Kuching Means Cat!

Kuching Means Cat!

Another week in Kuching and we are actually finding our way around very well.  Now that Ed has decided that he will not ever drive again he has become a very good navigator and we have explored a bit and are comfortable that we can find our way anywhere. 

We even found the famous Kuching Cat this week.  As you can see, the city is getting ready for Chinese New Year starting next weekend.  Even the cat has been dressed for the occasion.  There are red lanterns and red lights everywhere because the city began as a Chinese settlement a number of centuries ago.  Apparently there were enough cats in the area at that time to warrant the name.   Kuching means “cat”. 

The city is actually not that big so we can get just about anywhere in 20 minutes or so if there is no traffic.  With traffic (which does happen daily at certain hours) we can be inching our way along for an hour or more.  We are trying to avoid those times, but we have found the traffic a couple of times and we are just grateful we have air conditioning in the car!  So far the only place that we have not yet mastered is downtown or what is called “The Waterfront” because it is right on the Sarawak River. Maybe this week.  We have been told that there is another store with “western products” where we might find some of the things we miss.  So far we have been in about 4 other stores where we have found everything from Pringles to Special K to Skippy Peanut Butter.  All at a premium price of course, but we can have them if we want them.

The great Cat of Kuching gets decorated by all of the holidays.  I don't know exactly how big he is because we just drive by him.  He is at a traffic circle so it is difficult to show perspective but I suspect he is 20 feet or more.  I will have to find out more of his history.

Yes, everywhere you look there are reminders and well wishes for Chinese New Year.

Shell Oil was actually started in Borneo so there are Shell stations everywhere...sometimes right next to the other major competitor, Petronas.

You may think you know what the sign says, and yes, it announces where you can get air and water, but the word "angin" actually means "air" and the Malay word "air" means water.

The stations have attendants who pump your gas.  Ed was surprised when one of them asked for a tip.  Tipping is not something that is done much here, but we don't mind tipping them.  I'd probably want to give them more if they would clean the windshield, but they don't do that.

On Monday last the sisters and I went together to do some shopping.  They took me to “The Waterfront” to a new mall that was built last year.  I loved the parking in this mall!  Most of the malls have underground parking but this one was unique.  Each parking spot has a light above it that is either red or green.  So when you enter the parking you just look for a green light on the ceiling and you know there is a parking space there.  How cool is that?   The real reason they took me there is because they wanted to go to the MacDonalds.  They are so funny.  A taste from home and it was surprisingly like home. …not exactly, but close enough.

The sisters get a little silly here so when I started pulling out of our apartment with 4 young sister missionaries and said loudly, “Road Trip” they did not even hesitate and said, “Thailand!”.  Now, you have to remember, we are on an island south of Thailand, but most of the people here who can afford it vacation in Thailand so they were just wishing.  We had a good time

Love those fries! ( So does Sister Tehrani! )

We had our first District Meeting with the Elders and Sisters on Tuesday at the Church.  It was well run by our District Leader, Elder Pratt.  We decided at the end that we should get a picture so everyone got their cameras out and we posed.  We put the piano bench on a table and lined up 6 cameras and raced to get the timers to go off together.  It was funny.  We did have a couple of pictures of hands before getting it right. 

Kuching District Missionaries

On Tuesday evening the missionaries teach piano and choir to anyone who wants to come.  I understand that there are about 30 keyboards out at various members homes.  Mostly it is the young people who want to learn.  The meetings here have young people playing the piano and leading the congregation in the hymns.  Some of them have become quite good. 

I thought you might like to see the new church building here.  I loved seeing the wall signs for the Branch President Offices.

The Kuching District Chapel at Lot 519 Block 16,Jalan Seladah by Song Plaza at the corner of Jalan Tun Jugah and Jalan Song.

Hymnals are in English and Indonesian. No Malay translation yet but the members (including children) sing out well.

We peeked inside.  Our first meeting with the District Family History Director is this coming Wednesday.  We are excited!  There are 3 computers but no readers.  Since there are not really any Malay records in the catalog we are here to help the members enter their own family names. 

 

(The Stampin Branch is pronounced like "stompin' ")

Wednesday night we returned late and come up to our apartment exhausted.  No sooner had we changed to lounging clothes but a knock came at the door.  I opened it to find the cute caretaker who doesn’t speak any English but I could understand that he was telling me that I had left the car lights on.  I was so grateful for him!  We are so used to lights that go out automatically that I had forgotten.  If he had not come up the battery surely would have been dead at 5:30AM on Thursday when we had to take two of the sisters to the airport.  That would have been problematic so I am grateful for that little tender mercy.

