Nov. 11, 2009

Dad Note: This letter actually arrived at our house about 8:30 in the
evening on Tuesday here. I was in the middle of writing Jessica a letter
and didn't even know it had come in. I guess her Wednesday P-day is our
Tuesday, so keep that in mind if you write her. I assume she won't get the
letter I sent last night until her next P-day, which I feel kind of badly
about. Sounds like she's experiencing the shocks of new things. I never
realized they'd be so sharply constrained on who they can teach.


Hey guys. I miss beautiful Singapore haha. K business first: you all can
email me here. I am allowed to email all family and close friends, so
pretty much everyone. Yes. And we have twice as much time than what the MTC
gave us. Right on. My address is
Jessica Viehweg
332B-9G GCB Court
50450 Kuala Lumpur
West Malaysia
This is for letters only, mail is not good here.
For packages send them to the mission office:
253 Bukit Timah Road, Floor 4
Singapore 259690
Singapore
missionaries will deliver them to me when they go to Singapore for Visa
runs. Not that i'm expecting packages, but if you send them make sure
nothing shakes, rattles or rolls. They'll probably take it if it does.
Pack it tightly. Ok, I think that is all.

Nothing is familiar here. Nothing. I mean really, where am I? I signed up
for this? Why didn't all you RMs tell me it was going to be like this:
HORRIBLE. haha Those were my thoughts my first day in Kuala Lumpur. It was
bad. I have since repented. We took Singapore airlines to West Malaysia
which were quite nice. I mean really nice. We landed in KL in the
afternoon.
I'm going to have to be careful about what i write because you never
know what will get out in the Internet and the church's presence is very
sensitive here. We get off the plane and people are staring because we are
the only white people. People ask us why we are in Malaysia and what brings
us here, which is usually a great invitation to tell about the church, but
all we can say is we are just visiting friends. Even when they persisted to
know more our answer must always be, we are visiting friends. It goes
against everything we were trained to do in the MTC!
Our condo isn't too bad, it is on the Ninth floor. I can't get used to
the light switches being on the outside of the room. I walk into a dark
room, shut the door in blackness, spend about a minute looking for the dang
switch, and then remember that it is on the outside of the room.
Life in KL is so fast, people are always in a rush to go everywhere.
Whoever told me KL was like New York lied, it is not that big. There are 4
million people here. It has been really hard for me to learn who I can
approach and who I cannot. We get on a bus or train and Sister McCurdy, my
companion, points out everyone we aren't allowed to teach (because they are
Muslim) which ends up being almost every single person there. If they are
Malay, they are muslim, and we cannot teach them. Usually their attire
gives it away, Sister Mccurdy can tell by their faces, she's talented. It
makes me very sad to not be able to teach everyone I see.
The other day we were in a mall getting lunch and a women from Mongolia
approached us asking if we could teach her and her son. We were excited and
started talking to her. She wanted to come to our church building on Sunday
to check it out. But after finding out more about her we discovered she is
Muslim. We had to tell her she was not allowed to come to our church and we
were not allowed to teach her. If we were to teach her we would risk
incarceration. It broke my heart.
It takes a lot of searching and speaking to a lot of different people to
find someone you are able to teach. It's not easy.
There are some people the sisters were teaching before I came so we do
have a few investigators. They are all foreigners though, since we cannot
teach Malay people. We are teaching a boy named Nanda, who is from Nepal.
He is actually part of the royal family in Nepal. He became Christian a few
years ago and his family tried to kill him so he came here. I don't think I
have ever met anyone with as much faith as Nanda. He loves the Bible SO
MUCH. We invited him to be baptized yesterday and he said yes. All the
Nepali men are so tiny! And they are so shy. Oh my gosh they are painfully
shy. Nanda is not as shy to us now that we have taught him a couple of
times, which is good. He is so cute.
We are also teaching a mother and son from East Malaysia. Their second
language is Malay, their first langauge is native to east malaysia and I
don't know it. Not that I know Malay either... But I did teach my first
lesson in Bahasa Malay on Sunday. I was terrified. I did pretty well
though I think. I didn't really understand much of what was being said. I
taught my part of the lesson, and then looked at my companion to do
everything else haha. I said a few words here and there Im sure, but not
much. They were very forgiving of my language skills. Niong and Benojoe
are their names. It is interesting the different living situations here in
KL. Sunday night we were invited to dinner at a member's penthouse suite in
downtown KL. They were so wealthy oh my goodness. Dinner was SO GOOD.
They are ex-patriots working at the embassy here. After dinner we then went
to Benojoe and his mother's house, or rather their cement room, sat on the
dirty floor, and ate crazy kinds of fruit and strawberry nesquik while we
taught them. The difference is crazy. They are so nice though.
I thought I would hate the weather here but I actually really like it.
The humidity feels so good. It does crazy things to my hair though, I hate
that. My first day here it rained so incredibly hard, and I didn't have an
umbrella. I got soaked, it was pretty funny. That may have been why my
first day was not so good, that and 3 appointments fell through and we
didn't really have a back-up plan. But it's good now.
KL is so loud. The buses are so loud, the traffic, the motorcycles,
the millions of people. I can't hear anything people say. And they are all
speaking in terrible english so I can't understand or hear. It's pretty
funny. I just nod my head and smile. Sister McCurdy and I are always being
stared at. Every where we go we are stared. It really bothers Sister
McCurdy but I don't really care. I just wave really big, smile and say hi.
It usually scares them at first but then they smile and wave back. We meet
a lot of crazy people here. Sometimes we have to run away from them. The
other day we were sitting at the bus stop and a man from India came up and
kept asking how I got my teeth so white and wouldn't really leave us alone.
Then he started talking about black magic and how his girlfriend has 15
babies at one time. We got on the next bus that came, even though it was
going in the opposite direction of where we wanted to go. haha. Keeps it
fun.
I don't really know what else I can tell you. There are people from
everywhere here in KL. And they are beautiful, especially those from India.

I love you guys. Can't wait to hear from you.