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?  ^_^

Hello at last From Kuching, Malaysia!

Arrived and loving it!

Hello from Kuching, Sarawak, East Malaysia!   

 Yep!   We went from this........

Above is the pond and golf course out the window of my mom's condo where we have been staying for a couple of weeks.

......to this!  

The view from our apartment window in Malaysia!

  We went from this (our language trainers, Scott Johnson and Zane Pulver) and our fun MTC District (Trainer Brother Keddington, the Shanz's, the Peterson's, us, the Bailey's, Trainer Sister Russom)

 

 to our Mission President fixing us breakfast and snacks the day we arrive in Singapore!

We have settled into our apartment enough for me to begin my blog for this year and this mission.  I’m not sure we have adjusted to the time changing yet, but we don’t seem to be having too much trouble. 

After leaving Salt Lake at 1AM on Monday, Jan. 21^st we flew to Atlanta and had a 6 hour layover.  We met our friends from our first mission, the Bailey’s, at the airport for a little while and a little breakfast.  We then left for the 14.5 hour flight to Tokyo Narita Airport.  We were fortunate to have an empty seat between us which made for a much nicer flight.  It was so long but I couldn’t sleep so I watched 5 or 6 movies and got up between each of them to walk and stretch my legs.   We arrived in Tokyo about 4:30pm on Tuesday, Jan. 22^nd.  A 3 hour layover was just enough time to stretch legs and walk a bit before getting on the plane for the last leg of our flight, 8 hours to Singapore.  Again we had no one in between us but it wouldn’t have mattered for me.  I promptly fell asleep and must have slept for about 5 hours.  It was difficult for me to wake up but that seemed to tide me over until we got to sleep Wednesday morning after landing.

There was so much confusion about our reservations and sleep arrangement or whether or not anyone would be at the airport to meet us we did not know what to expect but as we were getting our luggage, I looked out and saw two people with badges.  I turned to Ed and said, “Honey, we have badges!  It must be President and Sister Mains!  I waved and they waved back and as soon as we could we went through the door and she was just filled with enthusiasm and we hugged even before I moved around the gate!

Then President Mains pulled out his ipad and said,  “We have to record this for you to send home!” and he took this picture outside the baggage claim at the Singapore Airport at 2AM!!!

2AM pick up by President Mains at the Singapore Airport. We were ready to stay on the ground!!

They drove us to the Mission Home and we all went to sleep very quickly because we had a big day ahead.  We slept until about 8AM and then both Elder Moulder and I were up and studying before the Mains woke up.  They fixed us a wonderful breakfast (he loves to cook) of sausage, scrambled eggs, waffles, fruit and juice.  Then we began our instruction in their living room.  About 2pm we headed out to the Mission Office for more instruction and a tour of the Stake Center which includes a Family History Centre.  Along the way we had told President Mains about Elder Johnson from The Woodlands 1^st Ward in Texas and we were surprised when he showed up at the building with an investigator!  We took our picture with him for the folks back home.

Cute Elder Johnson had no idea who we were but when he found out we were from The Woodlands too he couldn't stop grinning.  He spoke to the President for a moment while we were there and it was obvious he was loving the work.  He just kept smiling and smiling.  What a great missionary!

So….we spent the night with the Office Couple, Elder and Sister Howell.  They stay in the quarters behind one of the other church buildings in Singapore which is used to house groups of missionaries when they come in.  The house (now the church building) was the home of a wealthy Chinese man and the quarters behind the house were for his concubines and servants.  It was a fun building to stay in.  At least today there are western beds and sit down toilets . 

What is now a Church building used to be the waterfront home of a wealthy Chinese man.

President Mains, Elder Howell and Elder Moulder study the menu at our first Singapore restaurant.

Elder Moulder loading all 8 pieces of luggage into the car heading back to the airport for the flight to Kuching.

Arriving in Kuching we were met by long time Church members Brother Lebannon Ero, his wife, Sister Mollie and their youngest daughter, Liahona.  They brought us to our apartment where the Sisters who live upstairs from us were eagerly awaiting our arrival.  The other senior couple serving in East Malaysia who lives here have been gone on their regular Seminary and Institute Support run around the island so the Sisters were happy to have another senior couple in the building.  

This is our apartment building.  It has a security gate that works better than the one we had in Salt Lake on our last mission!  ^_^ Ours apartment is the center apartment.  It uses the half of the building with 2 bedrooms, 2 baths and porches on the front and back.  The reddish and green area is the porch where the washing machine and oven are.

This is the 2nd bedroom and is the office where I am sitting right now!!!

Everyone chatted for a while and said goodbye to the Ero’s and then the Sisters began helping us do whatever we needed to.  They have been so helpful, translating, taking us to the stores, etc.  The other senior couple had left a jar of Skippy peanut butter, a loaf of bread, a box of cereal and a box of milk for us in the frig so we had some food.  (Since then we have been eating a lot of toast with peanut butter for breakfast, lunch and dinner.)

