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.

06 April 2007 – Friday

It is good Friday and that means everyone in Indonesia has a holiday – there seems to be one of those about three times a month which makes for short work weeks for those who are employed at the mission home.

Regular morning – they go by so quickly that I often can not figure what I did for the four hours before we leave for the office. Of course today there is no office. Instead we head for Jakarta Raya and the district meeting.

As we are driving the rain starts. This makes 8 out of the last 9 days that it has poured rain for an hour or more. Since it is a holiday it does not tie up traffic as it usually does, but there are streets that start to flood after only a few minutes. The motorcycle traffic is of course really punished by the rain. Many of them just pull over under any overhang they can find. Underpasses are a favorite with long lines of them waiting for the rain to stop or as their riders put on their rain gear. A few have no rain gear and must get somewhere so they just get soaked. Since it rains here about 6 months of the year – really hard for three – they are quite use to it. But that does not make it any less uncomfortable.

Raya district meeting went well. Elder Cheney gave the lesson and he seems to be struggling a little more with the language than most of the missionaries who have come since we have been here. But he is trying hard and is very humble so I am sure he will soon pick it up. The district is doing well and have a number of progressive investigators which is good.

After the meeting we drove through the rain to the mission home. Stopping first at BYU to pick up lunch. I must be getting use to the spicier food because I enjoyed every bite of potato which is the spiciest of the vegetables. I am not ready for Padang – which is very hot and Sam says he will be surprised if I ever get to like it – but at least my mouth does not melt when I eat off the street.

We went to the mission home because Mary had a date to go material shopping with Sister Peterson and Sister Jensen. Since they took Sam and our car so I was stuck at the office. I studied Indonesian for an hour and then got a taxi to take me back to the apartment. He took an unusual way home but it did not cost much more than the way I know so I guess he was not taking me for a ride. I might have had a more circular drive except I mentioned that this was a ‘Cara baru’ – a new way for me and I think he understood I knew he was going the long way. We only take BlueBird taxis because they have a good reputation and the drivers do not want to be turned in for gouging a customer.

At home I listened to some of conference and then took a nap. Mary got home about 4:30 with a load of beautiful material. The expensive goods are $7 a yard but most of it is around $2. She bought enough for a number of dresses, skirts and blouses. The seamstress will come to the office to take her measurements and then sew the clothing. They say she is very good and very inexpensive. So I would guess she will end up with two custom made dresses and 4 blouse and skirt sets for under $130.

We ordered in Pizza for dinner. That is our usual Friday night meal and gives me breakfast and lunch tomorrow. This time they really did put extra cheese on my pizza so it was very good.

We are about to start reading the Kitab Mormon for the second time today. That will make about three hours for me today – I think it really helps but I still am not remembering as many words as I should. But progress is being made so I am learning patience – also faith and humility. All attributes I need to work on.

The hour goes by quickly – well it does when we are able to translate well and very slowly when we get hung up somewhere. Luckily for us we get hung up much less now than when we started. Tonight there was just one verse – a long one in Mosiah 1 – that we just never got. But others we could basically read straight through.

It is strange how some words will not stick in either of our minds – instead of the usual ‘sesuai dengan,’ ‘masing-masing’ is used by the translators to mean ‘therefore’ which is not quite what we think it means so we seldom come up with the correct translation.

During the evening I have been recording music from the web…I do this mainly as a habit because I have little time to listen but perhaps I will buy a small mp3 player and transfer some of these to it so I can listen during the many hours of driving. Or perhaps it would be better for me to download conference or other talks and use them.

05 April 2007 – Thursday

I have slacked off again about writing in this journal. That is a shame because that means I have lost some of the thoughts that come to me and that some of the experiences of my mission are also lost.

