02 February 2007 – Friday

Today was one of those days when one phone call changed everything we expected to do.

The morning went as normal. At the gym I did sit-ups, bike and some upper body exercises. I was happy to see the scale hit just 81.2 so that means I am under 81 kg. By the time I was through it was once again pouring rain – the season is obviously here. We read the Kitab Mormon for about 45 minutes and then packed up everything we needed for a day at the office and then to teach English class at the university.

Sam came and picked us up right at 9:30. As I was getting into the car he noticed I did not have on my tie. So I of course headed back up to the apartment. Just as I was walking in my cell phone went off and it was Elder Peterson telling me to change into work clothes because we were going to help with providing humanitarian aid to some fo the flood districts.

It turned out my biggest contribution was to help put up a very nice military tent that was about 25 x 50. We really had to do some jury rigging because we could not drive stakes into the concrete area where they wanted to put up the tent. I must say that the Indonesian saints would have gotten it put up without myself and Elder Peterson, but I think it is more secure because of my input. I made sure that it has plenty of support so if a good wind comes up it will not immediately come down. All together it took about 90 minutes or more to get the tent up and all of this time it rained. I was soaked through and through – thank goodness that it is warm in Indonesia.

The rest of the day – from about 1:30 to 6:30 had Mary and I involved in helping to prepare meals that will be given out to some of the flood victims. Elder Subandriyo and his wife was in charge and they are great administrators – they get right in and help with the work. I helped set up the stoves, cut up vegetables, washed pots and pans, and helped make up the food into meals. Mary peeled lots of little onions and cloves of garlic.

I do not want anyone to thing that we worked for 8 hours straight but we did work much of that time. It would not have been bad except the rain stopped and it got hot. Inside the tent there were 6 stoves putting off tons of heat. I could not stop sweating. Ever so often I had to retreat to the office where the air-conditioning would cool me off.

They talked about preparing food for 500 meals but they actually only cooked enough for about 120.  With the number of women there, that was about all they could have done. If they are planning on doing more tomorrow – they seem to be starting at about 5:30 a.m. – they are going to need a lot more people and a lot more food. The main slow point is getting the rice cooked and making up the meals. They need at least four meal making lines going and they need to get lots of rice cooked well ahead of time.

In 2002 they got it down to a science and they feed 500 meals three times a day. I am sure that they will can do this again.

When they ran out of food I decided we were no longer useful. It will only take one car to deliver the few meals they produced. Therefore I asked Sam to drive us home. On the way Mary wanted to stop at KFC to get some chicken. It is fourth time we have had KFC since we got here. Two of them been for lunch during some church event. I did not think tonight’s chicken was as good as that which we had for the CW a couple of weeks ago.

Now I am going to take a really hot shower and try to stay awake until 10:30. Mary is watching Mighty Joe Young…the new one.