06 April 2007 – Friday
It is good Friday and that means everyone in Indonesia has a holiday – there seems to be one of those about three times a month which makes for short work weeks for those who are employed at the mission home.
Regular morning – they go by so quickly that I often can not figure what I did for the four hours before we leave for the office. Of course today there is no office. Instead we head for Jakarta Raya and the district meeting.
As we are driving the rain starts. This makes 8 out of the last 9 days that it has poured rain for an hour or more. Since it is a holiday it does not tie up traffic as it usually does, but there are streets that start to flood after only a few minutes. The motorcycle traffic is of course really punished by the rain. Many of them just pull over under any overhang they can find. Underpasses are a favorite with long lines of them waiting for the rain to stop or as their riders put on their rain gear. A few have no rain gear and must get somewhere so they just get soaked. Since it rains here about 6 months of the year – really hard for three – they are quite use to it. But that does not make it any less uncomfortable.
Raya district meeting went well. Elder Cheney gave the lesson and he seems to be struggling a little more with the language than most of the missionaries who have come since we have been here. But he is trying hard and is very humble so I am sure he will soon pick it up. The district is doing well and have a number of progressive investigators which is good.
After the meeting we drove through the rain to the mission home. Stopping first at BYU to pick up lunch. I must be getting use to the spicier food because I enjoyed every bite of potato which is the spiciest of the vegetables. I am not ready for Padang – which is very hot and Sam says he will be surprised if I ever get to like it – but at least my mouth does not melt when I eat off the street.
We went to the mission home because Mary had a date to go material shopping with Sister Peterson and Sister Jensen. Since they took Sam and our car so I was stuck at the office. I studied Indonesian for an hour and then got a taxi to take me back to the apartment. He took an unusual way home but it did not cost much more than the way I know so I guess he was not taking me for a ride. I might have had a more circular drive except I mentioned that this was a ‘Cara baru’ – a new way for me and I think he understood I knew he was going the long way. We only take BlueBird taxis because they have a good reputation and the drivers do not want to be turned in for gouging a customer.
At home I listened to some of conference and then took a nap. Mary got home about 4:30 with a load of beautiful material. The expensive goods are $7 a yard but most of it is around $2. She bought enough for a number of dresses, skirts and blouses. The seamstress will come to the office to take her measurements and then sew the clothing. They say she is very good and very inexpensive. So I would guess she will end up with two custom made dresses and 4 blouse and skirt sets for under $130.
We ordered in Pizza for dinner. That is our usual Friday night meal and gives me breakfast and lunch tomorrow. This time they really did put extra cheese on my pizza so it was very good.
We are about to start reading the Kitab Mormon for the second time today. That will make about three hours for me today – I think it really helps but I still am not remembering as many words as I should. But progress is being made so I am learning patience – also faith and humility. All attributes I need to work on.
The hour goes by quickly – well it does when we are able to translate well and very slowly when we get hung up somewhere. Luckily for us we get hung up much less now than when we started. Tonight there was just one verse – a long one in Mosiah 1 – that we just never got. But others we could basically read straight through.
It is strange how some words will not stick in either of our minds – instead of the usual ‘sesuai dengan,’ ‘masing-masing’ is used by the translators to mean ‘therefore’ which is not quite what we think it means so we seldom come up with the correct translation.
During the evening I have been recording music from the web…I do this mainly as a habit because I have little time to listen but perhaps I will buy a small mp3 player and transfer some of these to it so I can listen during the many hours of driving. Or perhaps it would be better for me to download conference or other talks and use them.