10 July 2007 – Selasa

We woke early, packed, ate breakfast, read for a short time from Kitab Mormon and then left for Bogor to spend the Tuesday and Wednesday with the Kanes.

On Tuesday we visited two mushroom projects run by orphanages – one which was functioning and one that was getting started. The one that was functioning was not doing so at any great rate. It seemed to me that they were bagging product only because we were coming by. According to the man running the program they harvest about 2 kilos of mushrooms at a time and use it in the kitchen. This is not a very good production from something that cost $600 to start.

As we drove along Elder Kane told me that the large mushroom project that we had seen 6 weeks ago was only producing $80 in profits a month. This means they are not getting 20% of the potential from it. So it must be sitting unused for 80% of the time. Either that or they are producing bad product that does not germinate. It shows again that few of the people are motivated to be fully productive. Which is why Indonesian labor has one of the lowest productivity rates in the world.

After seeing the last project, we went to the gong factory. After seeing the ‘factory’ I was convinced that they did not produce the large gongs there and if they produced any gongs at that factory it was small ones because they had no molds for large gongs. Elder Kane agrees with me about that – the factory is all for show. My guess is that there is a large factory somewhere with more modern equipment that turns out the large gongs. We went to the show room and sounded a lot of gongs and bid on one but they would not match my price so we left.

After doing some shopping for office supplies and food to make lunch for tomorrow we went back to their house to drop off the perishables and other foods. Then we went to a ceramic store that again must cater to tourists because everything was greatly overpriced. But the ladies found some 50% off stuff they could not pass up. While they shopped I sat outside and took pictures and played with a dog that seemed to belong there.

Then it was time for dinner and the Kanes took us to their favorite pizza place. I had BBQ chicken pizza and while it was not as good as Pier 49’s BBQ chicken pizza, it was still quite good. Their driver dropped us off at their house and headed to his home. We basically had time to change over to the Kanes car before leaving for the Rotary Club meeting. It was not what I expected. There were only 3 people besides us when it started and three other joined us as it moved along. Elder Kane says that is about normal for a meeting, but they get a lot done.

The president is a retired Dutch pilot and he showed lots of pictures of airplane accidents. Way too many of them for my taste and with very little useful commentary. When that was over they talked about a couple of things and called it a night.

We went back to the house where Sister Kane made some great dessert crepes and we played a couple of games before heading off to bed. Mary and I read for about ½ hour before turning off the lights.

I can not say that it was a great spiritual day, but seeing the mushroom projects made me cautious about getting too excited about the prospect of this being the answer to helping the poor. Hopefully the oriental plant project will be more viable. But in no case will it work unless the people involved are willing to work hard each day.  Also talking to the Kanes about what they are doing with their English class and in their branch was informative. It gave me some ideas on what we could do. So while it was not the most spiritually productive day of our mission it was certainly worth experiencing.