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.