Letter #12 Week of 30 Apr 2008 - 4 inch spider!

Hello family,

Thanks for the pictures of Tyler, Dan and Sharyll.

For mother's day, we figured the best time to call would be 7:00 A.M. here, which I am pretty sure is 4:00 PM in Colorado. I had planned on getting a phone card and calling you, but I suppose it is a better idea for you to call. I know we still have a week, but I'll just give you the number ahead of time. I'm not sure what the country code is, so you'll have to look that up for yourself, but our phone number is XXX-XXX-XXX. We will have an hour to talk. Maybe some time you could practice calling the orangutan sanctuary or somewhere else you could find the phone number to so that everything goes smoothly.

The call a couple of months ago wasn't a collect call. I was supposed to pay for it, and after asking both Elder Beczuk and Elder Dhillon about it several times, I just gave up. It cost about ten dollars, but I couldn't figure out who or how to pay.
That's good to hear that Carly is still winning everything. It's also good to hear that Ariel got selected to the Best and Brightest. Mom, if you ever see her could you congratulate her for me?

This week went very well. For the next month at least, we will be focusing on a new area in Sandakan. We started knocking at an apartment complex last week, and we have a lot of new people to teach. I've been talking for a couple of weeks now, but I had been feeling very scared and uncomfortable trying to speak malay until Thursday. I don't know exactly what changed, but I just started to really enjoy contacting. It finally clicked that I could share with others the Restored Gospel.

Stephen Chin didn't come to church on Sunday. He was travelling somewhere.

We will be having a baptism this Saturday. Misdi is a 22 year old young Kadazan man. Going to his house is always very hard for me. He lives with many other people in a small wooden house they doubtlessly built themselves. They lack running water and many other things I'd never given a second thought to. I think his most expensive possessions are the clothes he wears to church. He always shows up with an ironed collared shirt and polished shoes. Misdi is very humble and courageous. The elders have been teaching him for quite a long time. He has quit several jobs because his bosses have suddenly made him work on sundays. We're excited that he can finally get baptized this week.

I got my quad last week. I think it came to the post office last wednesday, so that would have been exactly 2 weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, between conference sessions on Saturday, Elder Dhillon and I went to eat lunch from a little Chinese food court near the church. I ordered some noodles with beef. When the food came, I noticed they didn't have any forks around, just chopsticks. So, I had to figure out how to use those. I'd never done it before. Elder Dhillon tried to explain it to me, but I couldn't use them as he described, and I just had to figure it out for myself. It was nice after I got the hang of it. I think it's way easier to eat noodles with chopsticks than with a fork.

I got scared this morning. While I was downstairs exercising, Elder Dhillon called me, saying "There's something you might want to see." He pointed toward the bedroom. I went inside, and there, a few feet from where I had been kneeling in prayer a few minutes before, was a 4 inch spider. So naturally, I ran to get my camera and a ruler. But when I set the ruler down on the floor so I would have a point of reference in the picture, the spider ran away. I suppose it's still in our room somewhere.

As I've said before, most of the time we travel by bus here. However, past 7:00, there's not much bus service, so we use taxis, normally just to drive us home. We have one very reliable, very good taxi driver that the elders have used for years. His name is Jad. We call Jad before we go out for the day and tell him where we are going to be that night, and he will come get us. Every now and then, though, Jad is busy and cannot pick us up, so Jad sends his best friend Ahmad. Well, Jad's taxi broke down last week, so we had to use Ahmad a lot. Both Jad and Ahmad are Muslims. Because we gave Ahmad very good business last week, he invited us over for dinner. That was a good experience, eating with a Muslim. He and his wife are such good people. His wife is very good at decorating. They have by far the most beautiful home I have seen in Malaysia. For dinner, we had curry fish, and some chicken and fried vegetables, and, of course, rice. We ate my favorite way- no utensils. Along with the other things, Ahmad's wife also brought out a very small dish with some sort of pink salsa. Elder Dhillon wouldn't tell me what it was, but just suggested that I sprinkle a few drops on my rice and try it. I did. Those few drops burnt my mouth. It was the spiciest thing I have ever tasted. It was very potent.

Alas, I have to go.
Sincerely,
Elder Muffler