14 April 2007 – Saturday

Tekun – Tuh-koon – Diligent; hardworking. The Indonesian people are surely hardworking and once they get started they are certainly diligent. But like all of us there are times when they are not diligent unless reminded and asked frequently. Which is why we held the branch employment specialist training meeting today. We have not been getting reports from any of the branches or districts. It appears that this has been the case for many months and no one has reminded them or asked for the reports. So they just stopped giving them – if they ever did give them. Now I have to be Tekun in asking the country director for them each month. I will start reminding him on the 25th and hopefully by the 5th we will have at least some from this District.

A long day but good day of meetings. After a normal morning – including reading Kitab Mormon – we went to the Harris Hotel and had breakfast with Elder Kane with Sister Kane joining us later. Sister Kane says we all eat too much – she is probably correct. We then all went to Zone Conference. Sister Jensen gave a great talk about our appearance as missionaries – how we were representatives of the Lord and should look it. She took as an example a very bad looking hymn book and said that does not represent the Lord’s church. That everything in the Lord’s church is done right and looks good.

Although there were a number of very useful points discussed in the Zone conference, it really is more for the young elders and sisters than for the couples. After that I had a meeting with the branch Employment Specialist. I was pleasantly surprised to find that 7 of the 8 made it to the meeting. Lukito went through their responsibilities and I finished up with a short talk – luckily most seemed to know English – about how they had important callings and the most important part of it was to provide the names of who needed jobs and any jobs that came up in their branches.

The next meeting of the day was District PH Leadership meeting – the first meeting of the District Conference. It was good. I especially enjoyed the talk of Elder Jackson a area 70 from India. He gave an excellent talk for PH Leadership that went through the leadership and explained their responsibilities. He also took them through the quarterly report that does not seem to get turned in by the branches so it would seem that it is made up at either the district or country level. It must be like the reports we are supposed to be getting but may never have been ever turned in.

The surprise of the meeting was that I was recruited to sing with the Jakarta Raya PH choir. I did not get any practice with them, in fact I did not even know they were going to sing. But Hendra said that I was part of the branch so I was invited to sing. I carefully put myself as far back as I could so it would not be so obvious that I could not follow all the tune. The first song was fairly slow so I did fine with it – in fact the whole choir did. However the closing hymn was much faster and I dropped out a number of times. But I was not the only one…the choir in general dropped off in quality. I am just happy that the branch sees me as part of them. I have passed sacrament, been to a service project, and now have sang in their choir. Hopefully as the months pass I will draw even closer to them.

The evening meeting was the first general meeting for District Conference. The best part of it was the choir from Bandung led by Elder VanDongen. They were at least 50 strong – which means 90% of the active members were in it – and the sisters were all wearing bright red jackets and the men had bright red ties. When the VanDongens went to Bandung there was no choir and about 25 people came out to church. So their work was quite evident. It is the kind of work that only couples can do so that is why it is so important that couples who are financially and physically able need to plan to go on missions while they can. I turned off the flash and took pictures of the choir singing. When I showed them to elder VanDongen he was thrilled. I promised to send them to him via e-mail.
While we were in PH meeting the sisters had a RS meeting so they did not get to go shopping as they had hoped. The couples are requested to go to all the meetings and now I am glad I did. One thing I did was to take off the headphones – they translate into either English or Indonesian depending on who is speaking – and just listen to the Indonesian speakers. I need to get use to hearing the speakers so I can pick out words.

After all the meetings the senior couples went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant that has been recommended by both Rudy and Subandriyo. Sam dropped us off and made sure we had a place to sit before leaving. I gave him enough to have a very good dinner somewhere. When we opened the menu we found that it was all in Indonesian and for the most part we had no idea what it said. Much to our relief the Chinese family sharing the table with us – it was a row of connected tables with people just sitting in groups along them – spoke perfect English and was more than willing to explain the menu for us. Mary I ended up choosing the dishes – we were closest to them – and luckily everything turned out great. The total cost of the meal with tip was only about $25 for 6 people. The Chinese family explained that the food and restaurant was traditional Chinese – so traditional that none of the staff spoke enough English to help us with the menu.

So we ended the night having a good meal and good company. We took the Petersons back to their home – they had let their driver go home – and then the Kanes at the Harris Hotel. By the time we got home it was 9:30 – 13 hours after we had left.

13 April 2007 – Friday

Well we made it through the day without any problems – at least not so far.

We were up and out a little early today because we went with the elders and sisters from the zone to see Taman Mini which is rather like the Polynesian Visitor Center. The difference is that while they have representative buildings from all parts of Indonesia, there is not the people in native dress to tell you about the people and culture. We were going to go in the bus with the missionaries, but Sam told us that it was very big and if we did not take the car we would have to walk everywhere. So it would be hot and sweaty and we would have no way to get home except with them. President Jensen said about the same thing so we decided to take the car.

