Daily Archives: September 10, 2007

10 September 2007

10 September 2007 – Monday

I slept in today so there was no exercising. We read from the Kitab Mormon and had our normal morning. I called elder Kane and we talked about the committee for coming up with a business plan for employing older men and widows. We only have about 8 months to get this up and running and we are still at square one.

We went to the office for a couple of hours. Mary worked on material for her English classes and I handled the e-mail and then copied some things for English class. We then headed for the mission home so we could have lunch and Mary could teach her class. Besides having a great BYU lunch, I got to talk to president Marchant and Elder Subandriyo about a number of things about the mission and our callings. As we talked I told the president that I was glad he was the one who had to make some tough decisions and not myself.

We learned that sister Artin’s young daughter had fallen down a flight of stairs and was in the hospital. Hopefully she will be OK. One of the problems here is that stairs are all made of concrete and tile so if you fall there is no give or padding.

The Walkers and Davises were not around. They had gone up to Bogor where the Walkers got off to stay a couple of days with the Kanes and then John was driving the Davises over to Bandung through the ‘Puncak’ or the tops of the mountains. We have not made that trip but maybe we will sometime soon. President Marchant loves the trip and takes every advantage of showing it off. He says the besides the great view, it is also cool. It takes about 3 – 3 ½ hours so that means if the Davises come home tonight they will have spent between 6 and 7 hours in the car.

After Mary’s lesson – she had four or five staff members today – we went to SoGo to pick up a few things. We ran into Judi Guttormsen who was doing some shopping. She and her husband just got back from 10 days in VietNam and had a great time. We only bought three things at BreadTalk.

In the evening we had an appointment to meet with the Lurah – one of the leaders – of a local sub-district. He and his office basically run a section of Jakarta. We went to his home which is obviously also his office and meeting area and spent about an hour with him and some of his staff. We mainly talked about the PPMK program and how it works. We found out how to apply for a loan, the limits, and how it is repaid. He assured us that it was available in every sub-district. I will not try to get some of the leaders in other sub-districts to see how it works in their area.

One of the men who was there was a Christian and he had some good questions. Including why were we interested in the PPMK program. This gave me an opportunity to tell him why we were in Indonesia and what we were attempting to do. I suggested that we would be happy to put on Career Workshops and Self-employment workshop for people in his sub-district. I had meant to take copies of the workbooks with us but I forgot and so Sam will take them back tomorrow. I also mentioned that perhaps we could help with some wheelchairs when they come in.

I am hoping that this contact will not help us to understand the PPMK program but also help us to become better recognized in the community. One of the most important thing we learned was that this program is available in every sub-district in Jakarta. So whoever Agus talked to was mistaken when they said it was not available in their area. Now we just have to find out who we must talk to in a sub-district to get an application started.

I am learning so much from this mission. I am slowly learning patience, I am learning to be more obedient, and I am learning the need to be closer to my Father in Heaven and my Savior. I am learning to appreciate more and more my wonderful wife and her great strength. I would like to think that I am learning to be more humble. One thing I have not been able to learn is to be more organized – there are some things that even a mission can not accomplish. Maybe by the time we have served two or three missions I will have learned even that.



09 September 2007

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Elder Decker and the Walkers watching the movie on the night before elder Decker left for home.

09 September 2007 – Sunday

A normal morning with reading from Kitab Momon, writing and posting journal, and studying Indonesian. The time seems to whip by – three hours just disappear.

Sam took us to Jakarta Raya and we got there early enough to meet and greet most of the people before the meeting started. I talked to Hendra and he said that there was about 240 members in the branch of which about 80 were active. As we talked I felt that we should be out meeting those who do not come. Also before the meeting I talked to Eduardo Kencana and found that he had not been able to contact the school about the job opening. So I gave him the owner’s name and told Eduardo to call. I also gave him another job possibility that I had found in the paper. President Kencana and I talked for a while about the need for a better information flow between the branches and our office if we were going to be able to help them at all.

