Nov 9, 2014 - 1st week in JB

Hello!

Johor is defs a change from Mukah haha, so many more people it is ridiculous... however we can't teach 60% of the people here... 3 in every 5 people are Muslim.

The branch here is as Elder Capener called it "all the Sarawak all-stars" the Ibans from East who want a better life and move to Johor for work. It's similar to language Elders in North America, they just find the people who are scattered.

Looking out of my apartment I can see Singapore, which is weird because I've never been so close to Singapore. There is a decent mix of bidayuh and iban in the branch, so they just use Malay in church (which is nice, although my Iban is coming along now, so I can still understand church in Iban.)

We are a 15km bike ride away from our area, there are only 4 malay elders for all of the province of johor.. so our area is pretty big... we have some members and investigators closer, but most of our work is far away.

Elder Spurrier is super dope, this is his 3rd transfer in the mission, so he just finished training, it is a lot of fun serving with him, he has been in JB his whole mission, so he knows it pretty well.

Johor is so big, the actual "city of JB" is 0.4 million, but the Johor Area is 1.3 million (roughly the same as Calgary's "General area")

It took me 27 hours to get from Mukah to Johor... and RM270... so I have to get that reimbursed haha. I went to Sibu the night before (because there was no bus that could get to sibu in the morning for my flight) flew to KL and then took a bus to JB... and then a taxi to where we actually live... all in all 27 hours not in my area.

So are you and Elder Spurrier in your own apartment? Do you get to do stuff with other elders and/or sisters on PDay?

We live with Elder Egbert (my old ZL in Kuching) and Elder Capener (was in my district in Kuching) There are no Sisters in JB, I have no idea what we do for p-days cause I've had one so far... and I'm still emailing.

What is your branch like, big or small?

branch=small

singapore ward=big for Malaysia, small for back home.

Everything compared to back home is small :P

I'm excited that you still get to speak malay. I've always wondered, when it's just you and your companion, do you speak English or malay?

When I'm with my companion I speak mixed and broken english.

and school weekend is friday and saturday so no kids can come to church.

also, low on time so I will upload pics next week

bye! Jumpa Lagi!