Happy Birthday...Dad!

Hey everyone,

I forgot to say Happy Birthday in my last email home to Dad so here it is! Selamat Hari Jadi (Malay)... Masaya Kaarawan (Tagalog) and Happy Birthday (English). So you may be asking yourself how I know it in Tagalog and that is because we just went to an investigators daughters 19th birthday ha-ha and it was pretty cool we had some Filipino food which tasted strangely like Mexican food ha-ha or maybe I just crave Mexican food so much my mind thought it was ha-ha. But the investigator is Violi and her daughter Anu (what in Tagalog) ha-ha. Violi has been in Malaysia for 20 years and married a Tamil man so Anu is 1/2 Tamil 1/2 Filipino which their seems to be a lot of those and 1/2 Chinese 1/2 Filipino here. So for her birthday we took a picture of Elder Kiwi and I, with some sweet shades on and framed it for her ha-ha, since we didn’t know what to get her.

This week we meet with a recent convert named Jeffrey from Myanmar he’s way cool, he’s so funny. He used to work at TGI Fridays and so I asked him what his favorite food was there and he goes Mac and Cheese with Broccoli and I go… “really?” and, he goes… “of course man!”, ha-ha... he’s way funny.

This week we also got a new neighbor in our condo who is Malay she’s 26? She just moved in and we've talked to here a couple times then on Sunday she was down stairs with some stuff to carry up to the 17th floor (where we stay) and we only have 1 elevator working right now which is ridiculous so there is always a huge line up.... so I was talking to her and offered to carry up these bags for her. (three big garbage bags 2 with lots of pillows and 1 with assorted heavy stuff) so Kiwi gets a pillow one and I get the other two, we tell her we will take the stairs and she can take the elevator and we will meet her up there. So we get up and I am sweating and Kiwi is sweating we wait for like 8 minutes, then she comes out of the elevator and she like, kasihan (saying I feel bad) and we say no problem and then she’s like ok I want to pay you and were like no no no no no... she’s like ok then you have to let me make you some Malay food some time so we agree. But she’s hilarious she comes up and tries to wipe the sweat off my arm then she says thank you, pats our stomachs and then pinches our cheeks ha-ha …so funny. Oh yeah her name is Emy (Amy), I almost forgot. She’s way cool.

This Sunday Sister Kristina from Indonesia gets baptized so it’s pretty sweet. But two of our Indo members are moving back to Indonesia cause their bosses are really mean and jerks, etc. so we lose two members in May. We also are teaching a lady named Kalyany who is way awesome and today she said she wants to make us some spicy Tamil food ha-ha, so it should be fun. We had 8 investigators to church on Sunday so it was pretty sweet.

There are a lot of cool people here.The people of Malaysia are amazing and I love them so much and I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn their language and to teach the people here, even if they don’t always understand what I say in Malay ha-ha.

Well stay classy people of the world.

Elder Jalan

(This is what the Malay and Indo speaking Sisters call me at church… ha-ha, they always laugh cause it means to “walk” or “road”); (Wen Chang Lao is my name in Mandarin, “Wen”, means “warm” and “Chang Lao”, is “Elder”)

Ingat Ka (Tagalog)
Elder Watkins