ParkerLeeThompson

Bintulu is Great! & Monkeys Do Throw Poop!

How is everyone doing? Elder Thompson coming at you from Bintulu, Sarawak, East Malaysia, on the island of Borneo, on this beautiful P-day morning! Here's what happened the last week.

Well, I had to leave, Matang. It was, as it always is, sad and hard to leave all those people that I have grown to love and live with. The last two days there we were honestly running around like crazy trying to visit all the members and say bye. I will miss Matang and always remember the people there forever. But, the sadness was not long felt.

For my last P-day there we went with my whole district and we drove out to a mountain that is really close to our house there. We basically didn't have anything in mind other than we wanted to have fun and adventure. Well, we found and wildlife center/zoo and it was way fun! We saw some huge orangutans and we got poop thrown at us by monkeys. Yes, people, monkeys really do throw poop. We were laughing way too hard at that, haha. We say various animals, but not your typical ones. These were like Malaysian jungle and island of Borneo species animals. So cool.

Ok, then I flew on a plane to Bintulu and the last 5 days has been way fun. The area is super small. I have never not done so much biking in one week. Here is my description of Bintulu which I will explain. I am in a branch and area called, TJK (Tanjong Kidurong). So, TJK is this small town, industrial town, jungle village, suburban neighborhood, run down, rural, island paradise, coastal town. Did you get all that? I sense every one of those things every day here. It is really small. It is mainly factories and factory workers. That is what the town is built on. But in the same time you find yourself in a jungle village that all of the sudden turns into a random suburban neighborhood, like what?! It is super run down and rural. We are far out and there is for sure no white people here, but that's normal. All in all, at the end of the day, you look around and see palm trees swaying and ocean breezes coming in and you think, this coastal city/island paradise is great. Plus, to add to it. EVERYONE here is Christian and Iban. Who we are looking for. It's Iban paradise here and people are so nice. The members are great and the branch has a lot of potential to grow. So happy!

Oh yeah, another great thing, Elder Meacham and I are in the same house again here! So good to see him. We have gym we go to here too, so we enjoy pushing each other just like the old high school football days ;)

That's all I have! Until next week!

Elder Thompson