I have been thinking about the fact that we are going to miss two winters. When we moved to Utah some 19 years ago, I was worried about winter. I immediately bought a large snow blower – which we still have – and a four wheel drive vehicle. It was lucky that I looked ahead because the first winter was one of worse in many year and there has only been one to compare with it since.

Now I think I will not just miss – meaning not experience – but also miss in the fact that I have come to enjoy the season. To be honest I do wish it only ran for three months but I would like those months to be full of snow. This is because the land looks so beautiful and peaceful under a blanket of white.

Of course in Indonesia we will have only two seasons. Hot/wet and hot/dry.

Today was rather quiet and I must confess I did not put much time in on learning Indonesian. We had an appointment at the bank where we changed all the store account signature cards into Keith’s name. People have a hard time with the idea that although we sold the stock in the business the corporation itself does not change. They all want to close one account and start another. That is not bad since that means my signature and any guarantee that goes with it are cancelled.

Later in the morning we drove up to Midway to attend the funeral of an old acquaintance Bob Johnson. Bob was part of the Lennox Ward crowd and had been dying of cancer for the last couple of years. After seeing Bob and what the illness did to him, I told Mary that I looked that bad, I did not want an open casket. I do not want friends, children and grandchildren to remember me that way.

For lunch we went into Heber to eat at Grannies. I was surprised when we could walk right in and order. I was used to Grannies being filled up for lunch. My guess is that it has not recovered from being shut down for a time after the new owners could not make a go of it.

Mary spent the rest of the day working on Indonesian, extraction and watching TV. I took a long nap, went visiting people in the ward, read and watched TV. I did manage to study a little Indonesian before going to bed.

10 October 2006 – Tuesday

I woke at 5 AM to study Indonesian. I really would have rather gone back to sleep but it seems that the only time that my mind works well enough to absorb things is in the morning. I keep working on building up my vocabulary and also trying to memorize my testimony and a prayer.

I pretty much kept studying until it was time to get ready to go to a devotional at BYU that featured the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Indonesia. We met Sister Tippets there because we were to have our tutoring session right after the devotional. The devotional is part of a conference at BYU to promote inter-faith cooperation at bringing peace to the world. It turns out that over the last few years the minister and Elder Packer have become good friends. I am sure that this is helping the missionary effort in Indonesia.

The talk was about all people needing to work together, and was quite good. Unfortunately it did not add much to our knowledge of what our mission would be like. However after the devotional we got to meet and talk to a Muslim couple who are going to the Y. The husband did not speak English very well but the wife did. It turns out that she is from the part of Java Solo – where we might be sent to so we exchanged e-mail addresses and perhaps we will visit her family when we are there.

Then by pure chance four returned Indonesian missionaries walked pass. One of them has just been back a short time and had served in the Solo area and told us that it had the most active members of the mission. It has never had senior missionaries. My guess is that a number of couples will be sent there to help train church leaders to prepare them to become a stake.

After all the other folks left we had our language lesson. Mainly we worked on some questions we had about how to ask and answer questions. There is about 30 pages in the grammar book devoted to just that subject. By the time we were finished with the lesson it was about 1 PM. So the first half of the day was devoted to our mission.

For me the second half of the day was spent serving in the temple. That is always a wonderful experience and today’s service was made even more special because I got help a young couple prepare for their soon to be sealing. After all the years of working in the temple it was the first time I had this experience. Earlier, for about an hour, I got to work at the reception desk. It is a pleasure to greet the members as they come to the temple to participate in its special ordinances. I try hard to get each of them to smile and feel welcome.

Mary’s afternoon and evening was different from mine. She went to Out N Back to help Kristen learn how to balance the checkbook but Kristen was not ready for that experience. But Mary did work with her on other things. She also worked on her Extraction calling and studied some Indonesian. She is getting quite a few calls from those working on extraction and indexing. I am sure as the number of those working at this increases, so will her phone calls.

By the time I got home I was quite tired — and Mary felt the same way – so after we watched NCIS together and then headed off to bed. I think we are much busier now then when we went to work each day.

09 October 2006 – Monday

Today has been a fairly standard day. After our usual morning we spent a couple of hours working on Indonesian. Mainly trying to figure out how to ask and answer questions. As usual my problem is not knowing enough words to put into questions – but that will come.

After companion study we went out to collect rents. We managed to get one out two but there was no one home at the 700 East property so we left a note. We had a delicious lunch at Costco – it is hard to beat for under $5 including dessert.

