Our young guest who I entertained while Mary help his mother. The Petersons and the Tobings – the twin older sons are in Australia getting Master Degrees. The oldest son at home wants to go to school in America – we suggested BYU.

14 August 2007 – Tuesday

Exercise – two others came out about the time I was going in. This is the first people I have seen since I started walking again. Unfortunately neither were my friend Bob who I need to find. For some reason I was quite tired and ended up falling back to sleep later in the morning. We only read for about 45 minutes – we could not seem to get started. I guess it was just a tired morning.

We went into the office and spent much of the first two hours reading from the Kitab Mormon and watching Hendra move a wireless broadcast unit into our office. When he was done we had a great connection but it is still way to slow. Especially if we are trying to get to the US. It is even worse for the Family History Center – they are dependent on the records in SL and they are taking forever to download.

Sam got me lunch off the street. It was good but Mary’s tuna sandwich also smelled good. After lunch a sister came in and asked us to help design a price list/order form for her small business. Mary did all the work and I played with her young son. She could get a job sewing but she can not take her 4 year old son. She has no family in Jakarta and so there is no one to take care of the child. I had a great time working on some e-mail and playing with him. All children are the same – they like to play peek-a-bo.

After we had helped the sister, we came back to the apartment to wait for the air-conditioning repair folks. It took them about an hour to find the problem – a damaged fan motor – and fix it. Cost $40 – which I actually thought was high compared to their usual service. But still way below what it would have cost in the U.S. It is nice to have the quiet back and it also gave me a chance to clean the deck and re-arrange my garden.

Sam took us to the mission office and the Petersons. We had a nice talk with them about getting ready to leave the mission. They are going to be so busy the last few days that they will have little time to be trunky. They are a truly delightful and lovely couple.

We got stuck in traffic – no surprise there – but still made it to the Tobing house right at 7:00. They are a family of seven – mom, dad, four sons and a daughter. The mother and father converted in Fresno, California while he was going to school but became in-active so none of their children are members. They live in a wonderful California inspired home, speak almost perfect English – in fact the children do not speak much Indonesian – and go to an British International school.

The father seems to have a desire to know more about the Church and is reading the Book of Mormon. After Elder Peterson gave a nice lesson on the 12 tribes of Israel and how the ‘other sheep’ were those who came to America, brother Tobing asked Elder Peterson to give him a blessing. I got to take part and there was a strong spirit there. Elder Peterson had said that he thought brother Tobing would be a great leader in the Church and I am sure that he would be. Hopefully he will feel the spirit and desire to become active and his children will become members. Since the Petersons will be gone, I made an appointment to bring the new couple and home teach them in September. I wish we could be their regular home teachers but I am sure the new couple will do a wonderful job. Perhaps that is one of the reasons the Lord is sending them here at this time.

By the time we dropped off the Petersons and got home, it was almost 10 and we both headed straight to bed.