You do not see a lot of caged or chained monkeys or baboons but in one afternoon we saw this one and the trained one seen below while out looking for less-actives. He had a neighbor that I did not photograph because he was sprawled out on the floor of his cage. This one just looked right at me and the flash did not bother him at all.

30 July 2007 – Monday

Something I ate yesterday did not agree with me so I was up and down much of the night. I was afraid it would continue all day but after we left the apartment I was fine. Except for my problem it was a normal morning. We are reading the Isaiah chapters of 1st Nephi and so we only get through a little over 2 pages an hour. It is not so much the words as trying to figure out grammar and tenses. Even after reading the English we are not always able to understand why it is written the way it is in Indonesian.

We received a call from the Petersons inviting us to join them and the Kanes for a trip to Yogakarta for a couple of days of sightseeing next week. They wanted to see the big temples there before heading home in a couple of weeks. I did not feel good about going away from our area once again. Also in a couple of weeks the new couples will arrive and we will be spending some time showing them around. Then I decided that perhaps we could combine mission work with pleasure. We can look at houses for the new mission couple that will go there, talk to prospective drivers, and give Vita and Anna the Michigan test. We could also drive over to Solo and meet the Barnards and the Roberts and see how they are doing with the English class. If Sister Endang is available we might even finally see the ERS office there.

We were in the office from 10 to about noon. We are not officially open on Monday but I wanted to send some e-mail to those I have met over the last couple of weeks. Hopefully we will get some good contacts this way. Mary worked on some genealogy. I also tried to call and give a lead for a job to one of our members but he was not home and does not have a cellphone.

Hendra came in and gave us some good news. They have run a new line for our internet and phone service so that we should have much better speed. Also we will know when the phone rings it is for us and not for someone else in the building. He ran a speed test on the old line and it seems to have averaged about 160 kbps – I really doubt if that was true but that is what it showed. The new one is supposed to be over 300kbps – still well below the advertised speed but at least much better than it was.

At the mission office we ate lunch – Mary brought a sandwich and I had Sam get me lunch from BYU. I talked with Elder Subandriyo about a few things. I asked him about some of the things that came up at the meetings in Semarang. He confirmed most of what I already thought was so about money for schools and education. He also mentioned that he and President Marchant felt that the branch presidents needed to be trained about welfare. They felt some presidents were too liberal with the funds but for the most part they were too stingy. I told him the president in Semarang had been in 5 years and did not seem to know he could use his petty cash for welfare relief and that if he needed more he could get it from the district. I later relayed what I learned to the Bennetts and suggested they check with the district as to the actual rules and then let their president know what he could do.

I talked to brother Tandiman about his CES directors looking into scholarships for students and he is going to do that. I imagine it will take a long time for anything useful to appear but perhaps by the time we leave we will have some useful information to distribute. I am sure there are lots of scholarships if we just know where they are. I also asked him about the possibility of giving Vita and Anna the Michigan test and he said that would be fine and he would get everything ready.

We went to SoGo to load up on orange juice, veggies, and other things. We bought some plain dinner knives for the Bennetts. It seems they have not found anywhere to buy them so they use little plastic ones. We will have the mission office send them with the next package. Of course we also visited BreadTalk.

We were back to the apartment in time for the cleaning ladies – we now get two – to come. Before they got there I was off in dreamland for a nap. It was much shorter than ususal but I think that is good. I spent the rest of the day catching up this journal and sending some e-mail. We finally got a nice reply from Nancy Campbell, so I wrote back about our trip to Semarang.

We read from the Kitab Mormon – 2 plus pages. Then I tried to go back through what we had read and learn the words we did not know and a few Mary knows but I still do not recognize. Hopefully before we leave I can at least read the language.