10 August 2007 – Friday

I think the alarm wants to make sure I wake up. Once again I had trouble finding the switch to turn it off. I tried hard to silence it before it wakes up Mary but I do not seem to able to do that. My morning exercise went well and it seems I am finally starting to remember the vocabulary words. Hopefully it will help. We read from the Kitab Mormon – a humbling experience to say the least. I continue to read from the A&P which is much easier.

As we pulled out of the driveway, I found that I had not brought the keys to the apartment. So we had to turn around – which is not easy in Jakarta because there are not many places to cross from one side to the other. In this case it takes about 10 minutes. Not much happens at the office. I tidy up the e-mail and resumes. I also did some work with prepositions – an area that is so important in learning English.  Sam gets me lunch from the street. Today’s food is not as good as usual – rather limited in variety. Good and filling but not great. Not long after lunch President Marchant calls and invites us to have dinner tonight with them and the 13 new missionaries.

After the office we have time to go back to the apartment for naps and to get ready for dinner. I spend some of my time cataloging and writing captions for all the pictures we took while in Jogja. That is a major task when there are over 300 pictures to go through. Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Because of the possibility of bad traffic, we leave early for the mission home. At first it looks like it may be really slow going, but after a while it opens up and we get there in plenty of time. We finally got to say hello to Elder Roper only to find out that he had lost his voice and could hardly be heard. This of course did not stop him from talking – but it did slow him down a little.

It was great to meet all the new missionaries – 12 young men and a sister from Jogja. She is especially impressive with almost perfect English. Sister Tippetts sent us some phrases to use when we met the elders – they were surprised when we used them and wondered how we knew them.

Dinner was Italian and we sat at the table with some of the new missionaries. I enjoyed it more than sitting at the table with the Marchants and Petersons who we get to see all the time. We got to share some thoughts about missionary work, our calls, etc. It was very pleasant. After dinner we had a short testimony meeting – all the new elders and the sister bore their testimony as did sister Marchant. It was a good spiritual experience and we were able to understand most of what was said. Some of the US elders have a pretty good vocabulary and others you can tell are struggling with the language. But they are all strong missionaries and should do well.

It was a very nice way to end another day in the mission.

A traditional instrument – beautiful sounds. The horned owl and a shot of one of the aisles at the bird market in Jogja

09 August 2007 – Thursday

It was good to get back to doing our calling all day.

We must have slept very soundly last night because we did not feel a major earthquake that happened about midnight here. The first thing we knew about it was when we got e-mails from Brian and Tom, quickly followed by a Skype call from Jim asking if we were OK. When Jim asked about the earthquake we knew nothing about it. We checked the newspapers and TV but there was nothing there. Later news from our friends the Kanes up in Bogor said that they woke at 12:08 to house that shook and trembled for over a minute. I guess all of our years in So. Cal. made us insensitive toWe went into the mission office and Elder Subandriyo asked Mary to teach his staff twice a week – Tuesday and Thursday from 1-2. I talked to president Marchant and he said that they would be gone when the senior couple came in on the 22nd and asked us to take care of picking them up and taking care of them until he got back. Since that is the Davises who we have started an e-mail correspondence with, it should be good. We will get to meet the Taylors after they come here on the 15th. I talked to Ari about Bandung and a driver for the Davises. The president mentioned that we already had a house there – one where the sisters live when there are some in Bandung. I do not think the Davises will want to live there but we will look at it with the Davises.

The 13 new elders are all at the mission office and they are in the middle of their orientation. I looked in and saw Elder Roper – he is going to be one of the office elders – and he saw me and waved. He looks great so I guess there is no problems with his hernia. We also visited with the Petersons for a while. Mary wanted to get some information about the staff English classes. Later as Mary and I talked about we discussed breaking the class into two parts so the ones who already have excellent English will not be held back and those who do not have very good English will not be in over their heads.

We then went to the mall to get groceries and BreadTalk. We did not go to our usual mall because I suggested BurgerKing for lunch. I would have eaten at BYU, but Mary would not have been happy so I figured I could eat off the street tomorrow and treat her and Sam to hamburgers today.

In the afternoon we went to district meeting and shared in a lesson on the purpose of our mission. It included reading from D&C 4. As Elder Smith was reading verse 4, I happened to read the 2nd verse. Although we read it almost every week, I am not sure I have actually thought about what it says. It says that once you decide to become a missionary, you need to do it diligently “so you can stand blameless before God in the last days.” I pointed out that means if we do not do our best during our mission we will not be able to do that. It is rather like the couple in the New Testament who decided to hold back part of the money that they got for their home. Once we commit we need to be fully committed to the work.

We had a good turnout for English class. Mainly because they have Seminary in the evening and it ends at 6:00 so most of the students can come to our classes. The only ones I have in my class are Agus and Catherin’s family – but they are great so we get a lot done. I continue to work on prepositions and numbers.

The trip home seemed longer than it actually was. I think I was just tired and there were enough brief traffic jams to make it seem like a long time. All in all it was a good day.