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.