Since the Petersons thought we were going in the bus they had told their driver to take the day off. When we told them about our decision we suggested they ride with us. So Sam drove their car – it is bigger – and off we went.

It is really an amazing place but it is much too big to see in the few hours we had. So we saw a couple of things, watched an I-Max movie on Indonesia, and had a large boa constrictor wrapped around out bodies. The trip was made better by having the Petersons and the Kanes with us. Hopefully we will have some time to sit down with the Kanes and have a good talk. I mentioned having dinner with them tomorrow night.

We took the Petersons back to the mission home and picked up our car. I had a nice talk with brother Tandiman about PEF and found that we could get a set of coupons from Hendra to send to the ‘lost sheep.’ We will send them reminders and try to contact them each month by phone or have the couples drop by.  Nothing new on the financial problem and we are stuck until that is fixed. On the positive side brother Tamdiman said that now that we have the whole thing on a DVD in Indonesian the Planning for Success workbook should not take long to finish.

We then went to the office to do a couple of things that could only be done there. I printed some things we need for the training meeting tomorrow and Mary made an announcement for the CW to be held in Samerang next weekend. The Bennetts had called and asked for something they could hand out on Sunday. They think they will have about 30 people there. That would be wonderful but it also means we need to take lot more workbooks and registration forms with us.

I forgot to mention that earlier Sister Jensen said the Bennetts are doing great. The elder report that they walk down the street and talk to everyone and tell them about the church. The elders just follow along behind and get names and addresses. I would guess the Roberts are going to be about the same kind of missionaries. There is a reason that they were sent to the area that is going to be the first stake in Indonesia.

We came home and ordered pizza – our traditional weekend treat.

I forgot to write on Tuesday that we had a great missionary experience. We were sitting in the office when the phone rang and the person answering tried to talk to me. I realized he did not have enough English and I certainly did not have enough Indonesian so I got Sam. It turned out he had just moved here from Surabaya. He had been taught there but when he said he wanted to be baptized he had some problems with friends and family. When he got to Jakarta he somehow got our number and called to say he wanted to get baptized. Sam got all his information and called the office elders to tell them to contact him. When we checked on Thursday the elders said it looked like he would be baptized. That is truly a golden contact.

12 April 2007 – Thursday

Jadi – Jah-dee – One of those great words in Indonesian that means: going to, will, would occur, ready, born, ready-made, confirmed, agreed, OK, to become, and to be. There are also a dozen derivations like menjadi, terjadi, etc. Usually we start with ‘to be” and work our way through the rest.

Woke at just after 5 and studied from Gospel Principles. A quote by president MacKay stopped me cold because it included a list. Lists in general are a killer because they contain words that are not in general use when speaking to others. Most of the time when we come across them in Kitab Mormon we work on a couple of the words and then just read the rest from the English version. Normal morning – 2 more pages from Kitab Mormon.

At the office I spent most of my time working on English class. Mary continues to gather stories that the couples can use in their English classes. Sam surprised me by bring in a traditional meal that he bought off the street. I asked him if it would make me sick and he answered “I don’t know.” I was pretty sure he would not take any chances with what he fed me so I happily ate it. It was much better than the devil egg sandwich that Mary fixed this morning would have been. He included some thing that I assumed was fried tofu but he said it was peanuts. It was tasty – maybe a tad hot but I am getting use to hotter food.

After the office hours we came back to the apartment and enjoyed a short nap before getting back in the car and heading for Tangerang. The traffic at first was terrible and we thought we would not make it in time, but Sam took the alternate route and we sailed in with 10 minutes to spare.

District meeting was normal. They still are not having much success in getting investigators to come to church so they do not have any progressives. However they are teaching more so that is good. We talked about referrals and they continue to come up with reasons why they do not get any. I pointed out that of all the things that the leaders put in at the end of TMG as what a missionary needed to do. The only one that they made bold was “everyone’ when it was talking about who to ask for them. Elder Thiemann gave a lesson on The Book of Mormon and I pointed out that they needed to be sure that they had a spiritual testimony about the Book of Mormon or they will not be able to testify to others about it’s truthfulness.

English class went alright but I still do not feel that we are accomplishing much. I am starting to get so that the children trust me and so some of them are actually volunteering to do some things. Hopefully it will reach a point where they look forward to coming and participating. The small group things works well but we really needed some parents in the class to watch the smallest children.

The trip home went quickly – I ate half of my egg sandwich. We got home in time to watch the last 45 minutes of ‘Without a Trace.” Soon after it was over we headed for bed. Even though we were not able to help any one with work, it was a good day.