16 February 2007 – Friday

I slept well – in fact I think I slept too well. I did not get out of bed until almost 7. That seems sinful but I really did need it or so my body thought. After that we had a normal morning with our reading from the Kitab Mormon. We are finding that we can get most of the words, but the meaning is much harder because of the way the message is expressed in English made it hard for the translators to put it into Indonesian. I suggested that we start reading current talks by the General Authorities which tend to have language that we might use each day or at least they are usually easier to understand.

We received a nice e-mail from Taylor and we immediately answered. We hope that other grandchildren will write – letters from home always lift our spirits. We remember our family in all of our prayers and we are sure that they remember us in their prayers.

We went to the office at the regular time. They have finished all the kits and now all they need to do is deliver them. I would guess that by tonight the project will be over. Agus came in and we went through what we need for our trip tomorrow. I was happy to hear that we will not need to travel to the CW after this time. Once they are trained the DES will put them on. That makes a lot more sense than our traveling there to just sit around. I do think we will visit them some time during the year but not each month.

This means that we will be able to have our office open on a couple of Saturdays a month and then be available at Raya and Tangerang once a month also. We could have the office open from 10 to 2 on Saturdays and maybe Lukito and Agus could be available at Raya and Tangerang once a month – like on the first Saturday.

As I consider our purpose here in Indonesia, I felt like what we should be doing the most is training or helping to train the branch and district employment specialist to do their calling so they can help the members at a very local level. They can learn to help those who are unemployed or underemployed to be more successful in preparing for and finding more jobs.

I also think we need to be more involved in getting the members of the branches and missionaries aware of the need for them to form a better network so our members will know when jobs become available. With as many members as we have, they must have access to new job openings at all times. Perhaps that would be one of the things we need to do – or ask couples to do. To encourage members to tell the employment specialist about jobs they know about.

I see there is much more to do than we have been doing. Of course it would be better if we spoke Indonesian but being American can also help us get into places that are not available to most native Indonesians.

We went to the Jakarta district meeting and spent most of our time training elder Decker about his calling. We helped them establish a district standard of excellence and gave them some counsel about setting their goals each morning so they can be successful.  I think Elder Cheney will be a great help there and once Elder Decker gets his feet under him better he will be fine.

Back at the apartment we rested up before going to the University. Once again there were problems at the university and we could not have our class. It turned out it was time for finals and so there were no rooms and everyone was busy. We will not go again unless we know ahead that they are ready for us.

So it was back to apartment where we made sure we had everything we need to take on our trip. We will pack tonight and we need to be up at about 3:15 to be ready when Sam gets here at 4:15 – that is much too early to travel and hopefully this will be the only time that we will do this. Thank goodness we will have tomorrow night off to rest and I think we are safe on Monday.

Mary has learned to pay bills on line – the security measures are really good so that we do not have to worry about being ripped off. It also makes it very hard to send money to the wrong person.