New Area!

Allllllrighty!
well p-day finally cam and im starting to feel somewhat established in this area. whitewashing, at least in the Singapore mission (the best one), means two elders being transferred to an area at the same time. meaning that neither of them know the area at all. luckily we arent totally alone. we live in the same house as two the chinese speaking elders, so they were able to show us around this small town.
ok im wasting no time cuz i got a lot to share haha

so Elder Tadius is staying in Tawau and training. the weekend of trasfers was crazy, and long story short i didnt get back to Tawau from district conference in KK until 4AM. so i then woke up at 8AM to pack and get ready to go for my flight at 3:15PM. so i got packed and visited a few members and recent converts. mostly with one investigator that i have been teaching since April that is got baptized last saturday (right after i got transferred!!) so i flew into KL (Kuala Lumpur) and found my new comp [6:30PM], Elder Tyler who is from my same group from the MTC (awesome!) and then we embarked on an unknown adventure to Sitiawan. luckily E. Tyler had the time and foresight to call the chinese elders here and they gave some short but mostly accurate directions. so from the airport we took a train (monorail) to a central station in KL, and keep in mind i have my big suitcase and carry on and back-pack, and also my huge, falling apart bike box! so from there we took a taxi ride to a bus station. [7:30PM] the bus station ended up being the incorrect one and we had to walk to an adjacent train station (dragging the bike box) took a train to another bus station. [9:00PM] along the way an old Indian guy helped push my bike box across the ground for a considerable distance, awesome! we thought we were done for as far as catching a bus to a small town, but we were able to find one... that left at 12:30AM!!! so we waited in the bus station for about four hours cuz the bus didnt arrive until 1:30 AM... so we then took a four hour bus ride and arrived in Sitiawan. [5:30AM] we then took a really old taxi (both car and driver at least 40 years past their prime) and arrived at our house at about 6 AM...........

madness. but it was pretty fun and we ran into a bunch of strangers that helped out with luggage n telling us where to go. all in all i think i spent about about 450 ringgit in transit. which will be reimbursed. so thats the transfer.

to add to this, we are essentially the group leaders for the young Malay speaking Group here! it started in April and the elders have been running it since the group leader got a job that causes him to work on sundays. So we didnt really find out what all we were supposed to do until like Saturday afternoon haha when we met with the Chinese Branch President. we work through his authority, but we are responsible for callings, talk assignments, all that good stuff. i conducted sacrament meeting yesterday in Malay for 21 people. and both E. Tyler and I gave talks since no talks had been assigned for this week. the group is made up of more youth and children than adults. probly about 5 active adults, 7-8 teens and 7-8 kids. we are not sure why this area was whitewashed because the area as far as missionary work is doing really well, and also the responsibilities of group leader. but we dont complain and we take each challenge as they come. here the history has mostly been working with Iban people, who are natives of Borneo, and also people from India. The elders here recently found a group of Indonesian people and we are hoping they will be baptized, because they will be the greatest strength to this group. Iban people are generally not very educated and are not the kind of people that would be able to sustain a branch, and Indian people are hard to find and convert. but we are hoping to reactivate the few indian members and capitalize on these Indonesians. another problem is that the indonesians are generally illegal. so we teach but not baptize until they are legal. we have heard that the guys being taught now are way strong and are currently working on becoming legal. we havent met them yet so our main goal this week is to meet with them. of course there is always the struggle for preisthood holders, so that is another focus for our finding efforts.

Ok so two weeks ago we went fishing and it was a BLAST. we went out early and got to their jungle house at about 7:30AM. three of the little boys took us to their little pond (maybe big enough for a lake) and we fished from the shore. all we used was a long stick and a worm or bug on a hook. we caught probly like 50 little 3-4 inch fish. comparable to catching sunnies at crystal lake. but i snagged a foot long carp fish hahaha. it was way too fun and after we filled up our little bucket we just threw them back as we caught them. i would send pictures but this dumb internet cafe disabled all usb functions... so later i'll send them somehow.

um thats actually kind of it. if i forgot something you guys are dying to know, tell me haha.

love you!
Elder Giblette