So here is my teaching picture that seems to have not made it before. The picture of the sheep and the goats are for Olivia to show we have petting zoos here, only the animals are not in pens.
04 July 2007 – Wednesday
Happy 4th of July at least here in Jakarta…no fireworks however. It started well for me – I slept in until after 5. I guess I just need to stay up until close to 11. Mary did not sleep well – she took her turn of waking at 3 and not being able to go back to sleep. Finally working at reading Harry Potter in Indonesian wore her out enough to let her drop off.
I spent the first hour studying Indonesian vocabulary – only about 15 words but I am going to stick with them until I get them implanted in my mind. Then I switched to the D&C for the next hour and while drinking breakfast. Reading out loud really slows things down and that is good.
D&C 3 came alive for me this time. It is interesting that the second record revelation is basically about God rebuking Joseph for letting the world govern his actions instead of Him. As I read 3:4 I thought how this applied to me – how often have I rationalized my actions.
What really hit me as I read was D&C 5. It got me really thinking about faith and how it is a function of our relationship with God. The closer our relationship, the stronger our faith and the more we are likely to seek His counsel in ‘all our doings.’ It allows us to step into the darkness and not just hope that He will provide the light we need to guide us but ‘know’ that He will even if there is no evidence other than the prompting of the spirit. As we gain a closer relationship with God and Christ by becoming more Christ like, we will draw closer to the spirit and as the scriptures promises we will become one with them.
As we do that our relationship with others, such as spouse, children, and those around us, will become stronger as we do that which Christ would do. We stop arguing because we listen more than we speak and when we do speak it is to draw us closer, not to win a point. This is something I really need to work at.
***An hour later I read an article in the paper by Marshall Goldsmith that counseled that many leaders do not know when to shut up. To learn that it is as important to know what not to say as it is to know what to say. I am going to look for the book that this article came out of – I think I really need to know more about learning to be quiet. As I was writing this, I thought of Elder Holland’s talk on the misery the tongue causes to our spouses and our children. Perhaps I need to spend more time listening and less time talking. To encourage and not to discourage others and their ideas. Maybe there should be a book called ‘The wisdom of silence.’
Mary’s time at the office was spent cleaning up and organizing the paperwork from the English class. I spent most of my time creating review sentences for the vocabulary. I also started organizing our trip to Semarang to learn what the Bennetts are doing and to talk to the students and their parents about preparing for the future. We hope to go for three days sometime this month. Unfortunately no one came in to office for help. But we did get quite a lot accomplished.
I forgot to mention that yesterday Sam gave me a new cell phone that brother Park donated. He said it as a used one but I think it was brand new. Anyway Sam spent most of his time putting in all the numbers and learning how to use the phone so he could teach me. I have decided that somewhere deep down inside I have a aversion to cell phones and PDAs that will not allow me to learn to use them properly. It is like the veil that keeps us from remembering our pre-mortal life. I am hoping that there is no need for electronic devices when we get to the other side. But the new phone is neat. It includes a camera and lots of fun functions.
After we had finished at the office we decided to do our shopping at SoGo. Mary wanted to buy a book for Jin-young and look at a new BreadTalk knock-off that she had read about. The traffic was a little heavy but it did not take an hour like it did last week.
Once we were through there and back home, we settled into our usual evening routine of reading and answering e-mail, looking at Cindy and Olivia’s blogs, writing in my journal, watching TV, etc. Later we read another hour from the Kitab Mormon and I read a little from the D&C before turning off the lights.