Here is Leonard anak Jimmy, our very first missionary from the Masai Branch in the Johor Bahru District.  We are so proud of Leonard.  We have worked with him and his sweet family for some time.  We went with Leonard and his family to the Manila Temple last December.  He is so excited to serve the Lord here in the Singapore Mission.  We were privileged to buy Leonard a new suit and other things to help him get started on his mission.  It will be fun to go to our Zone Conferences, for the next two times, and see Leonard at our meetings as one of our full time missionaries serving with us.

 Today ends the month long celebration of "Ramadan".  Hari Raya Aidilfitri is the day that ends the holy month of dawn to sunset fasting.  Our sweet Muslim friends, here in Malaysia, do not eat all day until about 7:30 PM and then every hawker stand and restaurant and eating establishment is packed with people eating their one evening meal.  Even the taxi's stop working during the evening so the driver's can eat after fasting for the whole day.  During Ramadan, all the stores sell colored lights and colored garland, much like our Christmas holidays.  People go around visiting their families and greet each other with the words, "Selamat Hari Raya".  (Good Celebration Day)  This "Festival of the Breaking of the Fast" is a religious holiday in Malaysia and there is no work on Monday and Tuesday of this week.  All banks and post offices and schools are closed and most shops and businesses owned by the Muslim people we be closed to celebrate Hari Raya.

 Here is another display of the things that you can purchase for the Hari Raya celebration.  All kinds of colored garland and many different types of Christmas lights decorated the malls and the homes and businesses of our Muslim friends.  It reminds us of Christmas in July.  During the month of Ramadan, the Muslim families go home to their villages that they were born in and visit family and friends, seek forgiveness from each other, visit ancestor's graves, say their prayers in mosques and eat all kinds of Malaysian delicacies.
When we go out to eat lunch anywhere during the month of July, there is only Chinese people in the restaurants.  But when sunset comes, the malls are packed with hungry Muslim families, saving their places at various tables, waiting for sunset to arrive before they order their evening meal.  It's been a really great experience to see how other people celebrate their special days in their religion.

These final two pictures are very important to Sister Schollenberger and me, but to anyone else, they are just pictures of the podium at any church building.  This one is the beautiful wood paneling that we had to replace in our foyer and all the new wiring that needed to be put in for our headsets that we use for translation purposes.
It has taken us nine months to get these things fixed and repaired in our two church branch buildings and lots of frustrating hours working with different companies.  I need to still purchase a small cabinet to put in front of this black transmitter box, and then we are done in JB.

This little black thing is the microphone that is pulled out for the priests to speak into when they say the sacrament prayers.  The cost of this very tiny microphone is 1,300 ringgit.  That comes to about $450, which is quite a lot for the members out here in Malaysia.  The company had to order it from Japan and it must have come on a very slow boat to get here.  Finally, today in our Sacrament Meeting, the brethren used this new microphone and it worked very nicely.  Now, I still have to get our Masai Branch building's kitchen repaired and the entire podium replaced.
When you step on certain places on the podium, you fall through, so the entire plywood framework needs to be redone.  Then they will re-carpet the podium and put it all back together. (We hope!)  We resurfaced the baptismal font and had it repainted.  This company replaced all the red paneling in the foyer, which was eaten through by termites and they fixed cracks in the cement walls.  Another company does all the wiring and electrical work.  And still another company fixes the air conditioning and another company sprays for bugs.  We are called almost weekly to go up to one of our branches and open the building and wait for work to be done.  I guess it comes with being the District President, or maybe, it comes with being the Senior Couple who is available anytime they need you.

 We had a great 4th of July barbeque with our elders and investigators and branch members.  Here is Elder McCarthy, from New Zealand, wearing his USA socks for the celebration.  Our picnic started out with 4 people invited and we ended up with 30 to 40 people, bringing the traditional 4th of July foods like whole prawns, spicy chicken wings, fish balls, lots of rice, and, of course, smores.  Only these smores were made from marshmallows, cadbury chocolate squares between vanilla cookies.  There is no graham crackers, out here, so vanilla cookies had to do.
Not quite the same, but it was fun.

 Here is our barbeque pit in our apartment complex.  In the front of the barbeque are the spicy chicken wings and at the back of the barbeque pit are the chicken brats and chicken hot dogs.  It's also difficult to find anything made out of beef.  Sam, our recently converted member, was the grill master and had a great time lighting the grill with these charcoal pieces that you purchase.  The charcoal is like the charcoal stick that you sketch with, very light weight and easy to light.  Laying in the charcoals, are aluminum foil wrapped purple sweet potatoes.  They were really yummy.

 This round dish was the highlight of the party.  It's Linda's macaroni salad.  It was delicious and everyone wanted to recipe.  Pasta is not a big item out here in Malaysia.  We watched many of the members take a very small amount of macaroni salad on their plates, taste it and then return for seconds.  Elder Earl, our Zone Leader, returned five times for large helpings.  He said it was the only thing, beside the watermelon, that was like a 4th of July picnic.

