18 August 2007 – Saturday

The alarm woke me before 5 and I got in my hour of exercise. I only did 30 sit-ups because my stomach muscles were still complaining about those I did on Thursday. I continue to try and study vocabulary while I walk/job the track. Getting my body use to exercising is going to take some time. About an hour after I have finished, I feel like I am ready to go back to bed.

We read from the Kitab Mormon and it is interesting how the writing in Jacob is so much more difficult than that in the last part of 2nd Nephi. The concepts and the vocabulary is almost as hard to translate as Isaiah. I have a great respect for Jacob’s teaching and the task the Lord gave him to accomplish as he saw his people start to slide into inequity. How easy it is to forget where our blessings come from when we have an abundance. In today’s reading Jacob tries to convince the people that they should be more generous with their riches and the danger of pride.

We went into the chapel and I opened the office while Mary went to SoGo. I almost forgot to mention we finally got our car back from the garage and it looks as good as new. All the scratches and damage was repaired.

While Mary was gone, one man who we had worked with came in and said that he had been offered a job driving and he would start in September but he was not really happy with this and would continue to try to find another one. We started talking about how sometimes when we are poor and need help we become humble enough that we turn to the Lord. I shared Alma 32 with him and told him that while our worldly condition may seem poor at times, our spiritual condition never needed to be. That if we kept the Lord’s commandments he would help us to feel good with ourselves and to lift us up to try and improve our worldly condition.

I also called Franky – another of our clients – and asked if got his job on the cruise ship. He said that his interviewer would call him the first of October and in the mean time he was helping his mother with her small business. Unfortunately he is determined to seek employment away from Indonesia. If he would be happy with living and working here, I would send his resume to the Marriott chain.

I listened to a talk by President Hinckley in Bahasa and read along. I can pretty much keep up with it and also could translate a lot of it as I read. I am hoping that sometime in the future I will come to hear and understand Bahasa. I told Mary today that if we did not get called to another mission where we needed to learn a language, we should continue to read the Kitab Mormon and try to master the language.

After lunch we continued our reading in the Kitab Mormon. Jacob includes an interesting verse I do not remember reading before. He firsts admonishes the husbands to stop taking more than one wife and not to have concubines. But then the Lord puts in a verse that opens the door for future revelation that might make possible if “I want to raise up a seed unto Me.”

This morning Mary suggested that we have the Petersons and the Taylors over for dinner tonight. I said I did not think that was a good idea. But later I came up with the idea that we invite them to go to Amigos. Mary called and the Peterson’s accepted. Later we called the President and found that they were picking up their son in the afternoon and would have to call us back. Later he called and said they would love to join us. I just got off the phone with the Petersons and found that they had some elders and luggage in their car so they were loaded. It should be a real interesting dinner. After the dinner, the Petersons and the Marchants are going to go pick up the Dayhles who are coming in around 10.

After office hours we came home and took naps. Before I went to sleep I read from the biography of Boyd K. Packer that the president loaned me. I am still reading about his early life and that of his wife. I found it interesting to read how he finally came to have a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the Church.

Before heading off to dinner, Mary and I read again from the Kitab Mormon – we are trying to keep our average of two hours a day. It really helps us center on the gospel and also to learn Indonesian.

Our farewell dinner for the Petersons was well attended. The Petersons had been up in Bandung for Sister Peterson’s last piano lesson giving day. The Taylors had gone with them and for the trip home the president asked if they would bring back two missionaries and their luggage. So their car was quite crowded. The president and sister Marchant brought their son who is on his way home from his mission in Paraguay via Argentina, France, Hong Kong, Jakarta, etc. So he will fly almost around the world.

We gave the Peterson’s a small stone frog for a going away present. It turned out that sister Peterson is a frog collector so that worked well. We all had a nice meal and there was lots of talk. I reminded the president about making arrangements for the Taylors to fly into Solo and staying with the Roberts until they could get settled into Jogja. He called the Roberts from the restaurant and got it all settled.

The night ended with us taking the Taylors back to the mission home and coming home ourselves. I read from ‘Watchman on the Tower.” It is clearly written and reflects the solid organization that is part of Elder Packer’s life. His family really needed that since it consisted of 10 children and a father that was often away on assignments. His wife Donna certainly deserves a lot of credit for providing a safe haven for him.