hello all!! im doing very well. its usually just really hot. but lately its been kinda hot and rainy. rode my bike in the rain for the first time. it wasnt raining very hard but i got soaked haha. the worst is when it rains, and the clouds hang out and the wet, humid air just lingers because the sun cant dry the air at all. also usually when we bike to someones house i'll get kinda sweaty, and then we go in and the sweating really starts haha. but its all good cuz they dont seem to mind. i think ive probly lost about 6-7 lbs already. my pants are starting to show signs of fitting again hahaha, so thats good.

riding a bike is awesome. i would actually not like having a car most of the time cuz the traffic and roads here are atrocious. ya that bus ride to Sandakan was 7 hours cuz the "highways" here are bad. i guess its kind of hard to make a road go through a jungle. but ya Sandakan is the closest area to Tawau, and then Kota Kinabalu (KK) after that. so we're pretty isolated. we have been meeting with an inactive member, Daniel,  who has some problems with members of the branch here, but he's a really cool guy. he still has a testimnoy, but he just for some reason cant stand some of the members here. i guess there has been major drama in the past. so we're just trying to help him repair his relationship with God before he thinks about going back to church. (its been about 10 yrs...) but he used to be the branch mission leader, and he usually loves the missionaries if he feels he can respect them. and he basically told us how mature we already are, even though we're wuite young. but next week he wants to take us to the city of Semporna, which apparently has some of the best diving in the world. obviously not to go diving but to see some of the other cool stuff around there. Elder Trotter has never been there or seen anything cool like Daniel has told us about. so we're super excited for that!

so being a missionary is actually not that much different. it definitely feels different and weird when you're in the MTC, but now that im in the field, its a lot more normal, cuz like in the MTC every single second of your day is planned out, but its just not as jam packed in the field. of course not to say we dont work hard or we're lazy, but it's just different. I think it'll probly change after a while cuz even though i feel like ive been here for a while, its only been three weeks in the field. The language is actually coming along really well. i still usually have a hard time understanding peolpe, but i can say probly about 80% of everything i think to say. about 95% in lessons. apparently Malay is like one of the top threee easiest languages to learn haha. cuz there is only one tense. no past or future tense, which just makes it hard to think of how to say stuff if you cant put it into a tense. but ya Malay is just kind of a lazy, very non-specific language. and it definitely reflects in the people. they're very like wishy washy people, usually very non-committal. so its hard to teach people because of that sometimes. I wrote this to Ben Basilius and wanted to copy it into this email as well.

by the way ben just got his call to serve in the Seattle, Washington mission!

yes we have a senior couple here in tawau. theyre funny and awesome. about what youd expect if grandma and grandpa lanier cam to malaysia haha! just me and elder trotter in tawau. as far as food goes. we basically just eat fried rice/noodles and fried chicken. we COULD eat seafood and fish and all other kinds of weird stuff, but the rice and chicken is already hard enough haha. also one member family like to cook for us and she makes this either tuna or milkfish dish that is like marinaded in vinegar with onions and peppers that is pretty dang good. its called kinilau. i'll have to take a picture sometime. most stuff has a little spice to it but nothing i cant handle haha.

ya so two funny and related stories from this week. so we're headed home on our bikes, and we always pass a car place with some crazy guy that works there, but he ahsnt been there since i came. so two nights ago he was finally there, and the car place is like on a corner so theres a stoplight right there. so trotter is like waving to this guy, and he truly is some crazy malaysian guy haha, no shirt, just yellin and stuff. but trotter kinda passes him and turns around to keep waving, and doesnt realize he is headed for the back of a car. i'm a little ways behind trotter, so by the time i realize he is going to hit the car its too late. he barely looks before he can break and then hit the back end of a pickup truck hahahah! he was able to kind of lean forward so just his chest basically hit the car, and nothing happened to the car or trotter. just trotters pride is a little hurt hahaha. and then today, on our way to email, he basically does the exact same thing. we were coming to a stoplight, trotter sees one of our current investigators, and trotter continues to wave and doesnt realize how close he is to the stopped car. i barely have time to tell him to turn around before he smacks into the back of this car hahha! this time it was like a little SUV and trotter kind of smacked his cheek into the back windshield and jams one of his fingers pretty badly. less funny when it happened, but i am currently laughing as i write this haha.

 thats it for this week!

I love you all!

Elder Giblette

so i finally took pictures of our house mommy :D its super nice. like we liev like kings compared to everyone else. for real. very few people have more than one room. (but they'll have like a communal kitchen and bathroom)

 thats the lady who was baptised. wayyyy short haha. shes a filipina.

 

this is a cicat. (chee-chot) they are everywhere basically haha. they're incredibly fast and they basically just crawl along the walls and ceiling haha. this one is wayyy tiny.

half of a monitor lizard in the sewer drainage. probly eaten by another lizard. trotter has seen some like five footers, but we havent seen any big ones since i came

i decided to splurge on some quality sunglasses. these cost me about $2
 

this was our mcdonalds feast. at lunch they have like almost half priced meals. so all that, four fries, a mcchicken, a quarter punder, a bigntasty, a double cheeseburger and four drinks was about 30 ringat. which comes to about $10. awesomeness.