Daily Archives: April 1, 2007

1 April 2007

1 April 2007 – Sunday

A rather laid back Sunday for us – at least after noon. In the morning I was looking for when the conference broadcasts would be available on lds.org and found that BYU was broadcasting them live. When I checked there I found that they archive their TV broadcasts and we could watch and listen to Saturday’s conferences on demand. So before we had to leave, we watched the first 45 minutes of Saturday afternoon’s conference. I sat Total Recorder to capture the audio portion while we were gone.

President Jensen – i.e. Sinambela – was asked to be the guest preacher at the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan Geraja. This is a very large, very famous Christian church in Jakarta. The members are mostly from Sumatra or at least their roots are there and is supported by the Sinambela family who adopted president and sister Jensen soon after we arrived here. It is a great honor for him to be allowed to address the congregation. The choir from the Selatan native branch was asked to sing.

Sam picked us up at about 7:15 and we went to the church so we could caravan to the church. We took 5 of the sisters with us. As usual we – that is the Jensens, Petersens and Piers – were asked to sit in a special area near the front. The services were very interesting and they had a wonderful spirit. They alternate spoken text and music – and collections. There was four choir numbers – the best was a group of young adults that were dressed quite casually and sang in English. There were not a lot of them but they had wonderful voices and sang with great volume. Our choir was OK but you could tell they were not gifted singers.

Once we figured out how to read the program, we were able to sing along with the congregation for most of the songs. The songs are in a book that includes the words – it was not until the last song was over that I figured out that the numbers and symbols above the text told how the notes were to be sung – at least the beat per syllable.

President gave his talk in Indonesian without reading anything except the scriptures. I think he did a good job but I am not sure because I was reading from the bible in Indonesian. Mary later said that she could follow him for most of what he said.

After he spoke there was a baptismal ceremony for three children – two infants and one boy about 1 to 2. It is a simple ceremony with the parents answering questions from the priest. Then the priests dips his hand in the water and wipes the head three times for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost – then he lays his hands on their head and I imagine confirms them as members of Christ’s Church.

That ended the services and everyone went through a line to congratulate the parents of the newly baptized children. After that we went up to a room where there was a traditional Batak ceremony where each of the children received a small piece of pork – from a whole pig on a platter. This was after all the families had said something in Batak that sounded ritualistic. Then food was served .

We then went back to our chapel where I met with president Weaver of the English branch for a few minutes. I asked him about how I could get to meet the HR people from the companies the ex-pats work for. I want to know how to find out about jobs that might be available for our members and what were the best schools for young people to go to. He suggested that we have a luncheon so we could talk to them all. Hopefully this will open a few more doors of opportunity for us.

The Weavers have been here over 5 years and so must leave. They are being re-assigned to Africa. The children are excited because they do not want to go back to the US. They have never really lived there and so there is no attachment. They live in big homes in guarded communities, go to very good private schools, and associate with other children with the same privileges. It will be interesting to see if they ever consider themselves Americans or will spend their lives as ex-pats themselves.

We got home just before noon and listened to the other half of Saturday afternoon conference. I tried to record the morning session, but the connection was so poor that I gave up. Hopefully I can record it some other time when the traffic is not so busy – maybe tonight while we are asleep. We read from the Kitab Mormon – we are working our way through the Parable of the olive trees. It is just as confusing in Indonesian as it is in English. At least we have learned prune, digged, cut off, and throw into the fire…not to mention nethermost

Mary fixed omelets for dinner – the first evening meal we have actually prepared at home for a week or so. It was very good.

No April Fools day here in Indonesia. I imagine there will be some on the music boards tomorrow – or tonight in our case.



31 March 2007

31 March 2007 – Saturday

I did not sleep well so waking up at 5 was not easy. We are up this early because I am going to help with a service project at Jakarta Raya and Mary is going to another RS birthday celebration at Tangerang Satu (One.)  Her meeting will last until about noon and then she and Sam will drive out to Bakasi and pick me up.

We got to talk briefly with Bob and Cindy this morning. Skype is still very unstable – headphones help but does not solve all the problems.

We left at 7 a.m. and I was dropped off at Jakarta Raya to take part in the service project. Sam then took Mary to Tangerang Satu. The project was painting the house of a member who lives in Bakasi but goes to T1 because his wife and child live with her mother in that area. I think at one time the house was rather nice, but is now very run down. The best part of it was the windows and doors which were lovely teak.

I do not think I will ever get use to the way they use paint here. They take waterbased paint and dilute it until it is rather like skim milk. Even after two coats, there is not enough paint on the wall to cover. They also are not very neat about how they paint – a habit that I soon got into. But there was a good crew – more crew than brushes or rollers – and so the work went pretty quickly. I only sanded and painted for a short time because others seemed to know what to do. I spent my off time talking to members – especially president Anthony, the branch president. We talked about work in Indonesia. He works for a French company and he can only go so high because he is not French. We also talked about schooling in Indonesia. He said that the teachers here tend to lecture and not really allow the students to interact. Which means the students tend to be docile and this carries over into their attitude towards bosses and getting ahead.

I am learning a lot about the people, their culture, their school system, and their thoughts about work. I hope to make a difference in the next generation of LDS youth. That they will dream of having a career where they can progress and provide for their family. That they can break the cycle of poverty. This is not needed for the families where there is already money but they need to be prepared to help others to see this vision. Hopefully PEF will help, learning English will help,

Sam and Mary picked me up at about 1:30 – the quorum was going to work until 2 but then they would have had to go back to Tangerang and that would have added a couple of hours to my time. Even though I did not do much painting it was good to be there and help some. The Raya elders also came and so about half of the crew was missionaries getting in their service hours for the week. The brother who we hometeach was also there – I did not realize this until someone called his name. I really need to work more at getting to know the members by sight.

We did not stay up late enough to listen to conference which would have started at 11 p.m. here. Sam is part of the crew that records both the Indonesian and English broadcasts. This means they are up all night and well into the morning getting things recorded.



30 March 2007

30 March 2007 – Friday

Regular morning – reading the Kitab Mormon is still an adventure. Sometimes we sail through a verse and then we hit one that we just can not make sense of. It is certainly one way to get to know what the Book of Mormon says. Verses we easily read in English take on a new light when you try to figure out what they mean when you read them carefully. It is at those times when you realize how difficult it must be to translate a sacred text into another language. The same thing happens with LDS hymns – the translators must try to keep the basic thoughts while also keeping the beat. It is far from an easy task as anyone who has learned the hymns in a foreign language well knows.

We went to the Jakarta Raya district meeting and tried to join in where possible. We give our weekly report about our mission and we are happy when we can say that we were able to do some missionary work. Rudolf is in this district so we talked about our visit. One of the things I learned from this district meeting was that the missionaries have a very good idea on how to get things done – few things that we suggest are new to them. However they are always gracious about our comments.

In the afternoon we had English class at the University – at least Mary did. As usual I did not have anyone come to the advance class. We almost did not have anyone at Mary’s because we forgot to call and make sure they announced that we were having one today – a Muslim holiday – so Sam had to go down and gather up the staff. After the class we were invited to visit another Christian church and we may do that. At least when we show up with our white faces and badges, we will get some attention and should be able to answer some questions about the Church. We also invited the young lady to attend one of our meetings.

We got home about 4:30 and spent the rest of the day studying and watching TV. I am going back to learning vocabulary – there are words I can read in Indonesian but I can not come up with them from the English.