24 June 2007 – Sunday

I woke at 4:30 – I guess this is my new wake up time – and read from the Doctrine and Covenants. We did not read the Kitab Mormon – which means we will read twice later in the day.

We went to the English branch so we could hear our students give their talks. It is good to sit in Church and to be able to understand what is said – not only spiritually but also verbally. They did fine – I wish Jin-young could have spoken louder or had put the mike down further but all in all it was good. I think Anna did the best and when she got to the point of bearing her testimony she could not keep back her tears.

Elder Thomas gave a very good talk on faith with some stories from his past that helped illustrate his points. Brother Tandiman was the concluding speaker and I have to say that he was not at his best. However he mentioned that 23 years ago he met a man on the streets of Yogja and baptized him and his family – it was Anna’s father. What is the chances of two Indonesian natives sitting next to each other on the stand in an English branch and having that history. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Sunday School was great – we talked about J.S. Matthew 24 and I spoke up a few times. I was surprised how seldom any of the sisters joined in but Joel, myself and brother Moore all got in our comments. At first I did not find the PH lesson on prayer engaging me but as it went along I found myself thinking about my own prayers and how I needed to pray more often and try to get spirit to be there. I need to humble myself and approach the Lord with a truly broken heart and contrite spirit.

We were home by 11:30 – we took a cab home – and have spent the day reading the Kitab Mormon, the D&C, and watching DVD movies. We had a rather interesting day with the electricity. It went off a couple of times and although most things eventually came back on, the cable system did not. Luckily the computer has a battery so it never crashed.

Two appliances we really miss are the clothes dryer and dishwasher.