25 July 2007

25 July 2007 – Wednesday

I woke about 4:30 and thought I was awake for the day. So I moved into the other room so as not to wake Mary and got lucky and went back to sleep for a while. I studied a little Indonesian and then cleaned up a pile of papers that I had acquired over the last couple of weeks. It is amazing how paper accumulates even here. This was mostly vocabulary lists – words I have studied again and again without internalizing. Elder Kane makes lists of about 70 words and studies them in his spare time. My lists – if I type them – tend to be about 30 words but I have words on scrapes of paper, backs of almost anything, etc.

Normal morning in most ways. Mary got birthday greetings from a few more people, including Tom. I drank orange juice for breakfast. It is somewhat strange that I have become such an orange juice fan. At home I would have a glass from time to time but hardly ever thought of going to the frig and just getting a drink of OJ. After breakfast we read from the Kitab Mormon and then got things together for the rest of the day.

We went to the office and found a couple of army trucks parked in the lot with a dozen or so soldiers with automatic weapons stretched out on the ground resting. It turned out that the president was speaking across the street and this was part of his guard. Sam told us that this always happens when he or someone very important is there. I was reluctant to take any pictures because I did not know how they would react. But I did wave and smile at them.

Mary spent most of her day finishing entering the names of those who have attended workshops so far this year. We will now need to get them into some kind of form so we can send them to the district specialists. While she did that I sent out a number of e-mails to try and establish resources for jobs. I really need to do much more of that and we need to make a list of those we contact, when we contact them and what they say. I had Sam get us lunch – Mary brought a sandwich because she still has not found anything she really likes around the office.

At 12:30 or so Lukito and Agus showed up for our monthly meeting and we discussed the workshops for the last of the year. I am determined that the Agus works with the district specialists to make these decisions but I am reluctant to just let it slide so I imagine we will still decide from the top down.

By the time we were finished with that it was time to go back to the apartment to rest a while before the Peterson’s came to take Mary out for her birthday dinner at Amigos. I studied a little Indonesian – I am trying hard to remember to do this often during the day in hopes that the vocabulary will start to become natural for me.

We were pleasantly surprised to find President and Sister Marchant in the car with the Petersons. It is certainly evident that each mission president is different but each are called by the Lord for just that difference. We spent the next three hours enjoying their company and conversation. In the last three weeks we probably have already spent about as much time and spoken more with the Marchants than we did in the 6 months we were here with the Jensens.  Although the president seems to be quite relaxed he is also right on top of things. He has a vision of what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. He talked about going out with the missionaries and riding the angkots.

We had a nice meal and afterwards the manager came over and introduced himself. I told him that we were in charge of finding jobs for our members and asked him what kind of people he was looking for. He said he would be glad to receive any resumes. I will send him a thank you note tomorrow. During our dinner I mentioned to the Marchants that I had become addicted to the fresh orange juice that I got at SoGo. The president was very interested and since there was a Heros in the shopping complex we went there to see if they had the same machine.

They did and so the president bought a liter. Then we wandered around the store and the president and brother Peterson got a referral from one of the customers. We bought some bologna and a plant for Sam to give to his mother for Indonesian Mother’s Day.The trip home took a while because the traffic was rather bad in spots.  It was a good night out and we had the opportunity to gather some important information and a good contact – and there was even some missionary work done.



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