These are all the couples who are now serving in Indonesia. Most we know well and they are now close friends.
21 May 2007 – Monday
Up early to study some Indonesian – I went back through some of the verses we read yesterday in the Kitab Mormon and picked out the words I still did not know. This – as usual – led to me digging into the roots of the word and then expanding that to look up words used in the examples the dictionary gives and then… So it ended up – like so much of my study does – in not getting very far with what I started to study but way off on a tangent. It like when in Sunday School class the discussion starts out talking about Eternal Marriage and ends up talking about the beginning of the practice of polygamy in the Church.
After breakfast and a quick trip through the paper – corruption continues to be part of every front page – I finished yesterday’s journal and got it posted. I noticed that the number of posts continue to grow each month. I am glad I do not have to read it all.
It is P-Day so we do the laundry, clean up, and then Sam picks us up to go shopping. First it is we stop at Carrefore to get supplies for our English class. Then it is up a few floors to get TOEFL books so we can have lots of different tests to use in the classes also a couple of books on teaching that we hope will help in the Intensive English Class that starts in about a week.
The next stop is SoGo and BreadTalk – we are still too early for a good selection. I guess Mondays is catch-up day and they had not caught up yet. We will have to try it at about 2 p.m. next time. Our final stop of the day is the mission office where I drop off a bill and talk to Elder Subandriyo. He says it is a go for the English class – he seems to feel that we need to find a place for the students to live. I guess that everything but supplying the money for housing and food will be our responsibility. We talk briefly about the mushroom project – I do not think he is ready to spend much time on this. If it is to work I am afraid we will have to do much of the start up work.
Once we are home we eat some lunch and then watch a movie. We then do a final clean-up before the maid comes. Why does that word some wrong – cleaning lady sounds so much less pretentious. I was surprised to find that one of the members that was visiting the Tangerang branch had nannies for their children – I had never really thought about a member having nannies. Of course there is nothing wrong with that and it does provide a couple of people some work, a good place to live and food to eat. I imagine if we were living here with our young children and could afford it, we would hire nannies, maids, etc. For $250 a month you could hire – 3 to 4 people and they would all love to have the job.
The maid comes we are reading from Kitab Mormon. She gets to hear some of the gospel in our poor Indonesian. I am hoping that it will make her curious about what we are reading. As we have just read – the Lord does great works with small things. After we read, I fall asleep on the bed – Mary wakes me to get money to pay her. She puts in her full three hours because Mary asked her to clean the refrigerator – it really needed it.
I was just thinking about the mushroom project. If it worked a single system could provide 3 families about $200 a month which is a good level of living for a family here in Indonesia. It would be exciting if we could provide enough projects to help 30 or 40 families to earn enough that their children could go to good schools. I feel that there are other things like that which we can start that will do the same thing. I trust the Lord will point me in their direction when I have the time to do something about it.
I am tempted to watch another movie, but I feel that I need to be obedient to trying to learn the language so I spend the time re-reading from the Kitab Mormon and trying to get the words I do not know to stick in my mind. While looking for a pad to write down some of the words, I found some notes I made about the last day we were home . We did a lot of things – including almost getting stuck in the driveway, almost not getting a flight to Las Vegas, and almost being to late t catch our plane to Korea. It was an exciting day to say the least. I wrote that the two hours between when we finished getting ready and Brooke Alexander showing up to take us to the MTC seemed like two of the longest hours I have ever lived. Little did I know how great of a spiritual adventure we would be going to.