Daily Archives: June 21, 2007

20 June 2007

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The lady is a painting – actually oil pastel – that I bought at the Solo airport. I love the way the whole work comes together. The man is our faithful gardener who is there each morning when we arrive. I keep forgetting his name – what a surprise – but I try to go out and say hello to him so that he knows I know he is there keeping the grounds beautiful. When I took this picture he asked for a copy – it has taken me 3 days but it is now printed and I will give it to him tomorrow. I was thinking if all of us did our calling in the church as diligently as he keeps up the grounds, both the church and ourselves would be much more clean and worthy to be called the Lord’s.
20 June 2007 – Wednesday

I had a good night’s sleep but was still soon tired. I think it is because almost I am not getting enough physical exercise and too much mental. At least that is my excuse for being tired much of the day. We read the Kitab Mormon for about an hour – we had to look up a lot of words today.

On the letter front, we got a nice letter from Keith – he seems to be doing well. That is good for us because this means we have rent coming in for at least the next couple of years. We also got a nice letter from Kelli telling about her trip to a park with her mother and friend. It is great to get letters – we can not get too many.

Mary took most of the class today. I helped get things ready and made lots of copies of things, but she did all the teaching. I am working with a young man who is at the BYUH and is coming home soon. I hope to have a couple of interviews for him by the time he gets here. I have already contacted president Gjarot about getting his resume out to the computer community and today I talked to Joel about him working for Conoco Philips. It helps to have good contacts.

I did take four of the students and worked with them the last hour on today’s vocabulary words. Sam got me lunch and Sister Park also brought food. I mixed hers in with the street food Sam bought and so I had a big lunch. After eating I stretched out over two chairs and took a short nap.

The Petersons came right on time and so once we neaten the office we could head for home. The nap was long enough that I did not need another so the afternoon and evening was spent reading from the Kitab Mormon and the D&C, having dinner, and watching some TV. It is almost as if we were home.

Joel called after the class had left his house and was very excited because he held a vocabulary bee of the words that I had e-mailed him. He said they had a great time and everyone got involved – even after they were eliminated they were right in the game. I was surprised when Jin-young was one of the last two standing. I was not surprised that Vita was the winner. That young lady just sucks up knowledge. I am going to keep increasing her work until she says stop.

Obviously Jin-young is also spending lots of time on her school work. When we went over the vocabulary this morning she was not well prepared – so she must have made her flash cards and studied them. Hopefully others will do the same – it is a shame we did not start this from day one. But then we did not have the book that has all the vocabulary words.



19 June 2007

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Our version of Kinkos – the woman next to Mary started talking to her and said that she had a Mormon friend. This is how the print shop does it’s trash disposal. Lots of people do this and it just adds to the pollution. Of course having a few thousand buses all needing to be tuned does not help either.
19 June 2007 – Tuesday

It is 9:45 a.m., I am in the office, and I have a headache. Not a good thing since we are teaching both the morning and afternoon classes. I also just messed up some of the printing I am trying to do.

On the positive side, I just read a nice letter from Kristy and sent a reply. It is always great to get something from home. Earlier I looked at a photo display of President Hinckley that McKay forwarded to me.

I jumped right out of bed this morning after a good night’s sleep. I read from Moroni 7 in the Kitab Mormon – it is one of my favorite chapters and so I want to be able to read it in Indonesian. Once I got started it went rather smoothly but there are still many words I must look up. Later we read in 3 Nephi and made it to the day that Christ was born and the great sign that was shown to the Nephites and Lamanites. But even as this sign was being given, it says that Satan was putting into the minds of some that it really was not so – that it was foolish to believe in these things.

Mary is teaching the first part of the morning period – she is a much better teacher and seems to really enjoy the opportunity to teach.  I am making copies of vocabulary words for the rest of the classes. It is strange how slowly some mornings go by and at other times they seem to speed by…today is a slow one.

Last night we had dinner with the Peterson’s to celebrate our anniversary and sister Peterson’s birthday –she says that she is now officially a senior-citizen. We talked about how different our missions have been than we expected – even after we knew what we would be doing here. The Petersons, the Kanes and ourselves are the only Humanitarian and Service missionaries in Indonesia. So we do not have the same experiences as the other senior couples who spend most of their time working with the members, the missionaries and the branches. And of course our calling is the only one that has regular office hours…something we are going to do away with in the near future. Or at least cut them down drastically. (Interesting – drastic is one of the vocabulary words they are learning this week.)

I taught the last hour of the morning class and I made a lot of copies of different things that we plan to use over the next week. While we had a break for lunch I got to feeling poorly and asked Mary to take the afternoon classes. While she did that I did more copying and sent off some e-mail. The afternoon – unlike the morning – went quickly.

It is now after 6 and brother Moore is not here yet. He is usually late but tonight he is even later. Hopefully he will show up soon. If he is not here by 7 we will just call it a night and let them go home and do their homework and get an extra hour of sleep.

Brother Moore made it and so we were able to leave before 6:30. We ordered in dinner from the little restaurant downstairs. They have very good food for a reasonable price. We especially like their chicken steak with mushroom sauce, vegetables and french fries. After dinner we watched Nicolas Cage in ‘Next.’ I thought it was very entertaining and it moved right along. The only part that got me was that the bad guys were able to follow the good guys much too easily. This DVD was part of my anniversary present from Mary.  I ended the day reading from Moroni 7 – I do not do nearly as well alone as I do with Mary but I will keep plugging along.



18 June 2007

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We work our students until they drop – or until we do!
18 June 2007 – Monday

Our 47th Anniversary – We taught all day – Skype call from Bob – Letters from Shauna and Tom – lots of Father’s Day Greeting. We taught all day – Mary taught and then we split the class. Ate from the street – hot stuff. Mary did some shopping and then went home. I took the afternoon class – the class is covered for FHE and P-Day for the rest of the time. Dinner at the Park with the Peterson’s – it was her birthday as well as our anniversary. We agreed that we will do it again next year in Utah Valley. I got Mary a white gold heart for our anniversary – she got me a pile of DVD movies. After we got home from eating, I fell asleep on the couch. I did not send a letter to the president.

I wrote this note to remind myself of what went on but never got around to filling in details. The one thing I would mention is that my personal study is reading either from the D&C or the Kitab Mormon. As I read in the D&C I feel the spirit of the early Church to know exactly what the Lord wants them to do. To hear from the Prophet God’s words to them personally. What an experience that must have been to lay the foundations of a world-wide church by so few people with so few resources.

Now that we are serving in the true ‘mission field,’ I can better relate to this experience. We are helping to lay a solid foundation for the church in Indonesia. To help strengthen and train future leaders – men and women who will lead stakes, be temple workers, and temple presidents. Who will raise their children to be missionaries and to become general authorities. To bring a nation of hundreds of millions of souls to the truths of the Gospel. What a wonderful blessing it is to serve here where there is so much to be done. When I think of the trust and responsibility that the Lord has given us, I wonder if I am spiritually up for the task.