DECEMBER ON BORNEO!!!!

Christmas would not be complete without feeding our wonderful missionaries. I promised them that we would have lasagna, just as soon as I could find a store that sold lasagna noodles. After weeks of searching, I finally found some in an expensive store downtown. So we had a wonderful meal, even if I do say so myself!! I even baked chocolate and coconut cream pies for dessert. YUM!!!! This is Sisters Wong and Gopinath. Sister Wong goes back home to Southern California on January 2. We will really miss her. She is such a delight.

Sorry that this picture is so blurred but I didn't know how to delete it from the blog once I placed it there. We ate our Christmas dinner outside at church. It really was delicious. Kate, our Relief Society president was in charge of the whole Christmas evening at church. She can do anything!!!! Our sisters love to have their pictures made. After the meal was finished, we had awesome fireworks. One of our Branch Presidents bought them and his counselor, who is Chinese, loves to shoot them off!!! The kids were so excited and it really was fun.

The YM/YW performed the Christmas Story as told in Luke 2. They made their own costumes and they LOVE to perform. So simple and so from the heart. Sister Dorcas, who has on the Santa hat, is a counselor in YWs. She bought the fabric for the costumes and helped sing the carols with the youth. Dorcas used to sing professionally and has a lovely voice. She is amazing.

Also on the program, we had a "tree" decorating contest and guess who the "trees" were!! That's right--Our Wonderful Elders!!! We emailed their parents these pictures on Christmas Day. The members of the branches just loved doing this. I picked one adult member, one youth, and one primary child to decorate "the trees". Our branch members are so youthful in their laughter and enjoyment.

These are our primary children with Sister Kolinting, singing "Joy to the World". They love to sing, too.

The Relief Society sisters sang a medley of three songs. Chelsey, the little girl in front, sang the first verse solo. She was so excited and her mom bought her a new dress just for the occasion!! Her mother is Caroline, standing right behind her in the pink blouse. Caroline just went to the temple for the first time in November. She is Branch President Francis's daughter.

This is Sister Margaret. We have wanted to meet her for many months, but did not know how to contact her. She is inactive, hasn't been to church for five years. Her son, Ian, is active and lives in Hawaii where he attends BYUH. He is married and has three children. Sister Margaret has six children--five boys and a daughter. All of her boys are members of the church, her daughter is not a member. Her husband is a lawyer here and she has her own reflexology business. She used to be a nurse many years ago. We went to her business to introduce ourselves. She treated us to lunch and we had a nice discussion with her about her activity in church. She was receptive but not ready to decide. She is a lovely lady. We told her that we're going to look up Ian and his family when we go to Hawaii and giver him this picture of his mom and us.

The best thing we did in December was to go to Sandakan for some wheelchair assessment training and distribution of wheelchairs. These are some of the nursing students who volunteered to help with the wheelchair assessments. The 70 wheelchairs that were in Sandakan were part of the almost 600 that were donated to Cheshire Homes in KK. Only three people in Sandakan had had the assessment training, so we needed these volunteers to train. They had "on the job training". They're smart and caught on really quickly.

This is E/S Lee with one of our wheelchair recipients. They are relatively new missionaries in Sandakan. I think that they have been there about 4 months. E. Lee is now the Branch President. S. Lee is the R. Society president. They are from Kuala Lumpur. They are young for "senior" missionaries. They quit their jobs to serve a mission now while their health is good. S. Lee said that the Lord had blessed them to be able to do this. They're doing a great job. They were especially helpful to us at this wheelchair give away because the speak many different Chinese dialects. This was so helpful because some of the recipients were Chinese who did not speak Bahasa Malay. E. Lee translated for the students who were doing the assessing.

They also picked us up at the airport and showed us some of Sandakan. We stayed in a beautiful older Chinese hotel.

This was part of the closing ceremony with the wheelchair recipients. The Muslim lady to the right of E. Larson was our government official guest. She spoke and officially thanked LDS Charities for the gifts of the wheelchairs. It is such a blessing in our lives to be a small part of Heavenly Father's Kingdom here, to help bless His children on this remote island, Borneo. Who else but the Lord's Church would find and give them this wonderful gift to help them live a better life???

Trying to teach the student nurses some of the assessment for this sweet, elderly lady.

E. Larson helping this sweet lady with a new chair and a cane!!!

This is Sister Liew. We just finished teaching her granddaughter, Veronica. We teach new converts eight lessons just as soon as the missionaries have finished teaching them their parts. We taught Veronica in Sister Liew's home--that's where Veronica lives. S. Liew has nine children and numerous grandchildren. Ten of her family live with her!!! She is always exhausted and busy!!!! We took her to lunch one day. We told her that we would only take her and no one else. We just wanted her to have time by herself, at least for a few hours for one day!! She is a good and faithful member of the church. She wants to serve a mission, but doesn't see how she can. I always encourage her. Notice all of the Christmas decorations in the restaurants with our Muslim friends!!

This is Kate and her friends at her birthday party. Her three best friends are here with her. They have been friends since primary school. The gal in the gray t-shirt is Angeline who lives in Australia now. She has the cutest little baby boy named Liam. These gals are all Chinese. We have had Angeline and Liam over to our apartment with Kate. I also invited them to the church Christmas party and dinner, but she couldn't come because she was moving into a new apartment that week. This will be their second home. The restaurant is a vegetarian restaurant. The food was delicious and I love Kate's friends--just like I love Kate. When I leave Borneo, part of my heart will remain with her. She is like our "adopted " daughter. I sometimes feel that we were sent here to meet and help her during this time in her life.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATIE-BUG!!!!!

We love our family more every day and look forward to seeing everyone...God bless all who serve Him everywhere!!!

DAD & MOM