Practice
A Typical Day as Humanitarian Missionaries in Malaysia
September 2013
We roll out of our king-sized bed between 6 & 7 am and watch sunrise
in beautiful Malaysia, from the top of a hill in Borneo
where we live on the 14th floor of an apartment building
(labeled 13-a because #14 is unlucky!).
We do some reading for a couple hours, from scriptures to news.
Grandpa Dan fixes breakfast, omelets filled with spicy brats, olives, green chilies, tomatoes and cheese melted all over it.
We read all of our new humanitarian e-mails and discuss our plans for the day.
Those plans include:
Find a place to purchase 100 wrenches for the Wheelchair project.
We go to several different stores to find the food we want so we can
feed the Elders each Tuesday at the end of their District Meetings. (Meal is optional but fun)
We Spend a couple hours reading about past water projects in East Malaysia so we can have a new project in mind when the water engineers
arrive from Salt Lake City next month.
We read and answer a dozen e-mails to track down shipping agents, translators, prices, confirm deadlines, view invoices, and build a mushroom house for the blind.
Sometimes we take a nap, read the newspaper, blog or FB.
We also run a lot of errands in our little car, $15 fills up the tank for a week.
Believe it or not 4 Elders can crowd in our backseat.
(if they’re desperate for transportation.)
We talk to the monkeys in our garbage bin.
We LOVE the monkeys, but others think they are pests.
We rescue the Elders during a downpour, who are stranded somewhere on the bikes.
We visit people in their homes, sit Indian-style on the floor for two hours, eating fried chicken, rice, vegies and ice-cold Coke in a can with a straw!
We walk away permanently bend in half!
Colleen teaches a keyboard lesson to an 11 yr old girl.
We wipe sweat off our faces with hand towels which we carry everywhere
OR
we pop open our umbrellas to stay dry when we are out.
There really is no “dry” here!
We do the dishes at the end of the day. We only have hot water in the bathrooms, so
I have to heat water to do the dishes. It reminds me of camping.
We refill water bottles over and over with filtered water and refrigerate them
so there is plenty of cold, clean water to drink.
This reminds me a lot of camping.
We often eat out once a day, it is actually cheaper than buying food!
We drive downtown to the outdoor fish market and eat the catch of the day.
There are lots of seafood choices!
As you can see Big Dan has not died, but he is in Heaven!
The night fish market has an endless amount of outdoor restaurants huddled together under large tents, grilling seafood and waiting on customers.
The favorites seem to be:
Chicken wings, stacked on two sticks one after another.
Three plump white squid on a skewer.
The prawns and lobsters are gigantic!
Fish of all sizes and kinds grilled with heads on.
Hot dogs and chicken butts on sticks (not tried the latter yet)
They also serve a variety of green vegies, seaweed that pops when you bite it, onions of all kinds and many things that look like a cross between spinach and green beans.
Things are quite tasty.
These small family restaurant owners aim to please and constantly coax us to buy.
After our evening meal we drive home, usually in a downpour,
scurry into our apt building and ride to the 13th-a floor.
We turn on our AC (each room has its own AC unit) and fall asleep about 11 pm.
