Elder Erickson from Dallas – he is rather tall and so he has trouble getting on and off angkots. Children are the same where ever you are. These bicycle driven rides roam the living areas and bring smiles to those who ride. The young lady was not sure she wanted that old, white man to take her picture.

28 August 2007 – Tuesday

It was a little cooler today when I went out to exercise – I would have liked it to be even cooler. About 20 degrees cooler. I tried to work on vocabulary but I just could not get interested. I did think about my talk about the widow and her mites. The need to give our ‘all’ and not just part is probably one of the hardest parts of the gospel. That is to know what our ‘all’ really is. The Lord does not want us to ignore our family, nor our work, nor our communities. I do not think he even wants us to ignore our hobbies and recreation. He also gives a commandment to not do more than we are able and to not reach beyond the mark. So how does a mere mortal decide when he or she is giving their ‘all.’ I think this is where the Gift of the Holy Ghost comes in. The Lord does not leave us alone to make these decisions or perhaps it is better to say that we have a gift that allows us to double check on if we are giving our ‘all’ or if we are just tossing in one of our mites. So perhaps the scripture should be changed to “So ye that embark in the service of the Lord, see that you serve Him with all your heart, mites, mind and strength. So ye can stand blameless before God in the last days.”

We have a super-slow connection this morning. Posting yesterday’s journal to the blog is taking forever. Someday, someone will bring a truly fast internet connection to Jakarta and blow the competition away. I imagine the big multi-nationals, the banks and some of the government must have fast lines, but us peasants are not so lucky. The president told me yesterday that their service has been completely down for a couple of days.

We read from the Kitab Mormon for about an hour and only had to look up maybe a dozen words. Some of which we should have already known but seem to disappear from both of our minds as soon as we read the definition. We are in the part of Mosiah where King Noah is in charge and Abinidi has just come on the scene. It is easy to understand why Noah and his people were not really interested in Abinidi’s message. No one likes to hear that they are going to be destroyed – especially not when they are living the good life.

We had a very busy day at work. For the first time ever we had three people come in asking for some help. Mary and Sam was busy helping with Jobsdb and resumes. We were so busy that we had to eat lunch in shifts and use another room. Earlier I had worked on getting back one sister’s passport, but when she came in today she said they may give it back early in September without her paying. However I made a good contact with brother Ventura who is a member of the English branch and works for USAID. He is going to try to get me some information about micro-finance in Indonesia.

I also had Sam calling our PEF loans and seeing how they are doing. One brother really bothers me. He is in a branch presidency, knows he owes the money but is acting like he is not going to pay it back because he does not owe it to PEF but to CES. We will talk about it in our next PEF meeting. Hong Kong will be happy that we posted our contacts so their numbers will be up.

After office hours we headed out to Maria’s house to meet with her and the elders. She is the young woman who was married to a man who decided he did not want to be married any longer. He was quite well off and so she had a good life but now she is living in a space that is not much bigger than a one car garage with 3 other family members and her young son Matthew. When we arrived they immediately went out and bought us water – an expense they can not afford but we could turn down. We were there so the elders could teach and so we could get the information we need to create a resume and register her with Jobsdb. She is well educated so perhaps she will be able to find something in the banking world. It was very hot today and the only thing that saved us was a large fan that they let blow right on us. I can not imagine what it is like when those fans are off. She wants to be baptized but the elders think she needs to know more. What we do not need in the church is more single mothers without a job and no testimony.

When we were done there we drove the elders to the mission home so they can go with the district to Bandung tonight. We were invited but we have a ERS meeting and the cleaning lady coming. We really need the ERS meeting and besides we have already been to where they are going. We told them they were lucky we were not going because if we went it would be overcast and raining.

We got a great letter from McKay today and one from sister Sandberg who is serving with her husband who is a mission president in Russia. We love to get letters and e-mail. We also heard from the Peterson’s who arrived home last Friday. Their family basically remodeled their house – with their approval of course – while they were gone. They also had a full weekend of activities – the Peterson’s sound exhausted.