25 May 2007

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A not very big picture of the very ‘public’ toilet that we can see from Mary’s classroom at the university. Further downstream people will be washing clothes, maybe swimming, etc. The next is Mary teaching her University class. The final one is of the missionaries wolfing down a home made meal – they were in 7th heaven.
25 May 2007 – Friday

And the days dwindle down – not as to our mission but it is only a week until we start our English class. I am both excited and worried – and humbled – about this.

The mornings seem to always rush by – in fact the days often are that way also. As I sit down and write about today, it seems like I just was getting up a couple of hours ago instead of 17. Although we did not do all that much today, what we did do was rather exciting and also enjoyable.

In the morning we did our usual hour of reading from the Kitab Mormon and I started in the D&C. I am planning to read it and make comments in a journal I bought about the things I read. What I read this morning served me well at district meeting.

After reading from KM on Friday we usually have enough time to take a short nap before it is time to leave for the mission office. Today as I was sprawled out on the couch about half asleep, I remembered the books that Steve Gibson gave me about small businesses that they use in their school in the Philipines. I feel it must have been inspiration because it came out of the blue. I realized that we could use them as reading assignments in our English class. In this way the students would not only learn English but also learn important business rules that they could either use in their lives or teach to others. I am hoping they also may give me some new ideas on businesses that our members could be involved in.

District meeting was very good for a number of reasons. Before it started I talked to Elder Subandriyo about the English class and he suggested that he go with us to the English branch to see if we can get people to volunteer to help. It does not hurt to have the Area 70 go to bat for the program. Of course Elder Subandriyo is as excited about this as we are. He sees it as a way to help Indonesian members to have better lives and stronger PH leaders – as I do.

I was surprised to be asked at the last moment to give a spiritual thought. I used the 1st section of the D&C as my text and read about how the Lord’s disciples were called on to take the message of the gospel to all the world. I pointed out that there were only a handful more PH holders at the Johnson farm when that revelation was given. I said to imagine how it would have felt to be there and hear that. They were called to convert the whole world and we called to convert only a single nation. I told them that we need to believe that we can do this as they believed they could.

Later the lesson was on prayer and I brought up the thought that we really needed to pray over all that we do. We need to pray specifically for things – like each investigator before we teach that we will have the spirit with us so we can teach what the people need to hear which may not be what we want to teach or are prepared to teach. The sister who gave the lesson did an excellent job – making good points and giving good thoughts all the way through.

Just as we were finishing Sister Peterson announced that she had prepared a homemade lunch of chicken noodle soup, bread and brownies. She had whipped all this up in the morning. It was delicious – especially the bread and the brownies. The elders and sisters really tucked the food away. Elder Thomas put enough salt and pepper in his soup to kill any other taste.

After the district meeting Elder Subandriyo gave me the applications of two returned missionary sisters who are coming to the program. This meant the two sisters in Bandung and the one in the English branch will not be in this class. But I got Elder S. to promise they got first shot for the next one. That is if this one does anything like what we hope it will. Actually we are not sure any of these participants are interested in taking the Michigan test to try and get into BYUH.  Later I had to make the hard call to the Van Dongens and tell them the young ladies would not be in this group. We did our important BreadTalk shopping at SoGo before heading home for the rest of the day.

The evening was our normal mix of TV and studying. We read four pages from Kitab Mormon – we only have 250 more to go for our first time through. I also continue to work on vocabulary – an area where Mary is far ahead of me. But it seems that more and more words are sticking and when I try to think of things I want to say I can usually come close – or at least I think I am coming close.



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