Once we got home, I took a nice nap. Something I do as often as I can. Then I spent three hours walking around the ward visiting older members who are either ill or alone. Some were home and some were not. I had a nice talk with the Seathalers – even helped him with a computer problem. Took a dahlia to sister Wheatfill and spent some time talking. She says that the nights are lonely with Ed gone. It was good to see Sister Engemann out working in the yard. I also got to spend a few minutes with brother Mohr. I tried to say happy birthday to Bill Lambert but they were not home. On the way back to the house I stopped by Nathan Luck’s house – he is rather new in the ward and goes to a single’s ward over in Grandview – and found that his daughter, mom and dad were there. We had a good talk about New Orleans and the church in Mississippi where he is in the stake presidency. It feels good to go around the ward and talking to people. I am sure I will be doing more of that now that we are retired.

Mary spent the day working on Extraction, studying Indonesian, and reading.

After that the evening was pretty normal. I will put in an hour or so on Indonesian before going to bed.

07 October 2006

This was a busy weekend. Unfortunately little of it was spent studying Indonesian. At least I did not study much Indonesian. I did spend some time trying to memorize my testimony. It is one I wrote myself and Sister Tippets only had to make one correction.

Saturday I went to see my second BYU football game in all the years we have lived here. I went only because Steve Gibson, the second assistant in the HP group leadership, invited me to see the game from his sky box. I also got to bring Bob and Mike. The game was a blow out but I must say that I would go to more games if I could do it in that comfort.

When we got home, Bob and Mike’s family was there. Some were watching a movie on TV and others were working on a puzzle. Tyler was glued to the computer. I think he gets more time on the computer while he is here than he gets in a week at home. Later we were joined by Daniel and Becky and then Tamara and Andy. So we had a big group for tacos.

After dinner we had a really short birthday party for Bob and Cindy — a month late for Cindy. Soon after that the Mitchells said goodbye and not too long after that everyone else disappeared down the driveway. Mary and I then cleaned up the kitchen and settled in to watch some TV.

It was a nice busy Saturday.

08 October 2006

It was a busier than normal Sunday. At least I did not need to get up to go to a 7:00 am meeting. When I went out to get the papers, I saw the light was on in the Jimmy and the garage door was down. Then I saw the door was open on both cars. When I looked inside the glove compartments were open and obviously had been rifled. I assumed that it was kids or a junky looking for something to steal. But then I noticed that a camera – the old one – was still on the back seat and a boombox was still sitting near the car. I was angry and disturbed but since nothing seemed to be taken I did not call the police.

I spent part of the morning going over some vocabulary and my testimony. Mary has been taking parts of the Book of Mormon and putting Indonesian translations under the English. At least this way we will know some scriptures and it is a good way to learn how the language goes together.

On the way to church we saw lots of police cars and some crime scene tape stretched across Navajo just outside the ward boundaries. We wondered what was going on but did not have time to stop and find out.

All the meetings went well. I participated in both PH and Sunday School. I enjoyed both Brother Barnes and Sister Griffith’s teaching. I bore my testimony in Sacrament. The first time I have done that in years. I felt the spirit as I testified of Christ’s atonement and the First Vision.

After breaking my fast I took a nice nap. By the time I woke up it was time to go to the church to hold some PPIs. Brother Hardin stood me up and so did Mark Wendeboe. But since Mark was last I headed over to his house and we had it there. While at the house I found out that there had been some excitement during the early morning and explained the open car doors and the police on Navajo this morning.

This article from the Daily Herald explains what we slept through. I am sure that the man was searching the cars to find hidden keys so he could steal one of them.

Police: Shots fired after attempt to run them down

Police fired gunshots at a suspect early Sunday morning in Provo after he allegedly tried to run them down in a stolen SUV.

Officers were dispatched to northeast Provo at 1:36 a.m. after calls came in of a suspicious person breaking into cars, said Provo police Capt. Rick Healey.

While a Provo police officer and Utah County deputy were searching the area, they heard a crash and responded to approximately 3100 N. Navajo Lane. Healey said the suspect was behind the wheel of a stolen Cadillac when he for an unknown reason struck two cars parked on the street.

“He got out of the car, went down about three or four houses and found another car he could steal,” Healey said.

The officers shouted for the suspect, 22-year-old Adam Gordon Norton of Provo, to stop the SUV but instead he accelerated.

“He wouldn’t stop. He drove the car at them while they were on foot,” Healey said. “So they started firing at him to protect themselves.”

From there police say Norton traveled north where he crashed through a fence near East Lawn Memorial Hills Cemetery. Other officers attempted to stop him but he accessed some dirt roads and continued to ascend into a ridge area above Provo’s foothills.

