Selamat Datang

Salamat Datang to another blog from Borneo.  Borneo continues to be the same weather wise every day.  We know you have been suffering in Utah with record snow and cold temperatures, but nothing like that ever happens in Borneo.  Every day the sun comes up at 6:30 am and every night it goes down at 6:30 pm.  The temperature everyday always stays between 85-92 degrees during the day and will get down to 72 or 75 at night.  We still have to run the AC at night so we can sleep.  The AC wasn't working very well for the last month, so we called the service tech to come and check out all the units.  We have 4 AC units in our apartment.  The first time we called they said they couldn't come for a week, because it was Chinese New Year.  Then we made another appointment where they were supposed to come at 9:00 am.  We waited until 5:00 pm and they never showed.  We called the next day and they said "Sorry.  We send someone today.  Come between 9 and 11 am."  So again we waited and they never showed.  So we called again.  "So sorry. Technician very sick.  He come on Friday at 9 am".  I thought, he wasn't too sick when you called in the morning to say he was coming between 9 and 11.  Oh well.  They did finally come at 9 am on Friday and now all the AC's are working great.  One thing we have learned, there is time and then there is Malaysian time.

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Don't forget it is Ben's birthday on Saturday, March 9.  If as many of you as possible could send him a birthday greeting for his 70th birthday, I know he would be thrilled.  Send it to benandmargaretread@gmail.com.  And remember the time difference.  We are 15 hours ahead of you.  Thanks again!

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog:

Our car has been acting up too lately.  Ben had one of the Elders go with him to the car place to make sure they understand what work we need to have done.  About two months ago we needed to have a fan belt checked and tightened.  Well, they replaced the fan belt, which was fine but now the fan belt is really squeaking again.  We wanted the Elders to explain to them in Malay what we wanted done.  So we have an appointment for Monday morning at 8:30 am.  Hopefully, they will get everything taken care of at this appointment and we will be up and running again.

The other apartment tower by us had a fire last week.  We think it was an electrical fire but it destroyed one whole apartment on about the 14th floor.  OOPS I mean floor 13A.  There are no floors here that have a 4 in them.  No 4th floor, no 14th floor, etc.  The fire was contained to the one apartment and no one was injured.  But it did cause some excitement in the area for a while.

We also had to replace a broken toilet seat in our apartment.  I never knew there could be so many different toilet seats to choose from.  We finally settled on one that cost us Rm60 or about $20 US.  Kind of expensive sitting I think, but hey you gotta have comfort.  Anyway, this toilet seat has an automatic closing feature.  You just give it a very gentle tap with your finger and it very slowly and tenderly closes itself.  No more excuses for the toilet seat being left up.  The man who sold us the seat asked where we were from and what brought us to KK.  We told him we were missionaries.  He wanted to know about our family so we told him we had 3 children and nine grandchildren.  He thought that was really a lot.  I asked him, "How many children do you have"?  He said he didn't know for sure because he had had a lot of girl friends through the years and wasn't sure how many children he might have.  Funny but also kinda sad.

Good News.  We had another project approved.  We are going to be helping the Sabah Society for the Blind.  LDS Charities will be helping them with new braillers, a new embosser, refurbishing their mushroom house and building some new shelves for them to store the baskets they make in a better manner.  A brailler is like a type writer only when you press the keys, it prints in braille.  An embosser is hooked up to a computer keyboard.  The blind type with the computer keyboard the information they want and then it is "embossed" on special paper through a special print program.  The blind society also has a mushroom house where they grow mushrooms to sell to the local vegetable markets and to restaurants.  They had two mushroom houses, but one fell into disrepair so LDSC is going to furnish the materials to fix the second mushroom house and make it functional again.  That way they can double their mushroom production and become more self-reliant.  They also make beautiful baskets.  It is a dying art form and the society sends the blind to a special school in KL to learn the skill.  They don't have any decent shelves to store their finished baskets on, so we are going to build them some new shelves.

Our camera battery died during the week, so I haven't been able to get any pictures.  We are back in the camera business now, so I will be sure to send more pictures next week.

We love and miss you all very much.  We are so glad when we get an email from you.  It is the first thing we check every morning.  Take care and we have heard that Spring is just around the corner for you.  You will soon all be complaining of the heat.  Enjoy!   E/S Read