We are thinking of getting this as our second car for me to drive. We figure no one would notice if I have an accident. The Christensens, Lukito and us having lunch. A delivery going out from the bakery supply shop – eggs, water, and miscellaneous things. I am afraid we have been working Sam too much – he took a nap while waiting for us to finish looking at a gift shop.

14 September 2007 – Friday

I did not get moving quickly today but did get most of my exercise in. We had a short morning because we were to pick up the Christensens at 8:45 to go out to Tangerang. We read some from the Kitab Mormon – the Anti-Nephi-Lehis laying down before their enemies.

We had a nice talk with the Christensens as we drove to our meeting. We got there early so Sam started driving around and we passed a shop that advertised Baking Lessons. We had seen one of them before and I wondered what it was they taught. So we stopped and went in.

The bottom floor had everything you could possibly want for baking, including all the ingredients. It was really rather amazing because while it was not very impressive looking, it really did have everything including large cans of Del Monte cling peach halves in heavy syrup for only $2.00 – less than we would expect in the US. It is part of a chain of what I think is franchises. We will check into it more.

It turned out that the upstairs was a full kitchen for teaching everything from bread making to cake decorating. The prices for the classes seemed a little high but it would be a cheap way to use PEF funds – or perhaps Returned Missionary funds – to teach some of the single mothers a practical skill that they could use to start their own businesses.  The Christensens were impressed – I told them that we set it up to impress them.

Then we went to visit the State Vocational School. They teach a wide variety of practical skills that might lead to jobs. We visited the machinist, the welding, the automotive, and the construction sections. The man at the machinist area said that about 80% of the graduates found work. The costs are minimal – in fact it is free if the person can not afford it – and a student can take each section a number of times until they become proficient at the work and hopefully get a better job. In the welding section there was just one student and he was getting one on one instruction. Unfortunately there are no night classes. Now we just need to find a way to get this information to the members and hopefully some will find a way to use it to help their employment situation.

Lukito joined us for lunch. Unfortunately Agus had another appointment. We took them to the new mall that was near where we saw the school and we had a great Chinese lunch for 6 that cost a grand total of $20. After lunch we came home and spent about an hour talking about different things before putting the Christensens in a cab and sending them back to their hotel. They looked a little tired and I do not think they are yet up to feeling 100%.

In the Kitab Mormon and I was embarrassed to find out that we had not reached the half way mark yesterday – we did this evening. For some reason I thought the Kitab Mormon had 608 pages when it has 616. But now we are half way through and are still on line to finish in less than 4 months. After we had read, I went back and wrote down the words we had to look up and will try to learn them tomorrow while I am walking. I have stopped doing that and therefore I have stopped learning vocabulary.

13 September 2007 – Thursday

Wow the days of our mission are streaming by and I do not imagine they will slow down. A normal morning. The only thing that was different was that the sewer that runs through the grounds of the apartment had a more pungent smell than usual. I am spending more time in the gym so I walk/jog less.

We got lots of e-mails asking if we were OK. We are glad that we are on people’s minds. So far we have managed to avoid all the disasters that have struck Indonesia in the 9 months that we were here. Of course we were affected by the flooding in February but only because it closed a lot of streets that we usually would have traveled on.

We read from the Kitab Mormon – Aaron teaching Lamoni’s father and the wonderful geography lesson about where the Lamanites and Nephites lived.

The day was a rather ususal Thursday which included going to the office and getting things ready for English classes. Then we went to the mission office for lunch and so Mary could teach her first lesson of the day. But before that we got a SMS from Catherine that her family would not be at our evening lesson and that there was something going on that would probably mean that no one would be coming. So we thought about all we would do is go to the district meeting and then come back home.

We were going to have lunch from BYU but it turned out that since it was the start of Ramadahn – where Muslims fast during the day – they had a very limited menu and so I only got part of my usual order, nothing that Mary wanted was available. I shared part of mine with her, but that was not enough so I asked Sam to run to KFC for some food.

While at the office we had a good talk with elder Subandriyo about PPMK and got his thoughts on some ideas on how to get the information out. Later I talked to the president about ideas for the next couples conference and he gave me the go ahead to do some research.

Elder Whitmore has been called into learn about being an A.P. to replace elder Merrill when he goes home next week. It is both sad and joyful to see each great missionary leave after serving a worthy mission.

After Mary taught her class we took a quick trip to SoGo for a few things. Then we came back to the apartment where I called to the Christensens and found that while they had just made it to their hotel room, they had decided to rest up instead of going out to Tangerang with us. They have been battling some illness and it is probably better that they had this chance to recover from a 5 hour flight which means that they had been traveling for 8 or 9 hours or more.

Since I did not know when they would arrive, I had earlier SMS the missionaries and told them we would probably be late to DM. But the traffic was not bad and so we were only about 40 minutes late. We had a chance to participate, give them the fliers about the English classes, and the surveys for the Universities and Trade Schools.

No member came for English class but an investigator did. Since I knew nothing about his English ability I was rather stumped about what to teach but Mary suggested we study family relationships. So we spent the hour learning about everything from parents to grandchildren by asking about each person’s family. Elder Hadi Suyatmo has a tough time with figuring out his family in English but I think by the time we were done he had finally got it right. I hope we did not set the investigator back by the class.

The trip home was again quick – hopefully this traffic pattern will continue for the whole month. We read from the Kitab Mormon before going to bed. We made it to the half-way mark about a week before we had planned so we might get through in about 3 ½ months instead of 4. But with the Intensive English class coming up in October, nothing is sure.