Daily Archives: February 12, 2007

12 February 2007

12 February 2007 – Monday

I only slept until 5:00 and could feel that my cold was moving up to my nose – I got up and got a glass of orange juice and took some Vitamin C. I am not sure that it will help but with that and continuing my praying for relief, I at least felt better. I did not go to the gym because I just did not feel like doing any exercise.

However I started reading the Indonesian Book of Mormon Stories and find that I can move through them fairly well. I am not sure how good this is for teaching me patience – I get rather disturbed when I have to look up the same word three times in the space of two or three pages. My short term memory does not seem to exist – at least not this morning. It also helps that I have a picture to look at and the stories are familiar. However I remember that not long ago I could not get through even a page in 15 minutes and had to look up every second or third word. So I am progressing and learning patience – what more can I ask at that time of the morning.

Also on the positive side – I think my mouth is getting better. It still looks terrible but except for that ones on my lips, the blisters seem to be healing and not itching as much.

It was a good day – at least it was for the way I have felt. We had short conversations with Cindy, Bob and Tom – with Bob we also got to see Rachel. With Tom we got a naked William and a clothed Kelli Ann. Everyone seems to be fine. It is a shame that we do not get a better connection. Maybe we should try MSN chat or something like that. But I think the problem is that our connection here is just too slow.

The cleaning lady came at 8:30 – Mary left with Sam to go shopping for the items needed by the missionaries at about 10:00. This meant I had to leave the door to the apartment open because I could not be in the apartment with a woman and I could not leave and let her just work. She did a good job and finished right at three hours – she deep cleaned the bathroom and did surface cleaning everywhere else. I think once a week will keep the apartment looking good. The bill came to 60,000 rp and I gave her a 10,000 rp tip. – a whole $1.

When Mary and Sam got home from their shopping we headed off to see two of the three houses we are responsible for. When we got to the first one – it took forever to get there – we found one of the elders was so ill that he needed to go to the doctor. So we dropped off the supplies, took a quick tour of the house, gave the elder a blessing and then took them to the doctor.

We then headed to the second house where we found that none of the elders were home. We called and found one pair was nearby so we went and got them. We took a much longer look at this home and found that there was a lot of things that need repairing. The elders keep it quite well but we need to do a real through inspection with everyone there. Then we need to clean one area to show them how and let them clean the rest. I am not going to be too hard on them until some of the problems that were not caused by them has been repaired. Once they know we will get things fixed I expect them to help by doing their part.

One of the major problems with the houses is that the owners have used the cheapest water based latex paint made by man. It is pretty much like chalk and just can not be cleaned at all. I have suggested to the president that they re-paint with good scurbable water based enamel and then hold the elder responsible for keeping it clean. It is unfortunate that these homes had not been inspected in a long time. The program has always been in place but I guess it was felt by some senior missionaries that it was not really important to continue inspections.

The trip home also took forever – the Jakarta traffic is certainly back to normal. I think it took 75 minutes to travel less than 15 miles…but I did sleep part of that time so at least the last part went fast.

We got home just in time to have the air-conditioning repair folks come in. They of course did not get everything done so they have to come back tomorrow. The story of work here in Jakarta. But I am learning patience.

Speaking of that it seems the car is ready, licensed, and insured – however I decided to wait until tomorrow to go get it. I just want to make sure everything is OK this time. I will not be excited about getting the car until we actually get to drive it out of the compound for the first time.

We got an e-mail from the next couple – the Roberts – that is coming to Indonesia in March. They had lots of questions and I answered them and gave them some thoughts. They later wrote back with more thoughts and questions which I also answered. I prepared the two reports on the inspections and sent them to the president.

Dinner was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me. Mary had noodles – simple meals work here. Especially when neither of us feels near 100%.

We spent part of the evening reading from Kitab Mormon but for the most part all I wanted to do was stay awake long enough that I might sleep during the night. I could not really concentrate on studying and I was not interested in watching TV, so I pretty much wandered between reading, TV and the computer. Not what I would call an profitable missionary night. It is like Mary has always said- I am a real pain when I am sick and she is correct. Luckily that is not all that often.