BINTULU IS WARM & BEAUTIFUL

SOUTH CHINA SEA SUNSET

We are here all the way!! Got in Wednesday night from Singapore. We will be making that trip again. We have nothing to say but good about this place. The people are very friendly and the skies are beautiful at night.
The people here are a mixture of Chinese, Muslim, and Malaysian (made up of all the above and local tribes). The Malaysians are small, brown skinned, black hair, beautiful brown eyes and friendly smiles.
At church today many of them left their shoes on the rack just outside the chapel door. The meeting was conducted in Iban---a tribal language we have not yet learned---but many of them, especially the younger ones, speak English.
We are living in a house. A very nice house at that. It is a twin home. Rather than using a garage door opener to access entry we use a remote to open the heavy steel gate to drive into the driveway. The house and yard are surrounded with a concrete wall topped off with a wicked looking steel fence with spikes. There is a deep porch on 3 sides (4^th side adjoins the twin) which covers the entry in front, the parking area on the side and my clothes drying rack in the back. Big wood double front doors open to the living area which includes a dining room. The ceilings are about 9 feet, walls are cement all painted white, and floors on the ground level are white tile. That’s a lot of white for me to keep clean.

The climate here is tropical. We feel fortunate to have AC here to come home to after we are out in the heat. I don’t know what the temp is---don’t think I want to know. But the humidity is high. It takes a while to dry clothes unless they are in the sun. Most days are a bit cloudy and that makes beautiful sunsets which occur at 6:30 pm year round. We spent Saturday evening with 2 other senior couples watching the sun set over the South China Sea and then went to dinner together. It is almost cheaper to eat out than to cook at home. However, we are on a budget. The food is great with lots of rice, vegetables and fruit, and little meat which is often chicken or unidentified seafood. I am pretty brave. Last night at dinner I ate something with tentacles that was not calamari. One dinner I fixed tenggihi which looked like a tuna steak. Pretty good. I have some young piano students who I will teach on Sunday between 2nd branch and 3rd branch meetings. They have keyboards at home to practice on if they will only do it. They have early or late shifts for school and need lots of time for playing, too.

We will be working on breathing the water I mean the air a little better than we have as we will be out in it alot this week. It can be a little sufficating at times. We are still depending on a taxi and are not quite sure if we need to buy or rent a car. That will take some figuring.
We have the area welfare managers coming down from Hong Kong this weekend and will be here for almost 4 days worth of training. I am so glad for that as we will get off to the right start. They have a budget for our country that involves two major projects, one with clean water and another for vision care and then money for several smaller projects they call local iniatives. So we are anxious to get the desks in and get internet and etc so we can get to work.

We are only the thrid welfare missionaries to serve in East Malaysia. However, their have been regular missionaries here for 9 years now and they have baptized over 10,000 in just Bintulu.  Where are they?  There aren't that many members

The men work 12 hour days 7 days a week. That is just a little longer than I was working. :). Then they do their church responsibilities on top of that.

We this was a long post. Sorry. Hope it was sort of interesting at times.
I can't get the caption option to work without loosing the photo so the last 3 photos are 1) our shopping area, those stores are called shop lots
2) our market or what you know as a grocery store
3)Bill and I at the beach waiting for the beautiful sunset.