Badmitton in Ipoh

This is Elder Forsyth after playing the NUMBER ONE badmitton player in the world. He's sweaty, but he's still smiling!

Celebrating the EIGHTH day of Chinese New Year

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY

Playing badmitton against the #1 player in the world

Elder Forsyth (R) after getting schooled in the art of badmitton

The 2 Malay Elders I was on exchanges with...
Elder Maughn (left), ME, & Elder Cazier (right)

So, while Elder Winham was at his district meeting in Singapore, I got to go spend a few days in Ipoh. There were 2 Malay Elders and me, the Chinese Elder. So we did a lot of tracting with mainly me talking because there are a lot of Chinese in Ipoh and at that moment I was the only Mandaring speaking missionary in all of West Malaysia. I got to do a lot of talking and teaching, During my two day stay, I taught 2 lessons by myself and mainly invited a lot of people to the New Year's Party at the church. On the second day, we were invited to play badmitton with some members. I was like "Pshh!! Badmitton is lame..." Nah! Not when your playing with Lee Cheng Weigh! (#1 badmitton player in the world), I was playing with 6 teenage boys that seem to have been playing since birth. They were nuts! I was never more sore and sweaty my entire life. It didn't matter how hard I tried, these guys were going easy on me and destroying me. During one play, my opponent beamed one and got me right in the forehead. Well uh, they thought that was pretty funny ha ha. I played some one-on-one against each one of them, and played some doubles, but my two companions didn't feel up to par to play on that level. I almost rolled both my ankles multiple times because I was diving and moving so fast. My shoulder still kills just from swinging so fast and hard. Badmitton is my new favorite sport. Most intense and tiring I've ever played (must play with native asians, your results may vary.) Ha ha that night we were treated to Pizza Hut.

Something funny about our companionship. Elder Whinham is the DL, and there TWO in our district, him and I. Haha Its pretty funny every week when we have a district meeting. We were asked to make it formal and legit, so Elder Whinham and I go to the church, we announce who's presiding (Elder Whinham), news, the two of us sing an opening and closing hymn, prayers... its pretty funny.

Chinese New Year FINALLY ended on February 17th! JEEZ! All we could do is spend time with members, but we got a lot of investigators to the New Year's Party. We have about 20 investigators now. And in answer to your question, YES, they do celebrate Valentine's Day here, but people go nuts here. They just start kissing people in restaurants, on busses, out in public, etc. So most of the time I say something along the lines of "Brothers and sisters, what are you doing?" That really catches them by surprise and they stop.