Belum – Ba-loom – Not yet. I think I mentioned before that this is a favorite word here in Indonesia. It is used in place of No because it gives the questioner hope that it will someday be done. The Indonesian never like to say no – it is not polite.

10 April 2007 – Tuesday

Normal morning – I have been having papaya for breakfast. I do not know why I stopped buying them. I really do like them and the price is ridiculously low. So it is papaya, fresh orange juice, and a piece of chocolate cake. I am not sure that is the breakfast of champions but it works for me.

We continue to read in Mosiah in the Kitab Mormon. King Benjamin’s talk still ranks among my favorite sections of the KM. It does lose something in translation into Indonesian but I would guess that if I had learned it in Indonesian I would say the same thing about the English version.

Regular hours at the office. I found a huge amount of information on universities in Indonesia on the web. More than I could absorb and made worse because most of it is in Indonesian. I think I am going to have to find someone to help with the gathering of resources. Sam wanted to work on his resume so I went into another room and read more from KM until it was time to leave.

We went to the mission home and picked up a letter from Olivia – a lovely picture and some of her Dora stickers. These are the stickers that Kristy bought for her and are featured on Olivia’s blog. Olivia seems to have her mother’s talent for art.

I talked to Elder Subandriyo about the English class. He is going to go through with it – now all I need to do is come up with how we are going to choose the students for the pilot class starting about the 15th of May, come up with a curriculum, a place to have it and who will teach it. A piece of cake. Actually I am going to get Sister VanDongen to help as much as I can. She taught English so I would guess that she can be a lot of help. It is both exciting and scary to be involved in this. I know the Lord has inspired me to come up with the program and I will ask for His help in making it a success. Once the pilot is done we will have to see how we can make it work for a larger group on at least a quarterly basis or as needed.

While at the office one of the workers – I am sorry to say I do not know his name – gave me his son’s resume. He mentioned he graduated from Hotel school and I told him that Novotel in Bogor was looking for some help. I suggested he see Elder Kane and get the information I had sent to him last week. Hopefully he can get an interview there. If not I will see if I can get him an interview with the Marriott chain. It is nice to be able to help when someone is actively looking for a job. Hopefully we will have some success so that people will start to feel that coming to us for help is worthwhile.

After the mission home, we went on a two hour shopping spree. First to SoGo where we got the more expensive things and of course stopped at Breadtalk for some goodies. Mary was thrilled because they had fresh Rye bread. While we were there I went up and got some cash from the ATM – we are going through it quite rapidly this month and it is not going to get better next month.

Our next stop was Carrefour where we stocked up on office supplies, food and I bought three white shirts. I have been going through shirts faster than I have been going through toothpaste. I just can not keep from ruining white shirts. Lucky for me that they cost from $4 to $6 dollars here. They are not great shirts but they will do for the mission. I figure if I go through 1 shirt a week, I will only end up spending $200 or shirts over my mission. Hopefully it will not be that bad. So far in 4 months I have managed to ruin 4 or 5 shirts.

We then went upstairs and Mary bought more office supplies. As we were checking out we noticed a sign advertising the new Harry Potter book – they are taking advance orders at $33 per copy. I am not sure if that is in English or Indonesian. Even at that price it is probably cheaper than having someone send a copy from the US.

A quiet evening with me mainly writing in this journal and looking up some things for Elder Subandriyo. Mary paid some of our bills – it costs us about $200 a month for utilities. We read for another hour from Kitab Mormon. Mary thinks that it will take us about 3 months more to finish it for the first time. The second time should not take as long.