Melissa and Dave W.

When Dave, Ceri, and I headed out to our site, Ceri was expecting to go down the same road that most of the other sites were on. But instead of turning down the road to the mission, we kept going straight and as we climbed higher and higher into the mountains, she was awestruck by the view. The road up to our site cuts through the jungle and on either side is lush foliage. Through the banana trees, rubber trees, boganvilla bushes, and vines, we looked out over the valley below which rose back up into more mountains. We drove a gravel/clay road for quite a while, once again through lush jungle. Every now and then, a dog would run across the road in front of us or a chicken would scurry through the ditch.

Soon we came to the village, a small village of about 400 people. The villlage is situated on a ridge so everything is right beside the narrow road. The scenery just kept getting better and the road continued to get narrower as we followed the ridge until we arrived at the church. They had landscaped it so nicely and many bushes were in bloom. The tiny little church wore a steeple equally as tiny. It was so picturesque. Ceri said that she couldn’t think of a better place to put a church. On the right, it was just straight down, and on the left, also straight down. You could see Mt. Kinabalu really well and Ceri couldn’t take enough pictures. They led us to the back of the church, through a creaky door into what I would normally call a chicken coop but they call it their fellowship hall. They fed us creamy fruit salad, black bean soup (which they called porridge) papaya, and bananas.

After the meal, the elder went outside and rang the huge gong seven times. I asked him if there was a certain reason why he rang it seven times… but he shrugged his shoulders and said he does a different number every time.

No one is there on time except a couple small children and an adorable little old man. Ceri just kept taking pictures of him. Dave courageously presents his health talk, the translator struggling through every word. (Between sentences, Dave made the most hilarious facial expressions. Everything he was thinking showed on his face. We all started laughing when he accidentally said arithmetic instead of arthritic.) We had been having problems with our translator not only talking slowly but also talking plenty. For every word Dave would say, the translator would say two or three. And he ended each sentence with “Ya!” which means yes. When I got up to preach, I was relieved to find I would be working with a new translator and he did a spectacular job. Since then, we have had a different translator every night. It’s part of our training in patience and flexibility.

On the way back to our hotel, we decided that they shouldn’t paint lines on the road in Sabah… or maybe instead of not painting lines, they could paint two extra lines; one in the middle of each lane because everyone drives down the middle of the road anyways, straddling the center line. Anyways, nobody asked us our opinion when they were making the roads…