The Rains Came Down. . .

      We think the rainy season is upon us.  We have had showers nearly every day for the past few weeks.  It is nice to have things not so DRY in the tropics.  We have seen a great reduction in the number of fires---it used to be 5 or 6 every evening and that is just what we could see from our condo.
      We continue with the branch members.  Teaching them leadership and just general Church stuff.  Saturday and today we had the General Conference broadcasts---two sessions both days.  They are broadcast in Malay, Chinese, and English each in a different room with a different group.  We had one in the morning and then an hour break for lunch.  Saturday lunch was 2 pieces of white bread with a smear of jam, bananas, and a banana cake that I took.  Today there were many more members able to attend and so everyone brought food.
     We are also working with these young men who have received mission calls to get them ready.  One who is going to the Washington DC mission will go to Utah about a week early before entering the MTC and he has friends (a couple who served here a while back) who will help him get his 2 suits with 2 pair of pants each.  It has been quite a funny thing telling them about how they will need wool suits so that they can be warm enough in the winter time.  Do we wear wool shirts, too?  Do I have to wear a sweater?  In the summer?  Are you sure I will need an overcoat?  They have never been out of Kota Kinabalu and have no idea that there can be a different climate.

QUOIN HILL WATER SUPPLY

The Project was just done this past October

     We flew to Tawau for overnight last week.  We met with some members of a Rotary Club who could use some help with various projects---clean water, vision care, and we met a doctor who is very interested in having some neonatal resuscitation training at the Tawau hospital.  They took us to a really nice village, Quoin Hill, of over 2 thousand people who have school, churches, clinic, and a police station but no water other than rain.  They have a really great spring very near to the kampung and we will try to help them get the water to the homes.  We walked down to the spring and as we left the sunshine the mosquitos found us.  And then I discovered that there were big brown ants crawling all over Bill.  I brushed them off and then they were on me.  As I brushed at them they grabbed on to me.  They didn't bite but they held on with very strong pincers.  I practically had to kill them to get them off.  He had walked through their 'ant freeway' we discovered on our way back up the trail.  That night I dreamed about our little grand-daughter, Sadie, and that she had the brown ants on her and they were her pets---she liked them and fed them and didn't like it that I was brushing them off her.  It gives me a crawly feeling just to think about them.
     We heard good news about my niece, Megan Shumaker McCormick, who had brain surgery for a cavernoma last week.  She is doing well and is expected to make a full recovery.   We actually had a little conversation with Megan on facebook this morning.  She misses her 5 little children.  And then not so good news about my mother.  She fell a few weeks ago and broke her pelvis and they have now found that her sacrum is fractured.  She is in a great deal of pain unless she is heavily medicated and then she just sleeps.  She has been staying in Boise, Idaho, with my sister whose husband is CFO for a large hospital there so she is getting the best care both from Irene and from the medical staff but we are afraid she will not get better.  Her bones are 91 years old, after all, and they are quite brittle.  About all we can do is pray for them.

THIS YOUNG LADY PERFORMED FOR US AT THE NATIONAL 

BLIND SCHOOL.  SHE HAS A LOVELY SINGING VOICE.  

We attended the handover for the equipment we bought the National Blind School.

LATTER-DAY SAINT CHARITIES DONATED

THESE BRAILERS TO THE NATIONAL

SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND.

THese are very important to the students as they really learn everything by the use of the braillers. They have one student that sings very well and she probably will be professional one day.

 This is what is going on at the base of our condo building. They tore down the jungle and are planting palm oil tress. So it was full of squatters or illegals. And now they had to move out of the way.  Here is how they live.

THESE ARE THE HOMES OF OUR 

NEARBY NEIGHBORS.  THEY ARE SQUATTERS

AND HAVE NO ACCESS TO WATER OR ELECTRICITY.

We feel so bad for them. Apparently it is better than how they were living where they came from in the Philippines or Indonesia. They get all their water from a very muddy stream that drains down from the condos on the hill.  Often we see them carrying water up the hill to their new homes.

We are heading back to the east side of the country to inspect some of the new water systems that are being put in. We will be traveling out to some more islands to see if we can provide water for the nomadic fishermen and the boat people.

Take care...we love you and all your notes.