We had a fun activity at our Johor Bahru Branch
this week.  It was advertised as a Relief Society

activity, but the Senior Couple and the Elders are always invited.  The funny thing though, was it ended up with anyone coming, including the husbands to most of the wives.  It was making "Chinese Dumplings".  Here is a picture of my first attempt to make this little dough filled dumpling.  Elder Wang, our newest elder to our district, made the little dough circles and then we put the stuffing inside.  There was three different types of stuffing used.  One was chives and pork, the other was vegetables and the third choice was

pork and prawns.  Here is my lovely wife, with her cute little apron on, supervising the project.  I dropped her off at 7 PM and decided to just go back to our apartment, only one block away.  I gave her my cell phone and told her that I would come back and get her when she called.  As I dropped her off, I ran into the elders and Brother Brian Che, our new Elder's Quorum President.
They begged me to stay, since they were going to be stuck in the foyer, waiting for the sisters to finish the activity.  I told them I couldn't stay and
left.  I stayed home for about an hour and returned.

 Here is our new E.Q. President, Brother Brian Che.  His real name is Miau Fung Che, but all our Chinese brothers and sisters give themselves an American name also.  He was the 1st Counselor, but the president needed to be released and Brother Brian was all that was left.
There is 19 Melchizedek Priesthood brethren here in the JB Branch and all of them are in a leadership position or less active.  It doesn't leave much choices for callings.  Right now, we are in the process of getting a new activated brother to gain the Mel. Pr., so he can become the 1st Counselor to President Che.

Here is Brother Brian's wife, Sister Melanie, which is our branch Relief Society President.  Her real name is Man Yee Pang.  She is a really great cook.  We have been over to her home twice now and she makes wonderful Chinese meals.  Her "spring rolls" are amazing and last time, she made some "cinnamon rolls", from scratch.  They were sooo good.  She said she found the recipe on line and thought she would try it for us, since we were Americans.  They were really great.

 This picture Linda told me take, since this was her job in preparing the Chinese Dumplings.  She had to pull off the heads and legs of all the prawns, then wash them off in the colander.  Who would think you would need to save them.
But, they ended up being the soup base inwhich the Chinese Dumplings were cooked in.  Gross!  I didn't drink any of the soup juice, fearful that I would be sucking up one of the eyeballs or something. 

This is the finish product.  A pot full of the cooked Chinese Dumplings in the prawn head soup and a plate of fried dumplings, which I preferred.  The bowl, behind the fried dumplings, is a mixture of black vinegar and ginger, which you pour over top of the dumplings.  It was quite delicious.  I really enjoyed the chive dumplings, but wasn't so sure of the prawn and pork dumplings.  Their idea of prawns, out here in Malaysia, are suppose to be similar to shrimp, but they don't come anything close to it.

As we visited a local mall called "Giant", we came across this beautiful colored rice painting, done on the mall tile floor.  It is celebrating "Deepavali", which is coming up Nov. 3rd.  This is one of the Hindu holidays.  I thought that the greatest place to teach school would be here in Malaysia.  It seems that they have a holiday almost every other week around here.  Many of them are around the various religions such as the different Muslim holidays, the Hindu holidays, the birthdays for the Sultans and the Presidents of Malaysia, their 4th of July and lots of others.


Each of the sections, of this beautiful peacock, are made of colored rice.  We watched the little children dropping the rice on the tile floor and arranging it.  We went into the store to buy some gifts and when we came out, half the picture was completed.  It thought how beautiful and creative to build this and just a few pushes of the broom and it's all cleaned up. 





Today, we had our 6th baptism.  It was Sister Vennesa's husband, Brother Mike.  His name is Mike Aleyster anak Kinchau.  He is standing along side of his wife, in the white tee shirt.  We couldn't find a white shirt that fit him and couldn't find a jump suit that fit him either.  So we improvised.  Elder Kavapalu had the privilege of baptizing Mike.  He will be a great addition to the Masai Branch.  Along side of Mike is Vennesa's brother, President Joe, who is the 2nd Counselor in the Branch Presidency.  Elder Adam's is on the end with the little monster child, Eddie. 
Eddie is the terror of the Masai Branch.  He runs wild through most of the sacrament meeting and both mom or dad do anything to stop him.  You just want to trip him as he runs by or grab him and give him a good swat on the bottom end.  I guess every ward and branch has an "Eddie" to put up with.  Brother Mike took quite a few weeks to overcome his problem with smoking, but finally did it.  Now, we need to keep him strong in the branch and get him a calling or responsibility.  He has great family support and will bless the branch with priesthood power.