 Elder Crum, on the right and Elder Takin, on the far left, baptized Sister Roseta and her 3 sons.  She is a wonderful sister who participates each week in my Gospel Doctrine class.  Elijah (13) is in the back, Johannes (11) is the cute one in the front next to mom and Otneil (like oatmeal, except with an "n" is 9).    The baptism had a large number of people come out to support Sis. Roseta and her family.  Elder Crum ends his mission in 2 weeks and will return to Arizona.
Elder Takin, who speaks Malay and Iban, will get a new companion and keep working with the

rest of the family.  Sister Roseta's husband is standing behind her, with their youngest daughter in front of Sis. Roseta.  The young man in blue is Sis. Roseta's older son, his wife next to him and the other two children in front belong to them (Sis. Roseta's grandchildren).  She hopes all of them will join the church.
I'm thrilled because we are accomplishing the 4 JB District goals for 2014.  We set the goal to have 5 new brethren receive the Mel. Priesthood and we now have 7 ordained.  We have the goal to have more YSA activities, which we are doing.  We set the goal to send a missionary from our District, which will now come to pass and we set the goal of 20 baptisms for the year.  We now have 10 as of June 21st.  We are half way there.
Heavenly Father is sure blessing our little Johor Bahru District.

 On Saturday, June 14, we had a JB Branch Activity.  The whole branch came out and we flew kites.  It had rained the entire morning, quite hard and we were concerned that few would show up.  By 5:30 PM, we had over 60 members, non members and investigators out with their kites.  The only problem was there was no wind, no breeze, nothing.  The adults ran all over the place, keeping the kites up as long as they moved, but we had a difficult time.  We still had a great time.

 Everyone brought a kite with their kids.  This is Sister Annie with her son.  They brought their "minion" kite. 

 Sister Eunice is in the checkers shirt and Sister Melanie is in red.  Sister Eunice was in charge of this Primary activity.  She is the Primary President.  We home teach Sis. Eunice each month.  She comes over to our apartment and we make her breakfast.  She stays for a couple of hours and we have a wonderful time talking together.

 Here is Sister Melanie again, who was just released as the branch Relief Society President.  The most wonderful lady ever, Sis. Amy, was just sustained as the new Relief Society President a few weeks ago.  She is the sweetest lady in the branch and we just love her.  Her good husband was made the 2nd Counselor in the Branch Presidency.  Bro. and Sis. Kurup are great members in our little branch.

 Here is the cutest sister in the branch.  We brought some kites and just gave them away to some of the children in the branch.  The elders helped everyone put their kites together and we just stood around (or just sat there) and supervised.  I'm good at that.  As long as we show up, the members are happy.  They won't begin an activity or start a meeting unless we are there.  It's kind of silly, but that is how things go out here in both branches.  It was a very humid day, after our morning rain, and we just sat there sweating and enjoying the others running around.

 Here is Elder McCarthy with the blue tie and Elder Smith with the pink tie.  Elder McCarthy is from New Zealand and has the funniest accent.  I usually cannot understand him at all.  Elder Smith is from American Fork, Utah.  They are such hard workers and are doing a great work here in the Johor Bahru branch.  They are our English speaking missionaries, who primarily find people who speak English who are from India or the Philippines.

 This is one of our wonderful Zone Leaders, Elder Earl.  He is also from Utah.  An ice cream man pulled up on his little moto and ran his bell and everyone came running.  He served ice cream cones with chocolate, strawberry and "durian" ice cream.  Just like the real durian, the ice cream stank so badly.  Everyone still enjoyed the cool treat.

 This is our other Zone Leader, Elder Fabiano.  He is from Florida and goes home in August.  He is so fun to be around.  Elder Earl and Elder Fabiano are our two Chinese speaking elders in the Johor Bahru branch.  They have had a baptism a week ago and have another one scheduled in a few weeks.  We love Elder Fabiano.

 Here is the most kites up at one time, with all the dads running their little hearts off, trying to keep the kites up.  We were there for about 2 hours and there was not one bit of wind the entire time.  You could feel a breeze, here and there, but nothing more.  If you didn't keep moving, your kite came down.






Our final picture is the beautiful sunset as we closed our activity.  We had a great time with our little Chinese/English branch. 