“It was too dangerous for officers to follow him,” Healey said.

Norton’s luck ran out when he crashed the stolen SUV on one of the roads and officers could see the vehicle’s headlights from below, Healey said.

Police then approached the vehicle where they found Norton still inside and transported him to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo for “what appeared to be a gunshot would to the arm,” Healey said.

A blood test was administered to Norton to determine if he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

“There’s evidence he may be under the influence of something,” Healey said.

Still clad in a hospital gown in a jail photo, Norton was booked into the Utah County Jail Sunday on pending aggravated assault of a police officer, vehicle theft, vehicle burglary, DUI alcohol-serious damage and related charges, according to jail records.

Healey would not say how many rounds were fired at Norton by the two officers but that a police investigative board is looking into the incident.

According to court documents, Norton has been arrested 12 times since 2002 including an arrest for assault on a police officer and a medical worker in 2003. Charges were never filed in that case.

In the evening brother Dahl and brother Wilcox of the High Council came over to meet with Mary so they could understand what she does. They needed to know so they could call someone to replace her as Stake Extraction Specialist. By the time they were done they realized they would need to call two or three people to replace her. Brother Wilcox jokingly asked how we could get our mission postponed. Hopefully they will soon get someone called so Mary can train them before we have to leave.

We ended our busy and spiritual Sunday by watching our favorite TV program The Amazing Race and a couple of others. I am sure that we will have many busy days like this on our mission.

05 October 2006 -When we put in our papers for a mission we did not specify where we would like to go. However in my mind I was hoping that we would not get called to somewhere that was hot, humid and I had to learn a language. When we opened the package from the Church and Mary read that we were going to Jakarta, I realized that Lord had decided that I needed to learn humility.

Soon after finding out where we were going, I started looking on the net for information about our mission area. The first really good news I found was that the language used the Roman alphabet and was basically phonetic. This meant I would not have to figure out what a bunch of unfamiliar scribbles meant, nor would I have to learn how to sing a language.

Now after three weeks of working with Bahasa Indonesian, I have come to know that my inability to learn French while in high school was not a fluke.

 My main problem is that I can not keep the vocabulary or grammar rules in my head. Which makes it hard to say anything. Add to that a problem with saying the word correctly and language lessons become frustrating.

 It got to a point on Monday that I was ready to give up. But instead I just decided that there was no way I could keep up with Mary so I would just go along at my own slow pace and hope that she learned it well enough to be our interpreter. We talked about it and she is going to learn as fast as she can and in our daily language study she will help me.

On Tuesday as I was praying about the mission and my problem with learning the language I would have to lean on Mary’s language skills to get us through until I learned the language. I realized it was probably the first time I had to rely on her to achieve anything in the church and that it was a good idea. She has always had to rely on my Priesthood and even had to give up being RIII relief society president – which she greatly loved – when I became bishop. Once I came to that position I could more or less relax – lessons with our tutor is still frustrating – and just do my best.

Thanks to Jim we will have a nice mission blog to post to each day or so. I look forward to seeing lots of comments and of course pictures from everyone while we are gone.

Speaking of pictures we just bought a new camera so we can take a lot of photos of Indonesia. What I like about this Casio is how easy it is to use and understand. Without even starting to read the manual – 247 pages on line – I was able to figure out how to use most of the features.

 Mom and I get two hours a week with a tutor at the MTC. Mary is doing much better at remembering vocabulary and speaking. I am doing my best and then asking the Lord to fill in the rest.

We got a packet of information about the mission from President Jensen. One thing it mentions is that public transportation may not be the best way for senior missionaries to travel. We may end up buying a car, paying insurance, and then needing to hire a driver because it seems that driving in Indonesia is rather difficult. I do not think we will know more until we get there.

Today we heard from another couple who will be going to the same mission but a month earlier. We shared information about available language aids,etc. that we have found useful. There may be as many as 8 couples in the mission plus more on humanitarian missions. The mission only has about 70 young missionaries. This is because there must be a native – or someone who looks like a native – Indonesian with each young Elder or Sister from outside Indonesia. This greatly limits the number of young missionaries we can send there.

Missionaries can not go tracting but they can do street displays and contacting. Also it seems that missionaries must be very careful when it comes to teaching Muslims. You can not give a Book of Mormon or a tract to any Muslim unless they specifically ask for it.

 But with the Lord’s help the Church will grow and develop in Indonesia.

From Jim: By the way a larger Pierfamily.com site is under development at http://www.pierfamily.com/joomla. Another site I am working on is our troop web site at http://www.troop570.com.