Tuesday after our regular office hours, we went out to see Sister Pauline. She is the one who lives and has a business that is on the medium between two sides of a busy road. We went out just to keep in contact and to buy some fertilizer for our plants. She was there alone and we had a short meeting with her. We did not bring up anything about the church until a man came by and started asking about our badges. He said he was a Christian and would like to read the Book of Mormon. I just realized I messed up and did not get his name and address so the missionaries could take the book to him. However I did call Elder Thiemann and tell him that Sister Pauline needed a Book of Mormon to give him. Maybe by little steps we will be able to bring her back into activity.

Wednesday after the office we went out to see Rudy – the rich Chinese man who we met through the missionaries. He had called and asked if we could come by so he could give us the picture of Christ that he had promised. We had a nice visit and while we did not talk specifically about the church we talked about Easter, prayer, and spiritual experiences. I am hoping that as our friendship strengthens I can get him to read some of the Book of Mormon. But even if not it is nice to have another friend here in Indonesia.

There has still not been a single person come into the office for help in finding a job. However we have had some leaders ask for help for some of their people. I have used the last couple of days to work on different parts of my ERS calling. I feel this is a long process that may take most of our mission to set up. However I am hoping that by the time we leave, the process will be so ingrained that it will continue to work even if there is no ERS director here in Indonesia.

Wednesday I had Sam start calling the 14 lost sheep from the PEF. He got hold of about half of them and found that all had used the money to go to school but about half of them still do not have a job. I am going to have Sam call those and ask what type of job they would like and then have the District Specialists work with them. Once we figure out how they can make payments, I will have Sam call them each month and see if they have paid.

We decided to go to the CW at Samarang on the 21st. This way we can see the Barretts and perhaps they can take us around to see some schools that might be good for PEF applicants. I am somewhat torn about this because we are spending the Lord’s money to do something that may not be greatly beneficial to the work.

OK that is enough catching up – back to today.

I woke at 5 after almost 8 hours of sleep. I decided not to exercise, instead I studied from PMG. I read the chapter about how to study effectively. I decided I really needed to start using a Study Journal – something I have attempted to do a couple of times but failed. However since committing myself to “Be exactly obedient” – that is how PMG says it – I decided to try again.

Those three words are really tough ones. I rank them with ‘endure to the end’ and ‘Love the Lord thy God with all your ….’ and ‘let virtue garnish thy thought unceasingly.’ I see them as goals to work towards. Goals that will help lead to Eternal Life. So I am going to try to do what is asked with the knowledge that in doing that I am heading in the right direction.

I am excited about our progress in the language. Mary still is far further along in reading and knowing words but that is great. I find that I can read from the Kitab Mormon and pretty much know what is going on. Mary started listening to the latest conference in Indonesian and we were both happily surprised at how many words we can not hear. We still are not able to translate what is going on but at least the talks are more than just a jumble of sounds. I am sure as we continue to study, pray, and use the language, we will reach a point where we can communicate with the people. I am thankful to the Lord for all of His help and encouragement.

We read almost three pages from Kitab Mormon this morning. Mainly because Mary now knows so many words but that is OK. I am still learning more and more each day. We still stumble over tenses and sometimes who is speaking, but we are getting closer to understanding what is written. I am sure that in another couple of months, Mary will be able to just read what is there.

The rest of the day was a rather normal Thursday with the office, a trip to the mission home to pick up mail for the missionaries, a short stop at SoGo for necessities such as orange juice and goodies from BreadTalk.

Cindy asked us in a recent e-mail to describe BreadTalk and it is not easy to do. The best way to describe it is to have you imagine the back room of a bakery with about a dozen busy bakers working. Now move that room – with it’s ovens – to the middle of a supermarket and make one wall glass so you can stand there and see everything being made.

As soon as a product is finished baking, cooling and being stuffed or decorated or dipped or whatever, it is brought out of the room and put on shelves to be sold. Only the sliced bread is wrapped – everything else is just sat out on trays on shelves where the customer can come along and pick it up – hopefully using the supplied tongs and not their fingers – put them on a tray and then takes their selection to the cashier.