 We had a really exciting week here in Malaysia.  On Monday evening, after helping the elders do their weekly food shopping, we decided to venture out to the southern part of Johor and shop at "Cold Storage".  This is a store that sells many items that can be purchased in America.  We were able to pick up delicious pretzels, cherry and blueberry pie filling, brownie mix, black beans and we found an actual measuring cup with American measurements on it (ounces, pints, cups, etc.)  We loaded everything into the car and left from the underground parking lot.  We made our usual "u" turn at the light and headed north to go home.  There was lots of stop and go traffic due some resurfacing a few kilometers ahead.
We were standing still and suddenly, the van behind us slammed into the back of our beautiful 6 month old church car.  The guy hit us quite hard, bounced off the back, and then hit us again.  Linda was just fine, but I could immediately feel that my back was strained, exactly the same place where I

 had the tear in my muscle a few months earlier.  I have been nursing my right side and now, I think I got it slightly injured again with this whiplash.  Linda immediately got out the black book that the church gives us to follow in case of an accident.  It started by telling us to stay where you are, put on your emergency blinkers and call the emergency number.  Here, it's 999 and we called it.  Then, I went back to the young man who ran into us and asked if he spoke English.  He did luckily and we exchanged information.  I took pictures and got yelled at by those driving by (being called "bodoh" which means "stupid") since we were stopped in the middle lane of a three lane highway.  We then were told by 999 to go to a police station and file a police report.  It took hours, including a 2nd trip to another police station the next day, but we survived our first accident in Malaysia and are just fine.
I am amazed it is only my first in 15 months.  The drivers and motorcyclists are crazy here. 

 The highlight at the beginning of this week was a fun birthday celebration for Linda's birthday.  Our sweet elders brought over a godzilla blow up figure and put a "unicorn" horn on the front of it and called it a "godzillacorn".  They found some of that blow up bubble stuff that you put on the end of a straw and create bubbles.  They put the bubbles around the base of the godzilla for it to stand up.  Then they attached the unicorn horn to the front and stood in front of Linda and sang happy birthday.  It was really cute, but we have no idea what the meaning was.  Then they handed her their birthday card, and it all fit together.  Elder Smith is the artist and he drew the unicorn, with the 4 elders giving Linda some balloons and a gift.  You can see, from the picture above, that they could only find one balloon.  They signed their names to the bottom of the card and were so proud to present it to her.  Linda kept the silly godzillacorn up for the entire week.  We sure have fun with these kids here in Malaysia.  You wonder, sometimes, what they are thinking!

  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.

 Here is a sweet picture of my beautiful bride on our 40th Wedding Anniversary.  We had big plans on April 19th to go bowling with our elders and all the YSA in our District, but no one showed up.  Then we planned to go out to eat for our anniversary, but we got stuck in a traffic jam.  We did end up teaching our first Seminary class in Malay with 8 kids.  So we celebrated our anniversary by getting online and making up our Gospel Doctrine and Seminary lessons in Malay.
She is as cute as ever and we now begin our next 40 years together.  I don't know how she puts up with me.

 The next day, April 20th, is our Easter.  Here in Malaysia, no one celebrates or even knows about Easter.  Even at church, they welcomed everyone to Easter services and then all the talks had nothing to do with Easter.  We couldn't find a ham in a Muslim country like this, so we had some ham lunchmeat and cut it up over a baked potato.  We colored two Easter eggs (brown, of course, since we are in Malaysia) and our yummy can of Spam, which is getting tastier all the time.  A sweet sister gave us some rolls and there is our Easter dinner for 2014.

We see these signs almost weekly at our local Tesco (like Walmart) store, but don't even pay much attention to them anymore.  We love their "phonetic" way of spelling.  In the top wording, the hard sound of "c" is with a "k", since their "c" makes the "ch" sound.  (Bimbit means "mobile)  The bottom wording is with their other unusual sound "sy" which is their "sh" sound.  All the other consonants are just like our sounds and it's fun to read words like "farmasi" (pharmacy), "aksesori" (accessory), "akademik"
(academic), "butik" (boutique), "mesej" (message) and our all time popular one, "kredit cad" for (credit card).

 On Sunday, April 6, 2014, we went to the Masai Branch as we always do.  It was our Fast & Testimony Meeting and next week, we will have the privilege of watching General Conference, when it is sent to us on flash drives.  As I sat on the stand, President John, our branch president, came up to me and said that I was asked to bless this beautiful baby boy.  I was honored.  His name is Aivenoel (Ivan Noel) Baba anak Robert.
I then sat back down and the president came up to me again and said that the next set of parents also asked me to bless their little boy.  Number 2.