 Here is our wonderful Sam, keeping watch over his grill.  Of course, right behind him is my sweetheart, making sure that Sam was doing things correctly.  Along side of Sam is Jaden, our recently baptized 9 year old.  We were amazed how only the elders and Linda and I sweat profusely.  All the other Asians don't seem to sweat out here.  It was about 90 degrees at 8 pm, just like any other night, but the humidity is high and the sweat runs down the back of your neck through the entire night.  At least we didn't have any mosquitoes.  They were smart enough to go somewhere cooler.

 Many of our members, from the Johor Bahru branch, came out to our little gathering.  Sis. Lily is on the far right.  She was just baptized a few weeks ago.  Next to her is Sis. Bernie.  Sam is married to Sis. Bernie and they are both doing a fabulous job in the branch.  In blue to Sis. Jessie and across the table is her husband, Bro. Res Tan.  In orange is our sweet R.S. President, Sis. Amy Kurup.  We love Sis. Amy.  Kneeling down, next to a small barbeque to heat up our marshmallows, is Bro. Weaweh from Nigeria.  He is a great addition to our branch and teaches in the Elder's Quorum. 

A parting shot of our swimming pool, next to the barbeque pit.  This shot is looking over toward our apartment on the 1st floor.  Our apartment is right behind the orange life preserver, hanging on the palm tree trunk.  We don't go in and out of our outside entrance to our apartment very much anymore, since our elders live upstairs from us, on the fifth floor.  Now, they just need to come down on the elevator and visit us daily.  Since we are the only members around here with computers, the elders are over quite often.  Many are going home soon, so they get college stuff ready and check plane flights.

 Another amazing Gawai 2014 celebration!  Here is our banana tree, connected to the lighting in the middle of our Masai chapel.  All the fun treats are hanging from the banana leaves, with balloons and pineapples, grapes, and, of course, bananas.  All the children run around the tree and get as excited as Christmas morning, waiting for the people to come up with their machette and cut off the treats and place them at the bottom of the tree.  Our Gawai party started at 5 PM and we ended around 9:30 PM.  Lots of fun.

 Right before the cutting of the treats, all the Young Women dress up in their traditional costumes from East Malasyia.  Patricia and Mia are on the far right.  They are the sweetest sisters in Bro. Rantai and Sis. Sani's family.  Then, next to my sweetheart is Fauzina, Brother Uki's granddaughter and next to Fauzina is Erneshia.  Pres. John is right in the middle of things.
The elders enter the room first and dance around the tree and then the girls, in their traditional dress, come in and dance around the tree before the cutting ceremony.

 Our elders in Masai began the program with a beautiful song, "If the Savior Stood Beside Me".
Elder Crum (who already went home today) is on the far left, then Elder Robins (our short elder), with Elder Jin playing the piano and Elder Thatcher behind him.  Elder Thatcher has been in Masai for 7 months now and is finally getting transferred this week.  Next to Elder Thatcher, holding the music is Elder Tan and then Elder Takin.  Elder Tan and Takin are native Malaysians.

Here is the classic picture of me dancing around the tree.  I'm going after President John, the Branch President, with the machette in hand, which you cannot see.  The person who is handed the machette dances around the tree a few times and cuts off one or two items and then gives the hat and the machette to another person to go up and dance around.  We ran out of battery power in the camera, so we don't have the picture of Linda dancing around the tree. She was good.

 This adorable little boy is Brother David's son.  After all the elders and the traditionally dressed girls danced around the tree, he stayed in the middle of the chapel and just kept on dancing to the beat of the music.  He was so cute and everyone kept clapping for him.  He danced around the tree about 4 or 5 more times and didn't miss a beat.  He's going to be quite the Gawai dancer when he grows up.  He's going to have all the Iban girls after him.

This is our wonderful Brother Rantai.  He started off the dancing around the tree with his traditional vest and hat and the machette attached to his waist.  Bro. Rantai and Sis. Sani are great members that live quite a distance away from the Masai church building.  They are always there each week, with their 3 daughters, Patricia, Mia and their youngest one, Angela.  Patricia joined the church first and then, through her example, she brought in the rest of her family.  They have been members for just over a year and a half now.  They are strong and dedicated Saints.
After all the dancing and singing and clapping, we all move upstairs and have the delicious food.  The food arrived before 5 PM and then it just sits in the pans until we ate around 8:30 to 9 PM.  I'm so convinced that the Lord watches over His missionaries, because we never get sick from eating the food that sits out for hours.  We had delicious lemon chicken, and pork, noodles and rice, lots of vegetables and fruits and an entire pan of prawns.  These shrimps are longer than my entire hand and you are suppose to just pick them up and eat everything.  You start with the head, including this long antenna and two little black beady eyes, then the body including the shell and legs and finally the tail.  Ibans and Malaysians eat the entire thing, since the prawn is steamed and the shell is not as hard to chew and swallow.  I had a hard time with that, because I kept focusing on the experience, in a few days, of the prawns coming out the other end and how painful that may be.  All those shells and tails that don't digest.  Where else are they suppose to go.  All in all, it was a great party with lots of people having a wonderful time together.  The Masai Branch really knows how to put on a great Gawai celebration.

 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.