02 April 2007 – Monday

“These things aught not to be.” Elder Holland on how we talk to our spouses and it hits me right in the chest. How often I have said things I should not. This is another Christ like attribute I really need to work on. I am sure that this is the main message from a prophet for me in this conference. I hope that all of my children hear this talk and learn faster than I have…losing this vice is more important than losing weight and much harder.

“Nothing in this world is so bad that whining will not make it worse.” A Hollandism. Great talk even if it did hurt to listen to parts of it.

It is P-day – the first one we have had for a while. We spent the morning listening to Sunday morning conference on the web. We then read from the Kitab Mormon. The maid came and did her quiet clean-up while we continued to do our thing. Today I finished the laundry – three full loads over the last couple of days. Mary cleaned out the refrigerator.

We tried to Skype with Tom but there was some problem with a new version that he downloaded. Shauna later sent us a nice e-mail. None of the other family seemed to be on the net Sunday evening. Maybe next Monday-Sunday. We did get some great e-mail from friends in the ward and others. Lynn Wardle is watching over our yard – at least he is looking at the yard. The other day Bob said he would go down and make sure the sprinklers were all working. We usually lose one or two heads over the winter – especially along the driveway.

At about 1, Sam came and picked us up. We went to the mission home where we were able to take care of most of the things we went for. Then it was to SoGo for our shopping. After getting cash from the ATM, we went to the bookstore has a large stock of books in English. The problem is that they are all expensive – paperbacks are from $11 to $20. I think I will for books for my birthday. At the grocery store, I was able to buy a Kedong-dong – I will try it tonight or tomorrow. We bought way too many goodies at BreadTalk – unfortunately I am sure that the BreadTalk idea would not fly in the US because the cost of help would be too much.  Our last stop was the postoffice so Mary could send off some letter home. We all dipped our fingers in the glue to help put on the postage. Back home by about 3. Since then I have been studying Indonesian, listening to more conference talks and watching a little TV.

I am trying a new approach to learning Indonesian. I am choosing English words and learning the different Indonesian words with the same meaning. I am going to try to learn words that I can use in everyday sentences. Something that is not always true of the words we learn from the Kitab Mormon. I do not think I am going to use prune, digged and dunged all that much. Or for that matter ‘master of the vineyard’ and ‘natural olive tree.’

I was very impressed by Neil Anderson’s talk – ‘Its true, isn’t it? – Then what else matters.’ (It spoke to me in a different way than Elder Hollands.) ‘We simplify and purify our perspective.’(It reminds me how hard it is to choose between goods. I must make sure I am choosing what the Lord wants and not what I want – even if what I want may be good.) ‘A time and a season.’ ‘I am sorry Nannie. I lost my CTR ring and can not choose the right.’