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.