Mary relaxing after hiking in the mountains with the Kanes to see the water project. A fisherman an Anyer beach. They perch on rocks, wade out on reefs, and surf fish. As I watched the surf fisherman, I could not help but think of mom and Dona with their poles standing in the water fishing the surf. I imagine there is a picture somewhere of the two of them. I will have to look when we get home.
24 July 2007 – Tuesday
Happy Birthday to Mary. I gave her the necklace I bought a couple of weeks ago. After I gave it to her she confessed that she saw me go back to get it…well my intention was to surprise her. We had a nice call from Jim and Kristy wishing her a happy birthday. Jim has accepted a new job with Sears which sounds good and is in a growing department of the company. He gave us a good idea about our mission experience – we will see what we can do with it. Cindy had sent a e-mail card the night before.
We read from Kitab Mormon and managed about 4 pages – it is rather fun to be able to read 90- 95% of it without too much guessing or looking up words. We still make translation errors but that is OK – we certainly come close enough to know what is going on.
We went to the office and while Mary put in names of workshop attendees, I sent lots of e-mails out to try and get some resources and ideas for good careers. My hope is that by the time we leave, we will have a list of careers and schools that will help the young people make good choices about what they want to do the rest of their lives and the schools to go to if they want to be able to find a job once they graduate.
Since it was Mary’s birthday I took her to KFC for lunch. Not what you might call an elegant lunch but it was better than her making sandwiches or eating off the street. The Petersons are going to take us to dinner tomorrow night for her birthday. We wrapped things up at about 1 and we took Mary back to the apartment to wait for the cleaning ladies to come while Sam and I made a home teaching visit. This requires a 90 minute drive each way but the Salim and his son are always happy to see us. Johan Salim is the young man who I tried to make sure had a couple of good job opportunities when he came back from BYUH. He told me that he had a good interview with president Gjarot’s company and he is hoping to get an offer. If not he will start training for another job that I do not think uses his talents.
The father has a small business making a couple of parts for what I believe is a motorcycle company. He has this business for over 10 years and it has allowed him to raise his family in a decent house, give his children good educations, and I think provide some security for his future. If he did not have this business, he would – because of his age – probably be unemployed. The drive back actually took less time then going. I thought we would catch the home bound traffic but we must have been just in front of it.
When I got to the apartment I found that our regular young lady was sick so the agency sent 2 others to do the cleaning. I convinced Mary to go get her hair done while I stayed and supervised the cleaning. Actually since neither of them spoke enough English to even come close to being about to communicate, all I basically did was to pay them when they were done. Mary’s hair looks really good – she is wearing it very short so it is easy to take care of.
We had hot-dogs for dinner and then read about 3 ½ pages from the Kitab Mormon.
Sister Marchant asked me for some motorcycle load pictures that I had shown her on our camera yesterday and so I did. Later I talked to her and she thanked me for the pictures and said she had already forwarded them to her children. I mentioned I had a number more of them and asked if she would like them. So tonight I sent her five more. I realized that I really have not taken all that many pictures of motorcycle loads – they have to be rather spectacular before they are worth taking. Sometimes we see a good one but by the time I get out the camera it is long gone.
That picture of the man fishing from the rock is pretty spectacular. You should enter it in National Geographic’s photo contest – I am not sure when the next one is, but maybe you can find out of the website.