Third Week in Miri

MOM!

     My new home in Miri is really nice and I love the Ibans—they are crazy!!   Luckily, they no longer chop off heads; they are just super humble people. We have been teaching this little nine-year-old Iban girl and we are baptizing her next month!!  Miri is known as being one of the most beautiful places in East Malaysia.  Unfortunately, I don’t get out enough to take many cool pictures, but I am sending a letter home with a cool picture!!   My companion isn’t able to go out much, so I basically just sit in my room and study Iban and Malay for several hours a day.  We live with the Chinese speaking elders and because one of them is a local, he can also speak Malay.  He has helped me a lot with my Malay and Chinese. I’ve learned how to say in Chinese, "Can you speak English?"-- ne kuh e shua ing wan ma?  Whenever I see a Chinese person I just say, "ne kuh e shua ing wan ma?" and they just start cracking up.  They love it!!

     I have also managed to lose all the weight that I gained in Melaka!  I implemented a two-fold weight loss program.  First, I started doing Body Combat.  It’s like Insanity except with kick boxing.  Second, one of the Ibans fed me fish that he caught in the river and I don’t think that he cooked it all the way.  For the last four days, any food or water that I drank came right back up!  Yesterday, I had to leave church halfway through because I thought that I was going to die.  I’m feeling a lot better today.  The locals gave me "medicine"--little tiny pieces of coal--to swallow and no joke it worked!   But, I’ve lost a lot of weight between doing Body Combat and being sick; so, I am looking pretty good right now. 

     I hear Kansas City is getting a bunch of snow!!  People here always ask me if I get salji in Kansas and when I tell them that I do, they freak out! They have never ever seen snow, so they have no idea. They always ask me what it’s like and all I say is putih dan sejuk--white and cold.  

Elder Madsen with handle bars.

     This week has been a lot of fun when we were able to go out. We were at a members’ house the other night and my companion asked for a toilet and the members got really silent.  They tried to tell us why he couldn’t use their toilet in Iban, but we couldn’t understand them.  The family was getting a little frustrated with us, so this old lady blurted out, "You so fat; toilet so small. You fall and buaya (gators) eat you."  The room just burst out laughing!!  My poor companion is not one of those fat people that laugh about how fat they are.  He’s one of those fat people that are in denial, like me; so, he took it pretty bad, haha!   I also got my bike from Melaka this week.  They had to take my bike apart to ship it which meant that I had to put it back together.  We both know that putting things together is not something that I am very good at, so I was pretty proud of my work when I finally had it all together.  I tried it out the other day and as I was flying down a hill, my handle bars came off!!!  I started screaming and flew off into a ditch! I was covered in mud and dirty water!  The locals laughed so hard that they were crying!  

Eight months down already! Love you mom!! 

Elder Madsen

Miri, Sawarak, Malaysia

Mom!

Traditional Iban Family
 Umm, anyone lose their head?

     I made it to Miri!  I left Kuala Lumpur on Thursday and flew across the ocean to Miri which is on a different island.  It was basically a two and a half hour flight before we landed in a really small airport.  This area is amazing and there is soo much potential.  The Ibans are very kind and entertaining.  They all build their houses (longhouses) over the river.  The Iban people are really small. They are about five feet tall and weigh 100 pounds, so they don't build the floors in their houses to be very sturdy.  When I go to their huts, I have to crawl or squat to get around. I feel like a giant! My companion is a pretty big guy, so we are always scared that every step he takes will be his last.  One of these days my companion, along with the rest of us, will end up falling into the river.  Luckily it hasn't happened yet! 

     I ate duck tongue this week--it actually wasn't that terrible.  It was just really, really salty.  I am pretty pumped because one of the members here catches Biawak (the land crocodiles) and he told us that the next time he catches one he will call us and we can have a feast.  So soon I'll get to eat my first Biawak.

     I gave my first talk in Malay the other day, it was pretty scary.  When the branch president first ask me to talk, he told me to give just a small message.  Then on the way to church, I got a text that said, "boleh 10 minute?"  I freaked!  I can give a talk in Malay if I write it down and practice all the vocabulary, but I can't give a talk right off the top of my head.  When I got up in church, I just rambled on for like five minutes and then sat down.  I must have done okay because if my Malay was bad, all the locals would have laughed at me and no one did--so that is a good sign! 

