Interesting things

GOING UP THE TRAIL OUT OF DATA KAKUS

I have heard from our son that there are followers of our blog who get concerned if we go too long without a posting.  So I will try to do better.  I certainly have interesting things to write about---it is just a matter of finding the time to do it.
So---
Questions we are asked ALL THE TIME
     How old are you?
     How much is your rent?
     How big is your apartment?
     Do you cook your own food?
     Do you clean your own house?
     How much did -----cost?

Why are we so private in USA?  I don't mind answering any of those questions and yet we wouldn't think of asking some of them.

When we were visiting the Humana schools in eastern Sabah a few weeks ago several of the schools we visited were on the huge Melangking plantations.  We had met the manager a few weeks before visiting again with Dave and Lena Frandsen and he (Mr. Chee) had insisted that we stay in their guest house and he wanted to provide a river trip for us.  That he did and you heard all about it.  He also wanted to take us to tour one of the palm oil mills and I didn't write about that.  So I will try to remember what we saw and relay it to you.  I do know that there is very high security at the mills so I hope I don't give away any trade secrets.

OIL PALMS

GETTING AROUND ON THE

OIL PALM PLANTATION

INSIDE THE MILL WHERE THE OIL 

IS PROCESSED

 It all starts with planting an oil palm tree which is about 1 to 2 feet tall when planted.  They grow on terraced hillsides that have been bulldozed to make a level spot for the trees to grow.  They are fertilized and coddled for about 15 years at which time they start to produce fruit which looks like a basketball size clump of red-brown berries or nuts about the size of a walnut.  The fruit is up in the crotch of the tree about 25 feet from the ground and is harvested by hand.  A worker uses a sharp blade on a long pole to cut through the 2 inch stalk and the fruit falls to the ground.  The next worker comes along with a 4 foot long sharp metal spike which he uses to pick up the fruit and tosses it onto a small sled or wagon.  Often the wagon is pulled by water buffalo.  These are hauled to the end of the row or to a collection point and put by hand, onto a larger trailer usually pulled by a small tractor (John Deere, Massy Ferguson) and taken to the mill.  Because a few or many of the little 'berries' fall off when the fruit falls to the ground at the base of the tree, there are women who follow along with large bags (usually a washed out fertilizer bag) to pick up the loose berries.  They don't waste any.  Often we could see where a tractor turned a corner sharply and lost a part of the load.  There we would see the women and children picking up the berries.

OIL PALM MILL---BERRIES BEING CLEANED

So at the mill the fruit is weighed and dumped into a collection car which is a railroad car on tracks that go right into the mill.  These cars dump the fruit into a steam chamber and it is steamed to loosed the berries from the fibrous part of the fruit.  I don't know all the steps but soon the berries are clean and shiny and look beautiful.  The oil is squeezed out and refined several times and shipped off in tanker trucks to the port to be shipped around the world.  Most of the oil is for eating but they are working on making bio-diesel fuel as well.  The fibrous part of the fruit is not wasted.  It is either composted and used to fertilize or it is burned to generate the steam and run the mill.  All very efficient.
The palm oil trees begin producing after about 3 years.  They must pick the fruit every 15 days and it produces fruit for 20 to 25 years.  Quite the oil 'machine'. Things grow fast here.  (I have been told that some of the people use the berries for food---they boil them and eat them.  They would be very satisfying and high calorie which is something they need.)  The plantations are huge.  They have replaced both the rubber and the cocoa plantations almost entirely with the oil palms.  From the sky the plantations go on and on for miles.

We are working with some of our branch members who were recently baptized.  We teach the follow-up lessons or the new member lessons.  There are 5 of them about the following subjects:

• Priesthood and auxiliaries
• Missionary work
• Eternal marriage
• Temples and family history 
• Service.  

J

JOHNNY AND ERVINA AND FAMILY

DAVID LIEW AND DAVID CHONG

It is difficult for us to go to the homes of the members---no car, no translator---so we frequently meet at the church after the block and other meetings and use David Liew or David Chong to translate.  We are teaching Johnny and Ervina who are a young  (26 or so) couple with a little boy.  He is a truck driver and she stays at home (they live with Johnny's father and family) to care for their son who is 3 or 4 years old.   We are also teaching Patricia Voo who is 22 years old and goes to school away from home.  She is home on the weekends but leaves to go back to school on Sunday evenings.  We are having a hard time meeting with her. She was just made the counselor in RS and conducted her first meeting last Sunday.  She did a great job.  We also teach Erna Junaidy who is 17 and was baptized last March.  We haven't seen her for weeks nor has anyone else.  Rumor says she has moved away but until it can be confirmed she is in our teaching pool.

We gave away a Book of Mormon to a neighbor here in our building.  He came over last Sunday evening for a few minutes and spent over 3 hours asking questions.  He seems sincerely interested but has a little problem that I can't write about here.  He came again last night and had more questions and we gave him a reading assignment.  I don't know if anything will come of this but we are planting seeds.  Nice gentleman.

Bill's turn.
I wish we could give all the details on some of these things we tell you about. We are excited to go see another school in the interior. That is what they call the jungle here. We want  to get a few more small projects going before the budget for 2009 ends this December. There are so many to help. I just submitted the water project today. It will be up for the Area's presidency approval this next week and then off to Salt Lake for the Presiding Bishopric's approval. We expect it will be approved from everything we hear. That project will serve 6800 people and more as the population grows. There are 21 different locations covering the length of East Malaysia. That is about the same distance as from Seattle to about St George Utah. We will be traveling to some those sites each month. We will also be working with a local opthamologist and one of the local Rotariesto get the vision project underway. That is a fairly large project encompassing several thousand US dollars of equipment and eye glasses. These will be used too care for the poor and needy in the interior,(jungles) that would not otherwise ever see such help.

ELIZABETH FROM DATA KAKUS 

ON THE WAY UP THE JUNGLE PATH TO THE DAM

VIEW OF KK FROM THE WATER

These eyeglass frames are valued at over $100,000 and are graciously donated by VSP, a large company based out of California.  The story behind this donation is heartwarming and is quickly generating press in Utah.  In a nutshell, the president of VSP (who is not LDS) was very impressed with the Collie family and learned that they were members of the LDS Church.  He decided to make a donation to support our vision projects and to honor this family.  (The Collie family has a son, Austin, who played football at BYU and now plays in the NFL.)  The Collie family had no idea that this donation was being made in their honor or any of the reasons behind it.  They have since been notified.