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.