17 July 2007 – Tuesday
Well not going to sleep until about midnight caused me not to wake up until almost 6. Mary slept until almost 7 – she woke in the middle of the night and could not get back to sleep for quite awhile. By the time we got ready for the day, there was not much time for studying Indonesian before we read from the Kitab Mormon. We did not get through many pages because we had to look up words that we should have known from our early reading but which have not been used for many pages. As I thought about this it brought home the fact that different writers use different words to say about the same things. So as Moroni quotes his father’s sermons, he starts using words that Moroni used earlier when he commented on the writings he was abridging.
We are in the office waiting for Sam to come back with some print cartridges so we can finish up what we need for tomorrow. It has been a very busy and in someways frustrating day.
Sam and I left Mary at the office – there were workmen on the grounds so I felt she would be safe – and went to the mall to get some print cartridges filled and to do a couple more errands. Of course just as we got there I realized I had left the phone bill back in the office so that meant another trip back.
After we dropped off the cartridges, Mary called to tell me that a client had walked in to get some help applying for a job. Fortunately he spoke good English so she was able to work with him and I said we would get back as quickly as we could. When we checked about the cartridges they said it would be about an hour, so we decided to come back to the office and help Mary and Sam could go back for the cartridges and to pay the bill.
Frustration #2 showed up when we could figure out how to resize the brother’s picture so it would fit in the Job DB resume. We even have the instructions that Elder Lieshmann left and it still would not work. So we told the brother to come back tomorrow.
I kept busy sending out e-mails about PEF – there are enough layers of leadership involved that everything takes lots of writing back and forth and of course time to get something done. This is good because everything is checked and re-checked before a decision is made and the Lord’s money is spent. But also means that for most things, nothing can be done quickly.
Mary has spent her time updating the PEF loan files. We only have 13 loans out. I can not imagine what it is like to have 8,000 as they have in Brazil. It must take a lot of volunteers to keep up the records – let alone process loans.
Sams back and we are out of here…more later