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!