10 June 2007 – Sunday

I forced myself to wake up from a dream – something I should know not to do – at 1:30 and was afraid I would not be able to go back to sleep. Thankfully I did go back to sleep and did not wake again until 5:30. I thought I would remember the dream and why I wanted out, but it seems that it has disappeared from my mind.

We received an e-mail from Agus about the Self-employment Workshop that was held in Solo on Saturday. They had 25 participants for the first day – it will be interesting to see how many return next Saturday for the second session. I imagine he fed 30 – 35 people lunch.

We got busy and read three pages in the Kitab Mormon. We went through three and four verses without looking up words – sometimes that was a mistake because we missed translated some of them. But it is encouraging when we can make it through 3 full pages in one hour.

Sam took us to Jakarta Raya and then headed back to his own sacrament meeting. Hopefully all the students made it to the English Branch meetings. We were among the first to arrive – the majority of the branch arrives in the last 10 minutes. They are not much different than the saints at home. The difference is that some of the Indonesian saints travel an hour or more to get to church and it is amazing that they can plan it so they arrive within that small a window of time.

The sacrament meeting speakers were all the Seminary students and they spoke on Latter-day prophets – the subject of their year. All of them spoke well and seem to have taken time to write their talks. I could understand bits and pieces but if it was not for the fact that the names were familiar I doubt if I would have been able to follow it at all. The words come through but they are not translated rapidly enough in my muddled brain. They have some great young people – hopefully they will all get good educations and come back to strengthen the church.

We attended the Gospel Principles class – the new missionary in the area – Elder Wiedodo has been transferred – taught the class and did a great job. He had the class read most of the lesson but he used the readings as a launching point for comments and class participation. One of the scriptures we read was John 14:21-26 where Christ discusses the blessings to those who keep the commandments. He promises that God will love those who do and that ‘I shall love him, and manifest myself to him.’ I do not remember reading that before or at least when I read it, I was not ready to hear that Christ would manifest Himself to those who kept the commandments. The promise seems to be different from that of having the Holy Ghost testify of Him – but a promise the Christ himself will in some way be manifested. What a great promise. The question comes up is He speaking of while we are on the Earth or after we pass to the other side. Anyway it was a good scripture for me to read today.

Priesthood was chapter 11 in the Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball which is on self-reliance. Brother Leo taught it and did a good job. He would throw out some English from time to time so I could follow along and even participated some. If you have an unpaid balance on your credit card you are charged 3% a month – 36% a year. It makes American Express’s 20% sound cheap.

We took a cab home without any problems. We know the way so if someone tries to take us out of the way we will know – at least Mary would. I am not sure that I could make the trip on my own. We have spent the last 4 hours or so relaxing – I took a nice nap – but after I finish with this entry, I am going to re-read the first four chapters of Helaman to see how much I remember.