This is the food that was left for us by the other senior couple who are on a training trip right now.  So sweet.  The bread is very good but the milk is a little different for us.

 
The Sisters called the man from whom we are renting the car we will drive for the next 18 months and he and his wife and son came to deliver the car right away.  The couple here before us rented it new from him so we don’t have a new car but it is a good little car.  Elder Moulder really enjoys driving it.  It is a Malaysia make called Proton.  It is quite zippy and perfect for these roads.

Elder Moulder in the driver's seat of the Proton we are renting.  It is a fun little car and we are adjusting to the British driving quite well....better than we thought.  Probably because the people here do not drive very fast, they are polite drivers and they do not honk their horns!!!Hurray!

We have spent several days and gone through several local people to help us set up our internet and get a cell phone and a phone for our Vonage number. We appreciate these people so much. 

We have been cleaning and going through things in the apartment.  Learning how to use the little washing machine and the showers and the air conditioners, etc.  The prior couple left all the appliances we would need:  2 printers, rice cooker, blender, mixer and a few I didn’t know I would need but have come to appreciate very much:  heated tea kettle, clothes drying rack.

I haven’t even tried to cook anything yet but that may happen tonight.  We have a two element gas stove inside the kitchen and a little oven outside on the porch next to the washing machine.  I haven’t even opened that door yet…..it’s a little scary to me ^_^.  We do have a small microwave also. 

Washing machine on the left(must be kept covered so bugs and lizards don't get in because it is an open porch) and the oven.  Haven't tried it yet.....

Kitchen area with one of the two refrigerators.  The green door goes to the porch with the washing machine.  The table in the foreground is large because missionaries are always getting together!

This is our water filtering system provided by the Church.  We have to brush our teeth here and we have to be careful to keep our mouths shut during a shower.  We also have to wash any vegetables or fruit we eat in a solution of bleach and filtered water to be safe.

Saturday we were invited to go with the Sisters and Elders from our District to dinner before a baptism.  It was great fun to be with the high energy group.  They are so fun.  

Our District

 The new Church building is a beautiful building  that looks like most you would find in the States.  There is no organ in the chapel but other than that it is just the same.  The building is laid out a little differently to accommodate the 3 branches that meet there and the District Pres. Offices.  The kitchen is a little different too.

The baptism was wonderful.  Three adult men who have overcome challenges with the Word of Wisdom to be baptized.  They just couldn’t stop smiling.  I know they will be blessed for making this step toward having an eternal family.  On Sunday Elder Moulder was invited to be in the circle for the confirmations.  That was nice. 

After the baptisms we left with the Sisters to take them to an appointment  with an investigator they have been seeing for some time.  She is so sweet (Sister Rita) and her son (about 10 years old) was right there with her.  The Sisters taught about Fasting and Tithing and this cute woman had no trouble with understanding the concepts and committing to live them both.  She wants to be baptized but before she can she must be more regular at attending Church.  She said her husband’s car is broken so she will need to walk to Church tomorrow but she promised she will be there and she was!

We are still unclear as to what we are to do in attending the different branches here but we went to the two branches we think we will be working with at the Church building.  The first branch (Batu Kawa) seemed to be small in numbers.  They are the first to meet in the building at 9:30AM.  We arrived just in time to walk in and both the adult leaders on the stand stood up to greet us so we walked to the front to shake hands and then sat down.  The meeting began and then we heard a few words that we could understand and realized it had just been announced that we would be the first on the program to bear our testimonies to the congregation!  Ha!  We had not reviewed our testimony language!!  Elder Moulder was very brave and he stood up and gave a two sentence testimony in Malay.  I was not so brave and did agree to a translator.  My testimony was a bit longer because of that.  It did throw in a couple of words/phrases that I knew.  I did begin by saying in Malay I didn’t have words in Malay to speak my testimony.  After that first meeting we decided to return to our apartment and prepare for the next one just in case the same thing happened.  It did and we were both prepared the best we could.  We sounded like we learned Malay from a book, but, well…..we have! ^_^

So that is our first few days here.  I will end with a couple of photos….the moon was so beautiful Sunday night.  If I can just get rid of the ants all over the place (in the computer, in the kitchen….everywhere) I will really love this place. 

Singapore buildings on the way to the airport.

Another uniquely designed building and metal "flowers" next to it.

You can almost see the Shell sign behind the light post.  I was taking pictures from the car traveling to the airport.  We had only seen Singapore at night so I wanted to get some photos.  I was pleased to see Shell stations all around.  In fact, there is one right down the street from our apartment so we can use Shell gas while serving here!

From the plane on approach to the Kuching Airport.

Elder Moulder, Sister Trottier and Sister Tehrani brought us to a nice mall with a food court on Friday evening.  We had Tahi food although there was another place with tacos and a hamburger called "The Big Texan".....Another day perhaps.

Last night I was walking past the kitchen window and the moon was so beautiful.  It isn't a sunset like I used to put on my blog from our last mission, but this was as breathtaking.  The photo just doesn't do it justice.  What a great place to be living right now!