13 May 2007 – Sunday

A very quiet Sunday. The best part of the morning was that we got to have somewhat of a Mother Days visit with Jim and Cindy’s family. Bob called but by the time we got back to him he was off the air – he probably will call tomorrow morning. Mary got a great card from Cindy – it was an e-mail card which seems to be a great way to go. Especially when you are 12,000 miles away from home.

Sam dropped us off at Jakarta Raya and headed for his own branch. This is a new thing for us and we will have to see how it works. The Jakarta Raya folks arrive in waves – just before sacrament meeting opened it looked like no one was coming but 10 minutes later when the sacrament is passed the back of the chapel is filled.

We were very encouraged today. We are able to hear more and more words and can understand some of them. Not enough to really know what is going on but enough to at least let us know the basic subject. They need to have the youth speak more – in fact I do not think they have had a youth speaker since we have been here. I think I will ask the president about that. May it is not their custom to have youth speakers. Brother Leo’s – the priesthood quorm leader – son Rob gave a report of his mission to Malaysia.

Later I talked to him about his mission and he said that the church is growing – they have about as many members there as they do here – but that the missionaries can not wear their name tags. Indonesian missionaries must make a run to Singapore every 30 days – Americans every 90 – because they are there on visitor visas. However they can tract – which they can not do here in Indonesia. Rob speaks excellent English – he should since he went to the best schools in Singapore and received his AA from LDS Business College before his mission and plans to go to BYU Provo in August. Hopefully he will return to Indonesia and become a leader. He is certainly the kind of leaders they need to move the next generation forward.

We went to the Gospel Principles class and Elder Basuki gave a good lesson on Honesty. We were asked to give a definition of ‘honest’ and we found that it was hard to do that. I came up with ‘always be truthful.’ The lesson basically tells what you do not do if you are ‘honest.’ I need to look up the definition in Websters. Elder Basuiki had the class read the lesson but also added lots of his own comments and used the board well.

Priesthood was on Chapter 9 from the Teachings of president Kimball – forgiveness. I did not really get a lot of what was being said – but I could follow in the English version. Elder Rigby seemed to only be there some of the time – often when I asked him what was being said he did not know and had to start listening. I am know that this is something I often did in class so I can not criticize him. There was some lively discussions with the men sharing their own experiences of needing to forgive. I mentioned that President Faust made this the message of one of his recent conference talks – how the Amish community forgave the man who killed five of their young women. I asked if we would be able to do that if someone walked in and killed five of our YW.

Jemmy Morgan gave me his lovely Batik tie – I guess he was saying thank you for helping him with his business. He then went out with us to help us catch a cab and tell the driver how to get us home. We got a really good driver and he made the trip in record time without taking us out of the way at all. I gave him a good tip. It seems that this is going to work – at least to Jakarta Raya. How it will work for Tangerang is something else again.

The rest of the day included a tuna sandwich lunch, a nice nap, and lots of time on the computer writing e-mails and posting my journal. I still have not completely learned how to post pictures but I am getting closer I think.

We were reading from the Kitab Mormon when the phone rang and it was Jim calling us through Skype. They have a special Mother’s Day promotion that allows you to call anywhere in the world for free. Hopefully some of the other children will take advantage of this tomorrow morning. After that we finished reading – I am actually beginning to really enjoy this. Not only because it is a good way to learn Indonesian but because I am learning more and more about the Book of Mormon. I have certainly never read it this closely – that is where I must examine and think about each word. We also have to work at figuring out just who is speaking and how it ties into the different stories that are being told. This is especially true of Alma where several story lines are tied together.

Mary at Taman Mini with her friends – A typical Motorcycle load – the Jakarta Beach with Mary and Sam

For some reason it would not let me add text to the pictures, but they pretty much speak for themselves. The men all carried swords – you never know when bandits may come in and try to steal the food.

