This is a picture from the flood – it is not a river but a road that was near a river. Two or three days later people were out drying out their bedding, etc. They are so used to flooding that while I am sure they do not like to have their homes flooded, they take it as part of living. As I wrote earlier, there was an article about a family who had lived for three generations in a home that flooded two to three times a year. It would be hard to imagine this happening in the US.

09 May 2007 – Wednesday

I decided that I would not do any catch up until I had the current day at least started. Slept very well last night. For the first time since we got back from the conference I slept past 5 a.m. It feels good. I mentioned to Mary that it was strange that even though we do not do that much physical work each day, I am still tired in the afternoons. I decided to blame it on the heat…after all they take siestas after lunch in most hot countries – that seems very civilized to me.

I am back to reading from Book of Mormon Stories. It is interesting to see what words that I still do not recognize. Sometimes it is just because I am lazy and do not look for the root word – but most of the time it is just because I do not remember the word from the last time I read it.

I think that the mission is helping me to be in the world but not part of the world. Today I was following a story on the web that was more sensational than anything meaningful and I stopped and thought ‘how useless is this’ and closed up the site. It was not that there was anything wrong with what I was reading – it was just useless. The Kitab Mormon says that such things are ‘hal-hal manusia yang sia-sia’ or ‘tidak berguna’ – that is they are “things of the world that are ‘useless’ or without value. I am not bragging about this – I am sure it is the influence of the spirit because I am on a mission that is prompting me. I should have learned this 40 or 50 years ago – how much time have I wasted on such things – and of course how much will I waste in the future.

We read about 2 ½ pages in the Kitab Mormon this morning. I really thought we were humming our way through but it just seems to take about the same amount of time so an hour translates into 2 – 3 pages. We do spend more time now trying to really understand why something is translated the way it is. We still miss tenses – mainly because there is often none there – and who is doing the action. But mainly we come quite close to what it says in the Book of Mormon – unless of course the Indonesian translation is not close. I like reading from 7:30 to 8:30 because we can then relax some before we leave for the office.

Indonesia has lots of water – but it has very little naturally clean water. This means that you either buy bottled water – which is what we do. Or boil your drinking water – which is what most of the poorer people do. Hardly anyone drinks water directly from taps or other sources. The Indonesians may be able to handle bad water a little more than we can, but they also know that they can get really, really sick if they are not careful about their water. I do not know how many people die in Indonesia each year from waterborne disease but I imagine there are 1000s. What is interesting is that the papers hardly ever mention deaths here – not traffic deaths, etc. Only if there is a major disaster associated with the deaths is it likely to make the news. I guess there is just so many people dying, that it is not considered news here.

Back to normal at the office. We spend some time getting our monthly reports into Hong Kong and I did some things for my Thursday English class. But mostly it is busy work that needs to be done but is not very exciting. Since paperwork has never been my strength it is interesting that the Lord has given me a chance to improve in this area. As we were leaving for the day I realized that I did not do one thing that I could have done today – but it will still be there when we get back on Thursday or Friday.
We can not go home teaching at Salims because it turns out he is on Sumatra helping his brother with his business. I think we will go out and try to home teach his wife before the month is over. I do not want to miss him two months in a row. We also need to call and go see Rudy – just to say hello and to see how he is doing.

On the way home we go by the Ambassador Mall to try and find the things Mary needs to start crocheting. She has decided that is something she can do while we are in the car. We find a place that sells yarn and the other things she needs but the yarn is 4 times as much at it would be at home. Since this is a little shop in a mall that is obviously catering to natives, the prices should be right – but Mary does not think she wants to pay that much for yarn. We are thinking about asking Cindy to pack a small box full of yarn and send it to us. Yarn is light and she should be able to get a lot in a small package. But before we do that we will look for other places that sell yarn.

Once we are home, it is great to take off the tie and settle down for another night at home. I take a nice nap and then work at the computer until it is time for dinner. Mary fixed a big meal of spaghetti – the only thing that is mission if garlic bread. I eat a rye roll with dinner – Mary thinks rye with spaghetti does not sound good. I found that it was fine.

I continue to read in the Indonesian version of Book of Mormon Stories. I find that I can go through a number of panels without help but then will hit some that have a number of words I do not remember. We later read from the Kitab Mormon and in a hour make it through 3 ½ pages of fairly easy reading. Ammon is in King Lamoni’s court and has started to teach him about God. This lesson is used as an example of how missionaries can introduce the Christian concept of God to Buddists and Hindus – or anyone else for that matter.

I have been reading about a four hour program on TV that discussed the Mormons. From what I have read it seems the program was fair to the church but that there was also some things that were not doctrine and that polygamy – especially Jeff’s ideas about it – was given too much time. It would be interesting to see what was broadcast – I wonder if Tom happened to record it on TIVO.  One thing for sure it stirred up a lot of comments on different religious blogs.

I would guess that in the long run it will be of more help than harm – that some people will wonder what there is about the LDS church that makes them news and start investigating or asking questions. I doubt if they are planning a 4 hour program on the Catholics or the Methodists.