Yesterday when we went there, it was packed with local women – upscaled women because SoGo is that kind of market – filling up trays with goodies. We have never seen so many customers there at one time. It was almost like they all arrived on a bus just to shop at BreadTalk.

They do not make donuts – there is a Krispy Kreme for that – and they do not seem to do some of the breads all the time. Mary has fallen in love with their rye bread and was disappointed that there was not any available. We both like their baguettes of French bread which we often bring home and eat with butter or peanut butter for dinner.

So that is BreadTalk. I do not think it would not work in the US because that many bakers making small batches of thirty or forty items would be much too expensive. Also you could not put all the open bakery goods out in the open on shelves – you would either have to put them in a case with doors or wrap them.

After the store we headed to Tangerang for district meeting and English classes. I gave the spiritual thought in district meeting. I talked about a suggestion in PMG that I mention above – ‘Be exactly obedient’ and my thoughts about it. How for me it is a goal to strive for and the closer we come to doing that, the more the Lord will be able to guide and bless us.

I do not feel that my English class was as good as it could have been. But I did find something new that I am excited about. I decided to print the first Article of Faith on the board and have them say it a number of times. I tied it in with the Indonesian version that all the older Primary children should know. I think I will do this each week – working on one article each month.

The trip home was a little long but I could not go to sleep. It is a shame I can not sleep or study more in the car because we spend so much time there. I keep thinking that I should take a pillow with me but I have not done that yet.

02 April 2007 – Monday

“These things aught not to be.” Elder Holland on how we talk to our spouses and it hits me right in the chest. How often I have said things I should not. This is another Christ like attribute I really need to work on. I am sure that this is the main message from a prophet for me in this conference. I hope that all of my children hear this talk and learn faster than I have…losing this vice is more important than losing weight and much harder.

“Nothing in this world is so bad that whining will not make it worse.” A Hollandism. Great talk even if it did hurt to listen to parts of it.

It is P-day – the first one we have had for a while. We spent the morning listening to Sunday morning conference on the web. We then read from the Kitab Mormon. The maid came and did her quiet clean-up while we continued to do our thing. Today I finished the laundry – three full loads over the last couple of days. Mary cleaned out the refrigerator.

We tried to Skype with Tom but there was some problem with a new version that he downloaded. Shauna later sent us a nice e-mail. None of the other family seemed to be on the net Sunday evening. Maybe next Monday-Sunday. We did get some great e-mail from friends in the ward and others. Lynn Wardle is watching over our yard – at least he is looking at the yard. The other day Bob said he would go down and make sure the sprinklers were all working. We usually lose one or two heads over the winter – especially along the driveway.

At about 1, Sam came and picked us up. We went to the mission home where we were able to take care of most of the things we went for. Then it was to SoGo for our shopping. After getting cash from the ATM, we went to the bookstore has a large stock of books in English. The problem is that they are all expensive – paperbacks are from $11 to $20. I think I will for books for my birthday. At the grocery store, I was able to buy a Kedong-dong – I will try it tonight or tomorrow. We bought way too many goodies at BreadTalk – unfortunately I am sure that the BreadTalk idea would not fly in the US because the cost of help would be too much.  Our last stop was the postoffice so Mary could send off some letter home. We all dipped our fingers in the glue to help put on the postage. Back home by about 3. Since then I have been studying Indonesian, listening to more conference talks and watching a little TV.

I am trying a new approach to learning Indonesian. I am choosing English words and learning the different Indonesian words with the same meaning. I am going to try to learn words that I can use in everyday sentences. Something that is not always true of the words we learn from the Kitab Mormon. I do not think I am going to use prune, digged and dunged all that much. Or for that matter ‘master of the vineyard’ and ‘natural olive tree.’