12 May 2007 – Saturday This should be an interesting day for us. We will see the first LDS wedding and go to the reception. It is convenient that it will be at the chapel where we have our office. This means we can go to the wedding at 10 and then go back to the office to do some work before going to the reception at noon. We are going to take a taxi both ways because Sam is playing for the choir and will want to enjoy the whole reception. The weather is beautiful – there has been clear skies most of the last week. Some clouds move in during the day and there is an occasional period of rain on some days, but nothing like it is during the rainy season. We read about 2 ½ pages from the Kitab Mormon this morning. I am getting to know a few more words but it is still Mary’s knowledge that allows us to get through that many pages. It is great to see how well she is retaining vocabulary – now if she could just translate that into being able to speak, it would be even ‘lebih baik’ – that is better. Yesterday I managed to put two pictures into the blog – one of the famous BYU restaurant and one of the ‘mall’ where Mary found all of her yarn. I had not noticed that the BYU picture included the two assistants to the president. We catch a taxi to the office and spend the first 45 minutes doing some work. Then we go up to the chapel. The wedding is about the same as one at home. The branch president talks longer than they usually do in the states but it is a really good talk – one of the elders translated for us. After he had finished the marriage ceremony he forgot about the rings and had to call the couple back to exchange rings. It seems that they put them on their left hand instead of their right – but we need to check this. After this a representative from each family gave a short talk of appreciation and some words to the couple. It is one of their traditions. While the newly weds and their families had a luncheon we went back and did some more work. I cleaned up the templates for some reports I hope to get each month from the couples. I will send them to each couple via e-mail. Mary worked on her English class – she is really diligent about preparing her lessons. About noon we went back up to the cultural hall where they had set up for the reception. There is no real way to explain everything so it is a good thing there are pictures. The couple and the rest of the party were in traditional dress. The men even had swords at the back of their outfits. It was really stunning. The couple and their parents were seated on the stage under what I took to be a traditional arch. They sat there through the whole luncheon – which included some short talks but family. One of the speakers was Agus – the country ER specialist that we work with – who was an uncle to the bride. There was tons of very good food. We just had to be careful of some of the hotter dishes. They had some beans that were delicious and I do not think we had them before. The only problem is learning to eat standing up – it is impossible to do this with a plate and a drink. So you eat your food and then drink. Jemmy Mongan was there and said he could not get the NYTimes article about golf in Indonesia so I went down to the office and printed him a copy. I will try to help him contact the man who wrote the article so he can let them know that his company does arrange golf tours for Indonesia. After we had eaten, I went out to go to the ATM – it was closed – and to get some bananas. It was raining very lightly and this meant that the humidity was very high so I ended up very damp both on the outside of my clothes and the inside. It is hard to understand how the young elders and sisters manage to survive in this kind of weather – unless of course they come from Florida or somewhere else in the South. I only walked about three blocks and I was dripping sweat. By the time I got back, the party was breaking up – and of course some people were still coming. They probably had to come a long way and the traffic held them up. I took a few more pictures and then we packed up and left for home. We were really lucky and almost immediately caught a taxi and he happened to be a good driver and got us home in record time. It helped that the traffic was very light. The rest of the day was quite peaceful. I edited the pictures of the wedding, we watched some TV, read from the Kitab Mormon, and answered some e-mail. I gave Mary her Mothers Day present – a can of cookies. Since we hardly ever go shopping without the other along, it is not easy to get any present that is a surprise. I got the cookies while getting her bananas. It was a good day – the reading of the Kitab Mormon reminded me of how a single servant of God can change a country. We need to believe that we do make a difference when we do what the Lord has sent us here to do. I think back to the MTC and how we were called to serve in the TRC. This eventually led to our being an important part of changing the way languages are taught at the MTC. Of course we were just tools in the Lord’s hand, but tools that were able to enjoy the spirit and to be inspired to know what to do. When it comes to this Intensive English class, I feel like Nephi when the Lord told him to build a boat. Nephi realized that he could not build the ship without the Lord’s help and so the scriptures say that he went often to the Lord for help. We are certainly going to need to do that each day. We are also going to need to have help – again I think of Nephi and the difficulty he had getting Laman, Lemuel and others to help. Hopefully we will not have that much trouble but I imagine we are going to have to go out and find those to help us. But like Nephi, I know that this is the Lord’s work and He has prepared a way for us to achieve the things He has inspired us to do. Therefore it is time to ‘thrust in’ our sickle and get on with the harvest.