Dear Family.
To begin this letter I'd like to start off with a quote by my Zone Leader given today. "Sister, enjoy this day, for next week you go to the land of infinite P-days". Amen to that! We had a great day but I'll get to that later. First I want to comment on a few things you all wrote.
Dad, glad the surgery went well. Keep poppin those pills, I expect you to be nice a loopy at all times. Are you sure you can't go skiing?? Please Deb, plleeeeeeeaaaase??? I'm glad you got it all out of the way though. I watched the link about you all being on the news and such. OH MY GOSH EVERYONE LOOKS SO DIFFERENT. I should NOT have watched that. It totally freaked me out. I'm gonna die. I can't come home. I can't handle this kind of change!!!!! I watched in silence because the sounds isn't working on this computer but still... holy moly. I can't do this.
Back to me. Today was great. I told all the missionaries here they HAD to spend my last P-day at the beach, no buts. It was great. Sister Lowe brought pastries, curry puffs, pamellos and guava juice for all of us. The four Elders living over in the Pujut House "made" me a good-by-pie too. They are so nice. They didn't make it they bought it, but they'll deny that to the death. They even dumped it in a pie tin that was too big for it, saying "it shrunk when we cooked it". Silly elders. They did have a good-bye message written on it that was hysterical though. I'd tell you what it said but you wouldn't understand it. It feels nice to be loved. When they gave it to me all the Elders sang "Happy Death Day Sister Viehweg" (happy birthday song) How thoughtful eh?
At the beach we played volleyball. We made our own net and it was awesome. I found two long wooden branches we used for poles and then Elder Tabiar the Sabahn found this vine plant we were able to use to make the net. We even tethered the two poles to the ground with the vine. It was a legit net, it was awesome. We went in the morning at about 8 so it wasn't too hot yet.
This week has been the best ever. Sister Lowe's companion had to have surgery in Singapore so she has been gone for the past week and a half. She had pollups in her nose or something, the surgery was simple enough but the fact that she was on coumadin for her heart made things difficult. They didn't want to stick on a plane back to Malaysia. She will be there for yet another week. Because she has been gone I have been following Sister Lowe to a lot of her appointments helping her out. I have been her interpreter for the past few days. The Senior sisters teach all the recent-convert lessons so I have been having a blast. I get to follow her around to see and teach all the new members that I love, in my area AND the elders area. It's been so fun. Sister Wong and Lor have done a great job flying solo too. Tomorrow through the end of the week President and his wife are coming to Miri for District Conference and a man from Salt Lake is coming to interview people here about being able to translate the Book of Mormon into Malay, so Sister Lowe will be quite busy with them. I'll be going back to be with Sister Wong and Lor for the end of it. Should be fun. I have soooooooo many people I need to see!! I don't know how I am going to fit it all in. The problem is everyone wants me to come the last day before I leave. It would be fine to space it all out throughout the week but no no, they won't have it.
Talk about having out of control feelings all the time! I don't wanna leave, but then I do, but then I don't, but then I do. It's cutting off years of my life. I feel like since this is my last email home I should be saying things very meaningful and inspirational about all that I've experienced and learned but my mind is spastic right now. It's been great....that's all I got.
Our recent convert's husband passed away last week. She was older, 60s, but her husband was 90+! You wouldn't know it though. They say it's because he is a Bomo aka medicine man. Those with that kind of black magic don't age, so they say. This was the cutest guy in the world I loved him. He always said he was waiting for the rest of his family to join the church before he would. A good portion of the family has already, but he didn't make it. Wonder what he's thinking now. Experiencing an Iban funeral has got to be one of the most interesting things I've experienced thus far on my mission. SOOOOO much tradition and cultural things so different from my own. The festivities seem to last for days and days and days. Ok, I shouldn't really say festivities...the mourning. I kind of expected to see a lot of wailing and loud banging but it was exactly the opposite. For three days everyone from everywhere gathers at the home and sits there. They just sit and sit and sit some more. Each night we would go and sit with them, if we didn't it would have been incredibly rude I think. Each night when we showed up we would find the home, a farely large home, filled wall to wall with no walking space of people sitting of the mats on the floor. Just sitting there, drinking hot chocolote, and eating crackers. The third day when we went everyone was looking very very tired. We found out they weren't allowed to sleep either! They sat all day, and then they sat all night! He died on Wednesday and they buried him on Friday. For those three days his casket lay open in their living room....no wonder they didn't sleep. The family asked the missionaries to go to their house early on Friday to offer the family prayer before going to the cemetary. All the Elders came with and they ended up being the ones to carry the casket. Naturally the Ibans would have them do it, they're all six foot and huge. Elder Tabiar was asked to dedicate the grave. He was so nervous but did a great job. He studied his white handbook on how-to all the way to the cemetary (30min). Elder Tabiar is a very new missionary from Sabah, he is so cute, he hardly speaks any English but lives in a house of all white Elders. He is picking up a lot of slang from those bozo Elders and its so funny. Bah, I'll tell you about all this funeral stuff when I see you.
Man guys it really has been a pleasure talking with all of you everyweek for the past 18 months. I know for a fact that most of you hear from me more often in Malaysia than you ever did while I was home. That's pretty sad. It's hard to have it all end. I have loved it so so so so so so soooooo much. Im seriously being wripped in half.
Thanks for all the support and love coming from the States each week. You are all the best. I love you. See you Wednesday
peace out for good,
SISTER JESSICA VIEHWEG
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