This week was a better week, very busy though. We started off pday by waking up at 6 so that we could go on a jog around our part of town, and then be in the office by 7:30 ready to report. It takes a lot of time to report, I just finished. It's really good to hear from all the zone leaders. We then went to play a GIANT game of ultimate frisbee in a park on one end of the island- it was so much fun. I'd never played frisbee before, but I was instantly hooked. I embarrassingly got a little too into it, and dove (and caught) a frisbee which ended up ripping pants and cutting me up pretty badly. I was so sore afterwards. We then had an appointment with a member, where we could ask how we could help them.
It was a busy week of exchanges, we flew out on tuesday to Kuala Lumpur and had such a good time. I had a really interesting experience on the airplane. We typically fly Malaysia Airlines or SilkAir (which is part of the Singapore Airlines company). Well, when we got to the airport, we found that they had upgraded us to a Singapore Airlines flight, which is super fancy. A business man sat down next to me, and immediately fell asleep. Throughout the flight, I kept having this feeling that I should talk to him. After some refreshments were passed out, he woke up and started acting fidgety. I jumped on the opportunity and asked him if he was going to KL on business. He responded yes, in a thick French accent. I asked what he did, and he said he was in the luxury goods business. After a few minutes, I found out that he was from Paris, lives in Hong Kong with his family, and is the President of Louis Vuitton Asia. haha. He then went on to point out every piece of Louis Vuitton he was wearing (everything). We had a good conversation for the rest of the flight, and talked about all sorts of things: missionary work, job advice, families, God, and prayer. By the end of the flight he was so happy that I had talked with him. He said how grateful he was for flights, where we have to turn off our phone for an hour and listen! I committed him to say a prayer that night, and to visit mormon.org. I really hope that he prayed that night.
It was so nice to be back in KL. I was able to see a lot of old friends from the branch. One of the people that Elder Rasmussen and I found was baptized last week and confirmed yesterday, so we had dinner at President Woodford's house with charles (the one who was just baptized). The Woodford's are so great. I also just heard that a man named Leong, who Elder Stahle and I found, who was doing so well then suddenly moved North after a sudden divorce, found the Elders in Puchong, went to church, and is on target again towards being baptized. We visited sis Alice, and taught a brief lesson with her daughter, who is now on date and reading the book of mormon as well. I was so happy to find KL doing so well. Also (side note) KFC in east malaysia is terrible, and I missed west malaysia KFC, so for lunch we went all out and got a ton of fried chicken with their thai chili sauce. ^_____^ OH BEFORE I FORGET: I made western family macaroni and cheese yesterday for dinner- it was so good. I took a picture for GMa
After two nights in KL, we woke up super early to go to the airport to fly to Penang. I used my smart phone to set an alarm, but the phone froze, so we woke up late (still super early though) and rushed down to our taxi, who was a crazy guy (as usual). Penang was so nice! I was so impressed with it. It felt a lot more like California- a lot less tropical, a bit dryer, and cooler temperatures. The church is in a great location- right next to the Penang Polo club and the turf club in a nice bungalow house. The chinese have a majority on the island, which gives it a much different feel- almost like Singapore. We were there for Chinese New Year's which was awesome to see all the decorations as well as for food (or so we thought). We had a famous Penang Nasi Kandar lunch (where I ate more curry than any person should eat in a 2 week period), and then for dinner we went to a part member family's house and had hot pot. It turned out to be mountains of processed fish balls. They insisted on us eating atleast 5 bowls of it. I got to about half way through the 5th bowl and a piece of artificial crab caught my gag reflex. I'll have to attach a picture. The highlight of that trip was when, at this dinner, the family (after we shared a message) went around and bore their testimonies. It was so cool to hear, because this family has recently been reactivated. It was great to see how each testimony linked to one another, and how they built off each other. Very uplifting.
The next day we flew back into Singapore to go on exchanges with the Singapore North Zone Leaders. We had just enough time to drop off one suitcase at the apartment, shower, and grab the other bag to head off to their house. The house next to our condo was throwing a very fancy new year's party, and the whole street was packed with porsches, maseratis, bentleys, and rolls royces, with little chinese business men walking around. They had a private dragon and lion dance on our street which was cool to briefly see. My camera was out of batteries, and I have misplaced the charger, so i didn't get good pictures (i just found out yesterday that the charger to our Sony smart phones also works with my sony camera!)
It was super fun to be with the north zone leaders- they're chinese elders, so we were able to meet with a lot of chinese speakers. They deal mostly with chinese nationalists, so they have awesome chinese. We had a dinner in a little sketchy chinese restaurant (super delicious) but made me feel like I'd been hit by a train all night.
cool story:
One of the Elders in our mission is from a town north of KL called Ipoh. He is serving just across the border of singapore in Johor, Malaysia. Well, his little brother came down to singapore to get set apart before heading off to Alaska for his mission, and for 24 hours, President Mains let the two Loke brothers be companions in Johor. Last night, we had little Elder Loke spend the night with us. He was so excited- literally bouncing off the walls. It lifted all of our tired spirits. We sent him to the airport at 3:00AM this morning. I hope Eric gets called to the Singapore mission- maybe we could go on exchanges!
ok, I'll send this and talk about the housing
Elder Robinson
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