19 July 2007 – Thursday

I woke at about 5 and started to think about the telephone conference we could be part of this morning. I had almost decided not to bother, but felt there was a need. So at about 5:30 I woke Mary up by getting all the info to make the connection. For once I was able to get a connection to the US without a hitch.

I can not say that we learned a lot from the 90 minute meeting – we had almost no input but we did find that we had one of the highest contact percentage in the Asia area. It helps that we only have 14 students to follow. We did get a good idea about using SMS messages to stay in contact with the students to let them know we have them in mind.

The biggest thing that happened today was that we finished the Kitab Mormon. Right through Moroni 10 this morning. Mary said we would start again in the evening but I said no we get the night off and start again tomorrow.

We spent five hours at the office. A client came in and we got him up and running on Jobsdb. I hope he gets a good job – he is a 35 year old man who spent 6 years in the US and was baptized there. The Elders are working with his family and hopefully the mother will join. After he left we worked on a number of things that needed to be done. Mainly I wrote e-mails which seems to take much of my time. I had Sam go get food for me – I am becoming addicted to street food. It is much more interesting than tuna sandwiches.

After the office we headed to Tangerang and the district meeting. The elders were a little late but that was good because Mary was able to catch a short nap. I turned on the air-conditioning and tried to join Mary in napping but it did not work.

District meeting was good. Both sets of elders have some progressive investigators and there is hope for some baptisms next month. Unfortunately Elder Wight will probably go home before that happens but I do not think he minds because he is an excellent missionary. Elder Wight asked us to share our favorite scripture about the Atonement and I was embarrassed because I did not really have one. When I did think of one, one of the other elders came up with it first. So I ended up talking about the Jesus being alone both in the garden and on the cross. That the Spirit had to leave him so he could make the decision to let His Father’s will be done. This was one of the best – make that most spiritual – district meetings we have attended.

For the second week in a row, no one showed up for English class so we headed home early. Two of the elders needed a ride to an appointment so we took them part of the way. The trip back to the apartment went about normal as was the rest of the night.  Before bed I got a jump on the Kitab Mormon by reading the first three pages – there are still lots of words I have not put away in my memory but there more that I can now read.

My latest building pictures – This is what the front of the building looks like – It will be interesting to see how far along it will be when we come home. The most men I have ever seen working on it at one time is 7 and that was because there was a crew of 4 working to make and carry cement. Most of the time it seems there are just the same 3 men working.

18 July 2007 – Wednesday

We both slept in – that means we made it past 5:30 without waking up. The morning past slowly but we had a really good written chat with Bob via Skype. He could not find his microphone but that was OK. There was no static on the chat feature. It sounds like his family is doing fine – that is always good news. We read from the Kitab Mormon but we only got through 3 pages. I guess no matter how good we get, it takes just so much time to read everything three times including translating. It will be interesting to see how we do the next time through.

We got an e-mail from Brian asking about a volcano that he read about going off in Indonesia. It is about 2000 miles away from Jakarta, but we are glad he was worried. About the only thing that we are worried about is the heat and an earthquake.

Sam picked us up about 10 and we went to the mission home where we managed to see everyone except President Marchant. We made arrangements for our trip to Semarang, dropped off the PEF information Mary accumulated yesterday, talked to translation about some things that we wondered about from the Kitab Mormon, and we talked to brother Tandiman about firesides in the Surakarta area to train leaders about PEF.  It was a very productive is short visit.

Next we went to SoGo for groceries and BreadTalk – unfortunately we were too early to get most of the things we really went for. We decided to visit the other grocery store in the mall and found a few other things we needed. They have a BreadTalk knock-off but it is a poor knock-off and so it does not do much business. They only have 2 bakers where BreakTalk has a dozen – it is also not bright and clean looking like BreadTalk.

We went to the office where we had lunch from the street and took care of some things that we needed to do today. After that it was back to the apartment for the day. Starting next week we should be busy all day, every day with visits to less-actives. We now have a list from one of the branch presidents and hopefully we will soon get ones from the other two. We will try to correlate our visits with the missionaries and perhaps we can get a few people back to church.

We also need to start working hard on resources for school and jobs here in Jakarta. We have not done enough in that area. I guess I am reluctant to start cold calling firms and asking for their HR director. But I am starting to think that is the only way we will ever get this Employment Office really moving.

I made a movie of some of the traffic, but nothing really captured the feeling. I think the only way I will really get it down is to have Sam drop me off at the corner of a busy intersection during morning rush hour and take a long video. I need one of those scenes where 50 – 100 motorcycles are all start up from a stoplight at one time and then comes all the bumper to bumper cars with motorcycles weaving in and out of them.

In the evening we read twice from the Kitab Mormon and tomorrow morning we should finish. We have learned a lot of language since we started some 4 months ago. We have also read many things I had not really noticed before. We have learned that it is very difficult to translate English into Indonesian and then to translate it back to English. We have seen the differences in how the writers used words and what words they chose to use. We may not have been blessed with the gift of tongues but we have been blessed with a greater love for the Kitab Mormon.