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.