 This beautiful little guy is Vesly Smith Anyan anak Mike Aleyster.  He is the little boy belonging to Sister Venessa, who I was privileged to baptize a number of months ago.  Her husband, Mike Aleyster, was baptized just weeks ago and they are the most wonderful couple in our branch.  Mike will soon receive the Melchizedek Priesthood.
After this little baby blessing, another parent asked me to bless their little boy.  I don't have a picture of him, but his name is Atkinson Nelly anak Galam and he belongs to Sis. Melati.  Three baby blessings in a row.  What a record!

On Saturday evening, the day before our Fast & Testimony meeting, we were invited over to Bro. Uki's home, along with Bro. Gema and his family and Bro. Rantai and his family.  The lesson was on faith, given by our two sweet missionaries in the Plentong area, Elder Scheutz and Elder Thatcher.  After the lesson, we played a fun game that I had to remember, so I took some pictures.
You begin by packing flour in a plastic container and turn it upside down on some newspaper.


Then you place a piece of candy on the top of the flour tower.  Everyone then takes turns using a plastic knife and cutting away at the tower.  You can cut a large area away or just a very small little slice.  The fun part of the game is whoever makes the flour tower fall down, has to get the piece of candy out with only their teeth.  Here is Elder Thatcher, who lost.  He had the fun task of finding the piece of candy with his nose and teeth. (after I went up and buried it deeper in the flour pile)



Here is a great picture of Bro. David, making a very large cut down the side of the flour tower.  After his turn, Elder Scheutz went and made another large cut down the tower and the next player was Elder Thatcher, who barely touched the tower when the whole thing fell down and he had to pick out the candy with his teeth.  The room has about 30 people all sitting around in a circle and the temperature is well over 90 degrees.  It really makes the flour stick to ones face when you are the loser.


This is the spring time here in Malaysia and every street is lined with these very large pink and white flowering trees for miles and miles.
The temperature is a constant 85 to 90 degrees throughout the year, but we go through similar seasons as we do back home in Utah.  January, February and March are a wetter monsoonal season with lots of moisture (even though this year was quite dry).  April, May and June are the spring time and very beautiful.  July, August and September are quite warm, with temperatures going above the 90 degree mark.  And then comes our very cold winter months, when the

temperatures go down into the mid 80's.  The flowers come and go and the rain comes and goes, but the temperatures seem to stay the same.  Depending on the month of the year, the humidity also goes up and down.  Linda curls her hair and sprays it so nicely each morning and it lasts for a few minutes when she goes outside.
We look forward to seeing General Conference this next week and enjoying the time to hear from our church leaders.  Linda and I only have one more General Conference here in this great country of Malaysia.
We just came back from our Senior Conference in Singapore, along with our two days of Zone Conference with the elders and sisters of our Zone.  We also successfully got through immigration again, which is a real ordeal.  We went through another causeway crossing into Malaysia called the Tuas Crossing.  It took Linda and I almost 4 hours of traveling.  We get on the MRT underground railway trains and go to the far west side of the Singapore island.  We then stood in line for over an hour and a half, standing in the rain, to wait our turn to get on a causeway bus.  We packed into the bus like sardines, with our large luggage that we had to carry on the bus.  Then you get off the bus and go through the Singapore Immigration and get back on the bus with your luggage in front of you.  Then you get off the bus and go through the Malaysian Immigration, which is scary.  If they don't feel like giving you a "chop" (stamp in your passport), then you are sent to an office and are given a "talking to" by the immigration officials.  Last time we went into Malaysia, we had the wonderful experience.  Going through Tuas though is usually better than going through the busy Woodlands causeway crossing.  We made it through immigration, got back on another bus with our luggage in tow and went to Galan Patah.  There we exit the bus and find a taxi to take us home.  No taxi was available, so we had to hire a special blue taxi that has a meter.  Usually, it costs about 50 ringgit, but a metered taxi is much more.  It cost us 76.80 ringgit to get home, but we made it.  Now, we are able to serve here in Malaysia until June 25th, when we have to do this all over again.  We are so glad the Lord can soften hearts and help us through the immigration experience, busses, taxis, rain and all.  We just remember that "all this shall give thee experience, and be for thy good".