We had another baptism on Saturday, yesterday.  Three more adult men baptized along with a young 8 year old boy of a family in the branch.  There is always a good turnout of branch members at these baptisms.  It seems they have them every week.  There is another one planned for next Saturday.  It is so great to see these men make some difficult changes in their lives to accept baptism.  They are such humble people.

We are still eating out most of the time and we have found it is easy to go eat at the “This Spring” mall.  It is between our apartment and the church building and there is underground parking.  There is a KFC which Ed likes along with all the other kinds of food:  Arab Rice, Sushi, Thai, Malay Chicken Rice, all kinds of Chinese, etc.  My favorite so far is the Mixed Rice place.  They have a selection of meat and vegetable dishes to eat with rice.  I usually get 2 vegetable dishes and one meat, usually chicken.  Saturday on the way to the baptism we stopped and there was a vegetable dish I hadn’t seen before and didn’t recognize.  I asked what it was and the two cute girls just looked at each other for a minute and then one of them leaned forward and in her best English said, “It tastes like medicine.”  I was a little surprised so I repeated it, “You mean this tastes like medicine?”  They both smiled and nodded, yes thinking that I had understood their meaning.  I was struck that wherever they had learned English hadn’t taught them that medicine usually doesn’t taste very good, but I decided to try it anyway.  I still don’t know what it is, but it wasn’t too bad at all.

 

The "medicine" vegetable is on the spoon to the right of the rice. The plateful of food above was 6.50 ringit, about $2.00.

A place we love to eat.  The pot on the right end of the counter is full of hot chicken soup that is free.  You can fill as many bowls as you want to go with your rice dish.  It is quite good.

Today we attended the Matang Branch which is a little distance from the Kuching District Church.  They meet in a “shop lot” building which is basically a strip mall store front.  These are mostly people from the indigenous Iban tribe.  Many cannot read or write so have never read the Book of Mormon.  They have asked for the missionaries to teach them to read so a literacy class is taught during Sunday School time for anyone who wants it.  When the members spoke during testimony meeting today I was so lost and then we were told that they were speaking Iban!  We are having enough trouble with Malay so I don’t think we will be learning Iban although there is a large number of members who speak Iban as their native language.

On Wednesday we experienced our first real miracle.  

It has to do with prayer. 

Mid day on Wednesday my computer just went black.  It wasn’t the “blue screen of death” that we have heard about before, but we couldn’t get the computer to start at all.  We would get a black screen with the curser flashing white in the upper left corner.  We tried everything we knew.  After a couple of hours of trying this or that and leaving for a while and then trying to start it up again I said to Ed, “Okay, we have to say a prayer”.  All of the information that we have been gathering is on my computer and although it was backed up a week or so ago, we have been so busy that we haven’t done it since we arrived here.  Phone numbers, names, emails, instructions, everything that we have received in the last week was on my computer.  So we knelt together and I said the prayer.  I reviewed our situation and asked the Lord to bless us and the computer that the information would not be lost.  We ended with another plea for help and then tried to start the computer again.  Nothing……

At that point we had to leave for a while again but when we returned Ed decided that all he could do was call the Dell help line so he did.  The computer was off and he got the tech on the phone and he explained what had been happening.  The tech listened and then asked Ed to try to start the computer again.   It started as if nothing had ever happened to it.  No messages, not anything to indicate that it had crashed in the middle of my work.  Ed thanked the tech and we knelt again to thank Heavenly Father for hearing our prayers.  We decided He just wnated to make sure we were willing to do all that we could do before He helped us.  We are so grateful for prayer and for a kind, loving Father in Heaven who knows us and our needs.  Gratefully this was not a trial we needed to experience further right now and we have learned to get back to our back up plan!

I am so grateful for all the experiences we are having.  I know the Lord is here to help us.  He is on my right hand and on my left hand as He is for all of us.

View of the clouds and mountains from the airport.  This must be Camelot because for the time we have been here it has mostly rained at night.  Big storms with thunder and lightening and torrential rains, but those big storms have been at night.  This is what we have seen the most during the day.  Beautiful, huh?  ^_^