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.

On Saturday evening, Oct. 18th, 2014, we had these two dear Indian sisters baptized into the church.  Sis. Regima is the mother and her daughter, Sis. Patmah only speak Malay and Tamal.  The daughter understands some English and then interprets for her mother.  We also had Sister Jess baptized, one of our Chinese sisters.  Her picture is at the bottom of these 6 pictures.  It's amazing to have all these different languages and cultures in our two little branches here in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.  These 3 sisters give us 17 baptisms this year.  Our district goal is 20.

On our last P-day, we went with our eight elders to a candy factory.  It was awesome.  Each of us got a free sample of "Barbie microphones" with little star shaped candies inside.  They were "sedap". (delicious)  We walked from one area to another, watching the workers make suckers from giant blobs of hot molded candy, then into the room where they stamp out the little stars, then into another room where hard candy circles come out of these loud machines.  After that, we walked into another 3 rooms, where different candies were produced.  As we walked up to the workers and watched them making these candies and filling the machines with sucker sticks or wrappers, etc, we would get a sample of that particular candy being made.  Such fun!

Each of us had to wear a hair net before we could enter the plant and we were not allowed to take any pictures of the inside.  At the end of the tour, we had the owner take one group picture of us with our hair nets on.  The elder to the far right of the picture, Elder Lee, is the son of the candy factory owner.  Elder Lee is a Singaporean and his parents live in Singapore and have two candy factories in Johor Bahru.  The elders are not suppose to visit with their parents while serving a mission, so we kept Elder Lee far from his dad as he gave us the "royal tour".  We are each holding up our Barbie microphone.  The whole tour only took about 30 minutes, but it was a fun P-day activity together.

One of the most prized things you can receive here in Malaysia, from our wonderful Malay and Iban members, is a hand made Iban tie.  It has only taken me 20 months to finally get accepted, and I was so surprised when Sis. Minang gave this to me today at church.  You can see, from the picture below, that it is made of thousands of tiny beads that are strung together on string and made into this intricate design.  The top of the tie, around the neck, has some pearl sized beads and, at the end of the beads, another tiny set of beads that form a button hole.  On the other end of the neck fastener is a small red button, so you place the tie around your neck and button it in place.  Then you pull your collar back over the larger beads and the tie is ready to go.  They made an extra long tie for me that goes down below my belt.  Sis. Minang's sister made the tie for me and had it shipped over from East Malaysia.  The women also wear these beaded necklaces and beaded bracelets.  It must have taken this good sister hours upon hours to make this tie for me.  We offered Sis. Minang money to give to her sister, but she wouldn't take any.  I was greatly honored and grateful for this beautiful gift of love and labor. 

 Here is our cute little Petreus, Brother Jimmy and Sister Minang's 8 year old son.  He was baptized last Saturday and we had a great turn out for his baptism program.  Sister Minang is our Masai Branch Relief Society President and Brother Jimmy is in our Elder's Quorum Presidency.  They are both such great "kingdom builders" here in Malaysia.  No matter what the activity or meeting, this family always attends and brings food.  These are also the parents of our first missionary from the Masai Branch, Elder Leonard Kasi anak Rabing (Jimmy).

 We loved our General Conference this weekend.  We get the conference proceedings one week later on flash drives.  This time, we were instructed to watch conference on the same time frame as they do back home, 10 AM, 2 PM on Sat and Sun and a 6 PM Priesthood Session and General Women's meeting.  It is always fun taking notes on every speaker and then praying about which talks will be used for the next 6 months for the 4th Sunday lessons in Relief Society and Priesthood meetings.  This picture is our JB chapel with the TV up front.

During this conference, we had English playing in the chapel area, with one sweet sister (Sister Patmah) listening to conference in Tamal (from India) on our laptop with earpieces, and other Chinese members listening in the Relief Society room.  We also have two other flash drives in Masai, each listening to conference in Malay.
It is an interesting time speaking English and trying to learn Malay while everyone around you is speaking 2 or 3 other languages.

Here is our super faithful Brother and Sister Ng listening to conference in Mandarin.  One fun story that I should have taken a picture of but forgot.  During one of the breaks in between conference on Saturday, we took the 4 elders out to eat at our local McDonald's.  As we had finished and were heading back to the chapel, one of the elders pointed out this animal walking very calmly across the parking lot.  It looked like a small cat, but upon closer inspection, it was a rat, looking for some food.  Now, you have to hope that the cheeseburger that I just finished was really beef and not some other critter walking around their parking lot.  It makes one think!  Another fun experience we had on Friday evening.  Linda told me to take pictures and again, I just got too busy.  When you look at the picture of our chapel, just behind the TV is the podium and to the left of the picture, on the stand, we have a huge infestation of termites.  One of the elders was leading the music and fell through the carpeting to the cement flooring as the termites ate through the wood in that area.  So, I volunteered to repair the hole.  What a project!  We first had to locate a store that sold lumber.  There is no such thing as a Home Depot or Lowe's around here.  We found a hardware store run by some very kind Chinese people.  It was literally a maze of shelves and all sorts of things stashed everywhere from floor to ceiling.  We bought a hand saw, some nails and had a 4 foot by 8 foot piece of plywood delivered to our chapel later on Friday evening.  Now the fun begins.  I broke away all the rotted wood and large white termites crawled out from everywhere.  We have a pest control company coming next week to put down some bait, but until then, we needed to fix this hole and shore up the rest of the area before someone else falls through.  My hole was about 4 foot long by 2 foot wide and one foot deep.  I was going to build a frame to go inside the hole and then lay a piece of plywood over the frame to stand on. The entire podium is being ripped up in Feb of next year, when the church gives our area its new budget for 2015.  This is just a quick fix job.  I now begin cutting my first piece of plywood.  I didn't get 2 to 3 inches and ran out of steam.  This 3/4 inch plywood is hard to saw through, so we go to the local store to see if they sell electric saws.  We actually found a great circular saw and took it to the clerk to check out.  We just happened to ask if the saw came with a blade and if they would check.  No blade!  Of course, we are in Malaysia.  Why would they sell a saw with a blade.  You had to buy the blade separately.  And, of course, they don't have a blade to sell.  Great!  So we go to another store and purchase a small jig saw.  The jig saw was a total of 13.80 ringgit, which comes to about $4.50.  This should be a real winner!  We begin cutting the pieces and almost got our monies worth from this saw.  We cut 5 of the 6 pieces needed before the saw "gave up the ghost".  I hammered my framed insert together and it fit perfectly in place.  We covered the carpet back over the new frame and felt pretty good about our construction project.  At least we know that the termites will enjoy some new, fresh wood for the next 3 months.