Sacrament was on honesty – I did not realize that until Mary told me and then I could understand some of what was said. I had asked elder Erickson to translate for us but I guess he forgot or felt he should stay with their investigators. So I tried to pay close attention to the speakers or to what they were saying. To really do this I need to close my eyes and I am afraid that the speakers will think I am sleeping so I rather caught between a rock and a hard place.

The Gospel Principle class was packed with investigators and their friends. Elder Erickson pointed out a man who he said was inactive but was a great source of good referrals. He brought a friend – an older man – to church. Besides him Rudy and his sister came as well as a half dozen younger women – some who were members and some who were not. But there are no families investigating which is just the problem that the president wants to address. The church here needs strong families with lots of children and YM and YW if it is going to grow.

Priesthood meeting was on Chastity and the class was spent on discussing how to teach the children about it. I tried to bring in the thought that it was not just the children who needed to be reminded about this subject. I also mentioned that with the increasing number of computers and cellphones that can downloard pornography, that there was a need for parents to be made aware of the problems this could bring.

After the meeting I introduced myself to a brother I did not know. It turned out that he had just came back into activity after many years away from the church. He is married with a couple of children. We took some time to talk to other members before we went out to the curb and caught a cab. As we were driving I tried to start a conversation with the driver but my (make that our) Indonesian was not adequate for the task. However I did find out he was married and had two sons and a daughter. I told him we had five children – including 4 sons. I could not figure out how to ask him the age of his children – at least not so he could understand me.

He was really lucky in picking us up. Not only was it a good fare, but I gave him a nice tip. Also when we got to the apartment there were no cabs waiting and so he immediately got another fare. It is not often that a cab has no down time between fares. Hopefully this means he has a good day.

We ate some lunch and then took naps before reading some more from the Kitab Mormon. We are now about to head out to the mission home and dinner with the president and the other couples.

We had a great time at the mission home. President and sister Marchant, the Walkers, the Davises and the office elders all ate together. Table conversation during dinner was about the mission in general. I learned a lot from President Marchant in those few minutes. His love, understanding and compassion for the Indonesian saints truly came through as he spoke about home teaching and visiting teaching. He said he would not make the leaders and members feel bad about not doing it. He pointed out that because of the long commutes, most of them spend almost all their time away from their families. How can we ask them to spend hours of their time and for many of them their limited budgets to do home teaching? He said that the couples could count their visits as home and visiting teaching. As he spoke the spirit told me that he was correct and that my thoughts about how we should get reports from the district specialists, etc. should be toned down and that we should praise them for what they do and not what they do not do. The president said that since it was Elder Decker’s last night here, that we could each have an opportunity to say something about him. My comment was that still waters run deep and that is how I thought of elder Decker. That he had depth and therefore had power.

After dinner we sat around the table and discussed the questions that were asked by the branch presidents’ council about welfare. The president was happy that I had studied the handbook and as we went through the questions, most of them can be answered by the comment and instructions from the handbook that says that the bishops (branch presidents) will seek out the poor and do what they need to do to help them. The president said he would never criticize a branch president for his choice, but he might counsel him about doing the same thing again in the future. The meeting on Saturday night should be interesting.

I spoke very briefly with the president about the University survey and he asked me to try it in the districts around Jakarta before sending it out to the rest of the mission. I will have surveys for all the missionaries on Thursday and Friday.

Elder Decker wanted to see a film about a trip across America on bicycles that the Marchant’s son-in-law took part in. Three friends decided to go across the U.S. and have ‘heros’ – that is common folks – sign a basketball which they would then take to the Basketball Hall of Fame and see if they would display it. It was quite an interesting film and the Hall of Fame did accept it for display. The film won a ‘people’s choice’ award at a Canadian film festival. After the movie we gave elder Decker a last hug, wished everyone goodbye and caught a cab for home.

It has been a good Sabbath.