Mission Blog of Chuck and Cheri Lambson

  Today is the last day of April and it will be our final month in Malaysia before we return to Indonesia. We have made wonderful friends and had many memorable experiences here. Yesterday Sister Letty and Presdent Tan (whom you will see in subsequent pictures) accompanied us to Malacca, spelled "Melaka" here. It is only a two hour drive from KL and it is a place that I have long wanted to visit because of its importance as a strategic location along the Straits of Malacca which runs between the Malay peninusula and the island of Sumatera. For hundreds of years this was an imporant sea trade route between Asia and Europe and Africa. I won't go into the history because it is quite complicated but suffice it to say that the present population and culture are a mix of Malay, Chinese, Portugese, Dutch and Brittish influences. We also traveled here with the Brikerhoffs, who are in this picture, and who are a senior couple from Oregon serving with us in KL. If you look closely

  Tonight Cheri and I will speak at this community event which combines the buka puasa (breaking the fast) with  the Golden Rule day. These are normally two different community events but have been combined this year due to an exceptionally full schedule. The purpose of events like this is to invite people of various religious and cultural backgrounds to come together and learn about each other's traditions, religious practices and teachings and thereby increase understanding and unity within the community. Since the golden rule is something that is a common value of all major religions it is a great topic for bringing people together. I will share a story of how my mother taught me about the golden rule then Cheri will talk about teaching our children the golden rule before we open up some time for sharing by members of the audience. We don't have any pictures from the event yet because it is later tonight. I will paste some pics at the end of this blog post and publish it tom

  This is Cheri's pandan flavored birthday cake. We had a nice Easter dinner last week with the senior missionaries and the young missionaries at the apartment of the Murrays. We all sang happy birthday and had cake and ice cream just like we would back home. Cheri has been pretty excited for her "Beatles Birthday". Sister Letty took us out to a famous duck restaurant to celebrate Cheri's birthday. I had to put this picture in because it made us think of our little grandson, Bo. Just saw this sign in the mall, I think it is a store that sells handbags.

  Here is Sister Yong and Sister Lambson entering Foong Foong's Yong Tau Foo retaurant. Me and Elder Yong are right behind them. This is a special place that the Yong's took us to try some of the local cuisine. The food here is based on fish paste. It was a little hard to fathom at first because "fish" and "paste" are not words we ever expected to use in the same sentence. This restaurant serves a variety of vegetables and other foods that are all filled with fish paste and then cooked. Here, you see two women cooking a couple of the dishes that we ate. The woman on the left has a bowl of tofu and she slices it and then scoops some fish paste from the red bowl and inserts it into the tofu and then fries it in a big wok. The woman on the right is stuffing red peppers with fish paste and cooking them in a similar way. There are several more cooking stations like this. We ate tofu stuffed with fish paste, stuffed red peppers, stuffed eggplant, and another dish