     I have really been studing my Malay and my Iban really hard.  We are still waiting for the Book of Mormon to come out in Malay.  Right now, all we have is an Indonesian Book of Mormon which is pretty dang close, but I don't like to read it because then I will use Indonesian words and all the locals will laugh.  I was thinking the other day that I can pretty much fluently speak Malay and Indonesian.  I'm working on my Iban and I know three words in Chinese and Tamil.  So I now know six languages and none of them are useful except "Gong Xi Fa Chi" which means "give me money" in Chinese.  Everyone says it during Chinese New Year and because we are white and can say "Gong Xi Fa Chi", everyone laughs at us and gives us money! 

     Love you mom!!

Elder Madsen

One Transfer and Two Miracles

Mom!!

     I happened!  I am transferred!!! I leave for Miri in East Malaysia on Thursday!! It's so crazy because I am going to the straight up Jungle!!  Besides my companion, there will not be any other missionaries around for hundreds of miles.  The people that we will be working with are the indigenous jungle people from the Iban tribe. The Iban's speak their own Iban language which is kind of close to Malay but it has a different dialect so it sounds really crazy.  No one in Miri speaks English; they only speak Malay and Iban, so soon my Malay will be amazing! (and my Iban will probably be a little bit below average.)

     This week we had a couple of pretty cool things happen.  One evening, we were knocking on doors for a solid three hours in the rain and all we got were people who laughed at us and made fun of us.  So after a while, we decided to call it a night and head home. My companion jumped on his bike and out of nowhere he had a flat tire.  I was thinking to myself, "Why is this happening??  We just worked our butts off for three hours in the rain and now we have to walk forever to get a tire changed."  By the time we left the bike place, we were out about an hour later than we are supposed to be.  We started riding home and we saw a recent convert--who has a little bit of a drinking problem--leaving his house.  He was on his motto with his two kids on the back.  We stopped them and when I went to shake his hand, he couldn't even keep his hand steady enough to shake mine.  The guy couldn't even talk!  Come to find out, he had taken some pain medication and he had been drinking. I grabbed the kids off the motto, put them on my back and started walking back to their house.  My companion convinced the father to take his motto and go back home.  I am convinced that if we hadn't been there to catch him, he would have crashed and his kids would have died.  If it wasn't for that flat tire, we would have missed him entirely. 

     There was also another cool thing that happened this week. This kid in the branch was rushed to the hospital earlier in the week for dengue fever.  People here die from dengue fever (comes from a certain mosquito bite) and if they don't die they end up spending quite a bit of time recovering in the hospital.  The problem with this kid is that he supports his entire family all by himself; so, when he is not working that family is in trouble. When we went to see him in the hospital, he did not look very good and he was really, really weak.  I was really scared because it didn't look like he was going to make it.  We gave him a blessing, and.....two days later he walked out of the hospital.  That is unheard of here!!  It was so crazy--two miracles in one week!!

     The cut on my foot looks pretty good.  I never did get any antibiotics from the doctor, but the Sisters put some stuff on the cut that started fizzing up.  It was pretty cool.  The Sisters said that it didn't look too infected (very reassuring), so I am still going strong!

      I'm glad to hear that dad has been in a really good mood. Tell him that I want a car when I get home from my mission (preferably not the white Civic and that I would love to have all my college tuition paid for!!)

      Okay mom, I gotta run. I love you so much!

Elder Madsen

Back in the Saddle Again!

Mom,   

      I have been kind of worried because my stitches weren’t healing as fast as I hoped, but the Sisters have been taking care of it for me!  The doctor took the stitches out last Tuesday and that little operation hurt worse than the cut itself--and they left one of the stitches in!! When the sisters were cleaning my wound, they found one was still half in so they had to dig it out! But I am doing okay!! My foot is not infected though, we made sure! 

      

      This week was pretty good though.  We are still teaching the Chinese man and he’s still on for a baptism on February 17^th but, I’m afraid that I won’t be here because this will probably be my last week in Melaka. I’ve been here for five months and major transfers are being announced next Monday so I’ll probably be gone!! I wish that I could stay for the baptism, but I can’t count on it! His baptism will make number three for me! The Tamil family’s husband actually came back this week. He was sitting at the house when we showed up and the whole family acted like nothing happened! I still don’t trust him. Also, our new church is beautiful. 

     Mom, you would be proud of me! I can eat spicy food now and I actually really enjoy it; except, for  last night when this Indian family gave me the spiciest food I’ve ever eaten. I instantly starting sweating and my face got super, super red and a few tears may have welled up. The Indian family just started laughing--but they refused to eat that spicy food-- so I have a feeling that they did that on purpose.

     Everything else is great!! I love Melaka! Already almost 7 months down! I love you momma!!! Miss you!! Don’t worry about me. I am loving life!! 

Elder Madsen