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.