A birthday in the MTC

Wednesday night – November 1 – we went to the MTC to share some time with the Indonesian class. It turned out to be Elder Roper’s 19th birthday and so we got to share his excitement of this special day. We sang his favorite song – Put your shoulder to the wheel – in Indonesian and he read us some of the letter he got from a friend serving in Brazil. From a conversation that took place the Mongolian elders were supposed to sing him the Mongolian Happy Birthday song but their teacher told them it was really boring.

The first part of the class was reading from Preach My Gospel and I am ashamed to say that I did not participate. Mary on the other hand did a great job. I did come up with the meaning of a couple of words that the missionaries asked about. Later we had about an hour with sister Tippets where we developed a very short version of the first part of the first lesson. When we got home I expanded it a little and today – Thursday – we will practice it with Sister Tippets as an investigator.

We spent much of Wednesday morning working on Indonesian. I was working on the first lesson in PMG and developed a new word list. It was about 15 words and that was just from the first two short paragraphs. We later wrote sentences that used those words. We will have sister Tippets check them today. Mary can now translate about 70% of what she reads in Indonesian. I get about 25% but I am determined that with the Lord’s help I will master the language enough that I can be a successful active missionary.

On the home front, it looks like we will be able to sell the property on Main street in Orem before we leave. We will not get what it is worth but since it has been a pain to get the rent – and often not getting it – I think we are better off selling than have the family struggle with it while we are gone. We will take some of the money and pay off the store so that all the rent will come to us. Most of the rest will go to taxes and tithing but we will have a good income that we can depend on.

We got an e-mail from the missionary couple that we will replace. I had sent them one asking a number of questions about the mission. The Leishmans will go home about a month after we get there. This means we will have a month to be trained. Elder Leishman said that it cost them about $2000 a month but in looking over some of the monthly expenses he listed – including renting a car and a driver – I think it will be more like $2500. He assured me that there are good cell-phone and inter-net services in Indonesia.

Yesterday was the day the catalpa tree dropped all it’s leaves. I forgot to go out just as the sun came over the mountain to watch the majority of the leaves fall in just minutes. But later when we left to go shopping the nice clean driveway we had yesterday is not covered with a thick layer of plate sized leaves. Now that it and the maple has dropped their leaves, about the only leaves left are on the fruit trees.

 



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