Minggu – Senin – Selasa – Rabu – Kamis – Jum’at – Sabtu – The whole week.

29 April 2007 – Sunday

I did not have a really good night, but at least woke up feeling very good. Whatever Elder Wight said in his blessing really helped the vitamin C. I still have some rawness in my throat and my nose is a little stopped up but for the most part this was the easiest cold I can ever remember having.

We had to move rather quickly because we were out of the house by 7:15. The trip to Tangerang is so easy on Sunday morning. The trip that took about 2 hours on Thursday took about 30 today. I am going to miss Elder Roper more than I thought. He was a perfect translator for us in T2 – he made the time go by very quickly.

In T1, president Mak announced the Intensive English Class. I am not sure that was because we were there in the audience of if it is being announced through out the district today. I do not think it was announced in T2. I was slightly disappointed in the amount of words I could make out this week. I think it has a lot to do with the sound system in the Tangerang building. But someday I need to get my hearing checked.

Speaking of getting things checked. In Sunday School class, Elder Wight told the story of when he went to get his driver’s license he found out that he needed glasses. He thought his vision was fine, but when he put his glasses in for the first time he found out that there were things to see that he had been missing. The moral being that we often think we see spiritual things clearly when we really need spiritual glasses to correct our vision.

Anyway we sat through two sacrament meetings only catching a little of what was said. Normally that does not bother me, but today a couple of the speakers seemed to be giving really good talks and I am sorry that I missed hearing what they had to say. One thing did come to me as I sat there. I thought that except for the language, I could have been in a sacrament meeting in Utah.

After the T1 sacrament I mentioned to President Paul that it would be good if he had the elders give their report at the first of the Branch Council meeting so they could leave. I am not sure he understood but hopefully the system will change.

After the T2 sacrament meeting I asked President Djarot if he could give me the names of the three best computer schools in Indonesia. He is in higher management in a very successful software company that is always looking for good programmers. He almost immediately sent a note to his friend with my request. We must do this for almost every career choice available. Once we have the first three will try to go a little deeper and find the best value universities.

Elder Weedodo taught the Gospel Principles class and did not have the class read much of the lesson. We were proud of him but I do think we could have read a little more. Sometimes the lesson has some quotes and stories that are important. Elder Smith told me what was going on.

Since it was the 5th Sunday the branch all met together for the last meeting. If we had known that they were going to discuss the Emergency Plan for any problem at the building – mainly in case of fire – we would not have stayed. But they seemed to have fun discussing the plan – especially when they got to the part about how to use the fire-hoses. These are on every level – it seems the fire department is not big on getting to fires. They must have a fire department but only Mary has seen one – and that was parked in a parking lot of a big shopping area. Maybe it belongs to them?  I will have to do some research into this.

We came home to the apartment and had lunch and a nap. Then it was over to the office so Mary could finish up with her English CDs. The ones that Sam bought worked fine. It took about 90 minutes and then we came back home. The rest of the day moved between studying Indonesian and watching TV. There was a pretty good ‘B’ movie on called ‘Timebomb.’ The only mystery was who were the bombers and how would they catch them.

Hari Sabtu – Saab-two- Saturday

28 April 2007 – Saturday

I slept well and woke feeling better. Mary says she feels fine and only sounds terrible. I think she will be glad when she has finished all of her medicine. A glass full of orange juice helps the medicine go down…but not a lot.

We had to shorten our morning because we needed to be at the office by 8:30 to set up for the Career Workshop. It turned out we did not need to hurry as no one came to the workshop. This was not surprising because there was absolutely no announcement of there being one today. I think that Agus and Lukito have become so use to the couple taking care of making sure people knew about the workshops that they do not feel they need to do anything. After waiting 90 minutes, Lukito headed home.

We spent the day working on our presentation for Couple’s conference. I got lucky and Elder Allred came in to wait for an appointment and worked on setting up my template for the reports I hope the couples will provide about the resources in their areas. I doubt if I will get a report each week from each couple but if I get one a month from each of them, we will have a lot more than we have now. After the reports were done, we took them over to be copied. All the copies only cost $1 to do but the quality proved to be quite poor. I may do them again at the apartment where we get good copies.

Since we thought we would have lunch with the CW attendees, Mary did not make us a lunch. I gave her a choice between food off the street or sending Sam to KFC for the lunch we would have had. She quickly choice KFC.

While I was doing some other things – like answering e-mail – Mary worked on our family presentation.  Sam and her came up with a two part movie that we will be able to show through the projector. It worked great on the computer but when she tried to burn it to a cd, none of the computers would recognize it. Before we left for the day, she had the wisdom to save it to a memory stick. When we got home she put it on the computer and got it run with Real Player but the music did not sound right. I tried it with Media Player and it is fine. So once we get an English CD burned we will be ready for the confernece. It was nice to be able to erase some things off the ‘to do’ board.

In the evening we read from the Kitab Mormon – it seems our days have been so structured that we only get one hour a day in on reading instead of the planned two. We could have read longer tonight but an hour is about all my mind can take.

Mary pointed out that I managed to ruin another white shirt…that is #5.  I think I will start a lottery on how many shirts I will go through on this mission. Anyone can enter – the prize is a collection of all of the shirts.

Hari Jum’at – Jum-ought – Friday – hari jum’at ketigabelas – Friday the 13th

27 April 2007 – Friday

I slept well and woke up feeling better than I expected. I am sure the blessing and a lot of vitamin C help make it so. Normal morning with our hour of reading the Kitab Mormon. I spent part of my personal study time working my way through an article about Yeltsin and tennis. I did not know that he is considered the father of modern Russian tennis. That he was an avid fan and set up the program that has produced all the now famous – and some cases rich – Russian tennis stars. The article quoted Maria Sharapova on the importance of Yeltsin and also gave her as an example the success of his programs.

I was not going to go into the office at all but felt good enough to give it at least a try. One of the first things I did was to list all the different areas we are responsible for and some actions we needed to do for each. I sent out a number of e-mails to couples, president Weaver and brother Tandiman about different things. I think I will buy another Whiteboard just for this kind of planning. In that way things will not get lost – or at least it will be harder to lose track of some of the projects.

Mary worked on the English cd that we are going to give to the couples at the conference. Then she switched over to working on getting the last CW into the computer. She had some problems getting what we wanted printed. At one point she thought she had lost all the work she had done, but it turned out that the program just changed the order.

I had Sam buy me lunch from the street. It was good but I was surprised that I ate it all. They put a lot of rice into each meal. Just as I was finishing up I bit into an extremely hot piece of pepper. I am glad I did not do it earlier or I would have not enjoyed the meal.

After eating I did a little more work and then had Sam drive me home so I could take a nap before the English class. Mary decided to stay and do more work on the English stuff. I had a great nap and did not wake until she started to open the door.

I went to the University for English class – still no students for my class but Mary had her faithful three. They get along well together and that makes the class enjoyable for her. I spent the time reading from Kitab Mormon. I read things we have already read together. I can usually pick out the important things but there are still plenty of words that I do not know or do not remember.