FIRST FLIGHT

A different kind of week for us here.  We had FHE with our YSA on Monday and had lots of fun as usual.  Our little group looks even smaller at church.  I think that it loses some of it home appeal when we have it at church.  Oh well, we adapt.  We had a good lesson by Elder Larson and had refreshments by me.  I baked tons of biscuits and put KFC chicken nuggets in them.  Yum except I forgot the salt.  I miss my self-rising flour.  I took a watermelon and a peach cobbler.  The sister missionaries brought homemade brownies.  Afterwards we played church pictionary.  A fun evening for all. 
On Monday we had an early flight to Tawau.  It's about a 45 minute flight from here.  The airport there is about 40 minutes from the town.  A beautiful drive.  There are literally hundreds of thousands of acres of palm oil trees.  It's their main cash crop.  They use to be the world's leading producer of cocoa.  But this is a better cash crop, so they took up all of the cocoa trees and planted oil palms.  We were able to see a few cocoa trees. 
Tawau is only 20 miles from Indonesia.  They get lots of illegal immigrants from there because they can make more money in Malaysia and they have more freedoms here.  We were taken to a water village of over 10,000 people--mostly immigrants!  Such poverty and filth!  Our driver said that he could go thru there without any problems because he drives a government vehicle, but would not recommend anyone else doing the same.  It's not safe.
Our driver's name is William Leung, he is a Rotarian.  Soooo nice.  He has 2 daughters in school in San Jose, California.  He's never been there and really wants to go one day.  I really liked him.  He has been to the states one time.   He went to New York and Tennessee because he has a friend rthere.  His wife is from Singapore and they have a home there where his family lives and he lives and works in Tawau.  He travels to Singapore every 3 months for visits!  As I said William is a gov't official. 
Tawau is a quaint town, small but nice.  We stayed at a lovely hotel called the Promenade.  Such a nice room.  we watched tv for the first time since leaving Jenny's!  We really haven't missed it,but we watched 4 movies while we were there.  We saw Con Air and Taken and 2 others.
After we checked into our room, the Rotary President, Matthias Chin came to pick us up and take us to the hospital to visit Dr. Adjit, an opthamologist, at the hospital.  They are going to administer a vision project for us there.  Dr Adjit is a busy man since he is the only opthalmologist in all of the town and area.  He gave us a tour of his area of the hospital and told us of their needs as far as equipment.  Their needs are many!
We went back to the hotel, called the missionaries in town and arranged to meet them for dinner and dessert.  They were appreciative.
On Wednesday, William, Matthias, and another local man took us to a proposed site for a large water project.  It was several miles out of town in a village.  I was expecting a kampung like in KK, but was surprised to see much better homes with paved roads and electricity--just do not have any water to their homes.  They have a great natural spring but that's it.  we're going to build a dam for them and gravity feed water to their homes.  This one project is going to be for 4 villages and helps several thousands of people!  After our visit there, William gave us the tour that I already talked about.  He took us back to the hotel, and Matthias took us to another hotel for a Rotary lunch.  This hotel was beautiful.  It was an older colonial hotel with beautiful dark woods and carvings, marble, and lovely setting.  Lunch was great and everybody was late as usual in Malaysia!  All men, all Chinese except for Dr Adjit and another man who is a wealthy Indian plantation owner.  Dr Adjit is also Indian.  William told me all about who was who.  They asked your Dad to speak and he did well.  They clapped for him.  Dr. Adjit sat beside me at lunch and kept calling me Larson, because of my name tag.  It doesn't have Gloria on it.  They use first names here except at church.
We got back here on Thursday morning and said how great it was to get back "home".  ElderL. had a baptismal interview at church nite.  We forgot all about it being Thanksgiving.  E/L had leftover fried rice and I had a peanut butter sandwich.  We'll do better with Christmas.  On Friday we skyped with Ginger and Matt and kids.  You guys look wonderful and I love you.  Kiddies are growing up fast.  We had dinner with Kate on Friday night and ran errands with her.  She took us to a wonderful grocery store--Merdeka.  It's my new favorite.  I bought BEEF for the first time.  I'm going to make spaghetti with it.  YEA!
On Saturday we had homemaking where we had cooking demonstrations.  I made a peach cobbler--it's easy and doesn't have eggs, which Sis. Zafar is allergic to.  After R.Soc. we had a baptixm--7 people!  They were all confirmed in sacrament today.  Sacrament was 2 hours long today, because all of our people who went on the temple trip bore their testimony.  It was very special.
It's 10 o'clock and I need togo to bed,  so I sign off and wait anxiously for comments.  I LOVE YOU,MOM
the pics are 2 of FHE and 2 frome Tawau--site for water project in the local village, view of waterfront--and homemaking.