12 August 2007 – Sunday

A quiet morning and we got going so late that we did not make time to read the Kitab Mormon before we had to leave for church. We called Oregon and talked to Kelli to let her know we were thinking about her on the day she was baptized. Unfortunately we woke her up and I am not sure how much you understood. But I hope she realized that we were happy for her today.

Today it was Jakarta Raya so Sam takes us and we will catch a taxi home. We arrive early and we stand in line with the elders to meet and greet the members as they come in. Two of the new elders – Andreson and Ercikson – are now here with Rigby and Louhannapessy. They are both excited about being out doing missionary work and when I talked to them about their first night in the field they both said they slept well without air-conditioning. They seem to have some progressive investigators and there may even be a baptism coming up.

Sacrament meeting was on being humble – President Kencana was kind enough to translate for us. Johan Salim spoke but the highlight was president Anthony speaking about the teachings of President Faust. He brought a strong spirit to the subject and recounted that Elder Subandriyo suggested that we study his teachings and talks.

There were three progressive investigators in the Gospel Principles class. One was the young woman we visited with the elders a few months ago. She has moved in with her mother – who was not there. Hopefully she will continue to investigate the church and be baptized. I thought I had a major problem with my stomach but it cleared up and I have had no trouble since.

I forgot to mention that Sam has managed to catch a cold and if things run true to the past I will get it sooner or later. Which reminds me that I should start taking lots of vitamin C.

PH was rather unstructured. They started talking about a number of quorum members who were not coming out to church. They assigned one of them to us to visit – I told them we would be happy to look in on as many as five if we could help. After most of the class was done, we started on the lesson about reverence. I am afraid it is one of those subjects we always talk about but can never really master. The saints are just too excited about seeing each other and sharing the love. I think about the 100th Psalm where it says: “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord.” I think the ‘noise’ before and after the meeting is ‘joyful.’ What we need to work on is being reverent during the meeting so we can feel the spirit of the speakers and the sacrament.

For the first time we had to wait about 5 minutes for a cab but the driver knew right where to go so it did not take long to get home. Soon after we got home we got a call from our guests and they said that there was a major demonstration going on in and around their complex and perhaps it would be better to postpone our dinner together. We settled for tomorrow night.

We make it through the Isaiah sections of 2nd Nephi with a sigh of relief. Actually the last chapter was not all that bad to translate – at least not until the last two verses. The word that is used for ‘ponder’ is ‘menyelidki’ which literally means ‘study carefully.’ I think that is the only way to read Isaiah – carefully reading and studying with a desire to understand why Jacob and the Lord thought it was important to include these chapters in the Book of Mormon when they were already available in the Bible. I told Mary all of this could have been expressed by saying ‘Because of your wickedness, I the Lord will chasten and almost destroy the House of Israel and the House of Jacob, but a remnant will be saved and will be restored to the lands of their inheritance. See the stick of Jacob for the details.” Before turning off the light, I continue to try to absorb A&P 50 in Indonesian.