I have mentioned that anytime we see a small open area and there are any young people around, the odds are that there is a soccer game going on. The other national pastime seems to be kite flying. If there is any wind at all the sky will be dotted with small darting kites. They are much smaller than those in the US and do not have tails so they can be moved around quickly – they like to fight kites. Because of their love for kites, often you will see trees and phone lines decorated with kites that got too close. It reminds me of Charlie Brown’s kite eating tree.
16 July 2007 – Monday, Monday
I woke early again – it seems to be alternating – and could not go back to sleep. What a shame since there was no reason to get up early today. P-days are not my favorite days because I do not feel we should keep Sam busy on what should be his day off. However I also can not stand the idea of staying home all day so we compromise and go out for a few hours in the morning and then give him the rest of the day off.
Normal morning except there was no one on line this morning for us to even try to Skype. Cindy is now doing a good job keeping up her blog so we know pretty much what is going on there. Especially when she puts in pictures like the one about the birthday/swim party this weekend. Shauna sends us a letter each week and that is great. Kristy posts occasionally on Olivia’s blog so we have an idea of what happens there. Bob and different members of his family usually send us an e-mail each week and that is great but we could use more – grandparents can always use more letters while on missions.
We read from the Kitab Mormon – the part of Ether that I tend to skip when reading it in English. I must confess that I do not see what we learn from the details of how the Jaredites were finally destroyed. But there must be something there that I miss that is important for others. Soon we will be in Moroni which will be a treat and a great finish.
A communication problem kept Sam waiting for 30 minutes. We forgot that he had the keys to the car so he did not have to come up. When 9:00 rolled around and he had not shown up, Mary said that she thought I told him 9:30. So we waited until about 9:20 when all of a sudden I realized that he did have the keys and probably had been waiting for us. I quickly called and found out that was the fact. So we grabbed everything and headed down to the lobby.
We first went to T1 house and found that they were getting their house painted – at least one room. It turns out that the lease is about to come due and so the landlord is going to have to fix it up to if they want the church to renew for two more years. Hopefully this means all the plumbing gets fixed, etc. We really need a true handyman for keeping the missionaries houses in repair. We had a nice talk with the elders as we toured the house and found that they had a good turnout of investigators on Sunday. That is great news and hopefully Elder Wight will have at least one more baptism before he is released.
After that we stopped by a mall to go to a BreadTalk but they did not have what we wanted so we wandered around the mall and looked for other bakeries. There were a number of them and we got a few things but not what we were looking for. We will go to the other BreadTalk on Thursday.
While we were driving I got a call from brother Burr who is the area director for PEF. He needed us to send in some figures so he could send in a report. I explained that I had already prepared them but was just waiting for Elder Subandriyo and President Marchant to sign off before I sent them. As soon as I hung up with him I called the two of them and they both said what I had written was fine. So we went to the office so I could send it in an e-mail. While I was getting that ready, Mary wrote to ask how we could join in the video/phone conference that is going to be held on Thursday. I could only send half of what was needed because the other half was in a form I could not open at the office. So we closed up and came home.
I quickly sent off the rest of the information and a couple of hours later we got a response that Hong Kong had sent everything off to Elder Cook. Now we just have to wait to see if the Prophet will approve the program for Indonesia. Unfortunately there may still be a banking problem but that is out of our hands now. The Lord will have to work things out in that area – but I suspect if the Prophet approves it, people will get things moving.
Since then I have been napping, reading from the Kitab Mormon – not very well as it turns out – writing a few e-mails, and ducking out to the living room from time to time to see ‘Something about Mary’ that launched Cameron Diaz to the big time. While most of this was going on the cleaning lady came and got rid of a lot of dust and stuff that seems to accumulate on the floor each week. The important thing is that she gives the bathrooms a real cleaning and mops the floors.
We got a note from the management saying that they are installing a bathroom in the lobby area. It will take about 75 days and since we are just one floor above the lobby it is going to be noisy at times.
After a dinner of hotdogs – with real Oscar Meyer franks – we read from the Kitab Mormon. We are into Moroni and should finish by Wednesday or Thursday. I decided I would stay up late so perhaps I could get some solid sleep so I watched some mindless TV, read from the Kitab Mormon and finished by reading some of the Half Blood Prince. She certainly has a lot to clear up in the last book – it should be a lot of fun to read. I finally turned off the light just before midnight.