I was very impressed by Neil Anderson’s talk – ‘Its true, isn’t it? – Then what else matters.’ (It spoke to me in a different way than Elder Hollands.) ‘We simplify and purify our perspective.’(It reminds me how hard it is to choose between goods. I must make sure I am choosing what the Lord wants and not what I want – even if what I want may be good.) ‘A time and a season.’ ‘I am sorry Nannie. I lost my CTR ring and can not choose the right.’

1 April 2007 – Sunday

A rather laid back Sunday for us – at least after noon. In the morning I was looking for when the conference broadcasts would be available on lds.org and found that BYU was broadcasting them live. When I checked there I found that they archive their TV broadcasts and we could watch and listen to Saturday’s conferences on demand. So before we had to leave, we watched the first 45 minutes of Saturday afternoon’s conference. I sat Total Recorder to capture the audio portion while we were gone.

President Jensen – i.e. Sinambela – was asked to be the guest preacher at the Huria Kristen Batak Protestan Geraja. This is a very large, very famous Christian church in Jakarta. The members are mostly from Sumatra or at least their roots are there and is supported by the Sinambela family who adopted president and sister Jensen soon after we arrived here. It is a great honor for him to be allowed to address the congregation. The choir from the Selatan native branch was asked to sing.

Sam picked us up at about 7:15 and we went to the church so we could caravan to the church. We took 5 of the sisters with us. As usual we – that is the Jensens, Petersens and Piers – were asked to sit in a special area near the front. The services were very interesting and they had a wonderful spirit. They alternate spoken text and music – and collections. There was four choir numbers – the best was a group of young adults that were dressed quite casually and sang in English. There were not a lot of them but they had wonderful voices and sang with great volume. Our choir was OK but you could tell they were not gifted singers.

Once we figured out how to read the program, we were able to sing along with the congregation for most of the songs. The songs are in a book that includes the words – it was not until the last song was over that I figured out that the numbers and symbols above the text told how the notes were to be sung – at least the beat per syllable.

President gave his talk in Indonesian without reading anything except the scriptures. I think he did a good job but I am not sure because I was reading from the bible in Indonesian. Mary later said that she could follow him for most of what he said.

After he spoke there was a baptismal ceremony for three children – two infants and one boy about 1 to 2. It is a simple ceremony with the parents answering questions from the priest. Then the priests dips his hand in the water and wipes the head three times for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost – then he lays his hands on their head and I imagine confirms them as members of Christ’s Church.

That ended the services and everyone went through a line to congratulate the parents of the newly baptized children. After that we went up to a room where there was a traditional Batak ceremony where each of the children received a small piece of pork – from a whole pig on a platter. This was after all the families had said something in Batak that sounded ritualistic. Then food was served .

We then went back to our chapel where I met with president Weaver of the English branch for a few minutes. I asked him about how I could get to meet the HR people from the companies the ex-pats work for. I want to know how to find out about jobs that might be available for our members and what were the best schools for young people to go to. He suggested that we have a luncheon so we could talk to them all. Hopefully this will open a few more doors of opportunity for us.

The Weavers have been here over 5 years and so must leave. They are being re-assigned to Africa. The children are excited because they do not want to go back to the US. They have never really lived there and so there is no attachment. They live in big homes in guarded communities, go to very good private schools, and associate with other children with the same privileges. It will be interesting to see if they ever consider themselves Americans or will spend their lives as ex-pats themselves.

We got home just before noon and listened to the other half of Saturday afternoon conference. I tried to record the morning session, but the connection was so poor that I gave up. Hopefully I can record it some other time when the traffic is not so busy – maybe tonight while we are asleep. We read from the Kitab Mormon – we are working our way through the Parable of the olive trees. It is just as confusing in Indonesian as it is in English. At least we have learned prune, digged, cut off, and throw into the fire…not to mention nethermost

Mary fixed omelets for dinner – the first evening meal we have actually prepared at home for a week or so. It was very good.

No April Fools day here in Indonesia. I imagine there will be some on the music boards tomorrow – or tonight in our case.

