21 August 2007 – Tuesday

I thought the alarm woke me up but I must have been dreaming because after I had been up a few minutes, the alarm went off and I had to hurry to cut it off so it did not wake Mary. I am up to an hour of exercise. I am still taking it easy on both running and sit-ups but I think in a couple of weeks I will be able to be back to where I was.

We read from the Kitab Mormon – we are in the Olive Tree parable. We can read it fairly well but still are not sure of what branch and tree we are talking about. The importance I get from the parable is that the Lord does all that He can to help us and through his servants he continues to watch over His vineyard so that we can return to him. So the He, the servants who labor and those that accept the gospel will all rejoice together. One other thing that I find interesting is that the servant at one point convinces the Lord not to give up on the trees of the vineyard but to give the roots and branches one more chance.

Soon after we got to the office it started to rain – that is it poured. The young lady who was coming to see us sent an SMS saying that she could not come because of the rain. She rides on her brother’s motorcycle. We had no other patrons so I started going through the files to get rid of things we do not need and to organize what is left. There are a lot of good things from the past but there are a lot of junk.

Earlier in the day I got a call from Lukito saying that they had 20 people signed up for the SEW at Bandung. I told him that unless the funeral was on Saturday, we would go with him. Later I learned that it probably will be held on Saturday. Since Mary is playing and we are close to the family we can not go. Maybe next week. We do need to get some SE workbooks printed as we have about run out.

After office hours we went to the mission office to pick up the Taylors and to take care of some things. It seems we are going to the office much more often lately but I would imagine once the Taylors and the Davises get to their areas, this should return to normal.

We took the Taylors to Carrefore where we picked up some needed office supplies, got them an electric dictionary, and Mary some thread for her cross-stitch. We brought the Taylors back to our apartment and gave them a crash course on using the dictionary. We talked for about an hour and then Sam took them back to the mission home. They should get their KITAs tomorrow and be on their way to Solo on Thursday. They are anxious to get started – they are great missionaries and it should really help Jogja.

We read from the Kitab Mormon and finished Jacob. Before going to sleep I read some from the A&P. I just randomly open it and start reading. Sometimes I can read a page without looking up a word and sometimes it seems I have to look up every 5th one. But it is encouraging how much I can read without help. Of course I know the subject matter and the reading from the Kitab Mormon ties right in. Reading articles or newspapers is much harder.