31 March 2007 – Saturday

I did not sleep well so waking up at 5 was not easy. We are up this early because I am going to help with a service project at Jakarta Raya and Mary is going to another RS birthday celebration at Tangerang Satu (One.)  Her meeting will last until about noon and then she and Sam will drive out to Bakasi and pick me up.

We got to talk briefly with Bob and Cindy this morning. Skype is still very unstable – headphones help but does not solve all the problems.

We left at 7 a.m. and I was dropped off at Jakarta Raya to take part in the service project. Sam then took Mary to Tangerang Satu. The project was painting the house of a member who lives in Bakasi but goes to T1 because his wife and child live with her mother in that area. I think at one time the house was rather nice, but is now very run down. The best part of it was the windows and doors which were lovely teak.

I do not think I will ever get use to the way they use paint here. They take waterbased paint and dilute it until it is rather like skim milk. Even after two coats, there is not enough paint on the wall to cover. They also are not very neat about how they paint – a habit that I soon got into. But there was a good crew – more crew than brushes or rollers – and so the work went pretty quickly. I only sanded and painted for a short time because others seemed to know what to do. I spent my off time talking to members – especially president Anthony, the branch president. We talked about work in Indonesia. He works for a French company and he can only go so high because he is not French. We also talked about schooling in Indonesia. He said that the teachers here tend to lecture and not really allow the students to interact. Which means the students tend to be docile and this carries over into their attitude towards bosses and getting ahead.

I am learning a lot about the people, their culture, their school system, and their thoughts about work. I hope to make a difference in the next generation of LDS youth. That they will dream of having a career where they can progress and provide for their family. That they can break the cycle of poverty. This is not needed for the families where there is already money but they need to be prepared to help others to see this vision. Hopefully PEF will help, learning English will help,

Sam and Mary picked me up at about 1:30 – the quorum was going to work until 2 but then they would have had to go back to Tangerang and that would have added a couple of hours to my time. Even though I did not do much painting it was good to be there and help some. The Raya elders also came and so about half of the crew was missionaries getting in their service hours for the week. The brother who we hometeach was also there – I did not realize this until someone called his name. I really need to work more at getting to know the members by sight.

We did not stay up late enough to listen to conference which would have started at 11 p.m. here. Sam is part of the crew that records both the Indonesian and English broadcasts. This means they are up all night and well into the morning getting things recorded.

30 March 2007 – Friday

Regular morning – reading the Kitab Mormon is still an adventure. Sometimes we sail through a verse and then we hit one that we just can not make sense of. It is certainly one way to get to know what the Book of Mormon says. Verses we easily read in English take on a new light when you try to figure out what they mean when you read them carefully. It is at those times when you realize how difficult it must be to translate a sacred text into another language. The same thing happens with LDS hymns – the translators must try to keep the basic thoughts while also keeping the beat. It is far from an easy task as anyone who has learned the hymns in a foreign language well knows.

We went to the Jakarta Raya district meeting and tried to join in where possible. We give our weekly report about our mission and we are happy when we can say that we were able to do some missionary work. Rudolf is in this district so we talked about our visit. One of the things I learned from this district meeting was that the missionaries have a very good idea on how to get things done – few things that we suggest are new to them. However they are always gracious about our comments.

In the afternoon we had English class at the University – at least Mary did. As usual I did not have anyone come to the advance class. We almost did not have anyone at Mary’s because we forgot to call and make sure they announced that we were having one today – a Muslim holiday – so Sam had to go down and gather up the staff. After the class we were invited to visit another Christian church and we may do that. At least when we show up with our white faces and badges, we will get some attention and should be able to answer some questions about the Church. We also invited the young lady to attend one of our meetings.

We got home about 4:30 and spent the rest of the day studying and watching TV. I am going back to learning vocabulary – there are words I can read in Indonesian but I can not come up with them from the English.