Elder Christensen loved this because he raised sheep – a load of sheep tied in a pick-up. Driving through a city on the way to Bogor we saw this lady buying dates for breaking the fast and when she saw us she grinned and waved. The people are almost always friendly here. When we stopped to buy a chili shaped door knocker – picture to come – we saw these young ladies playing a board game and it turned out to be Monopoly. They were happy to pose for their picture. The young woman sleeping between her parents as they waited for the light to change is a classic. I guess if you grow up riding on a motorcycle, it becomes part of what you do and it gets boring.

18 September 2007 – Tuesday

I cut my exercise short today – at least the walking/jogging part. But I did put in all the time in the gym. I just did not feel like going around the track and the gym opened early. I am not eating much in the way of breakfast – yes I know some say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day – because I am not very hungry after exercising.

We read from the Kitab Mormon – they are preaching to the Zomamites about the gospel and how the poor were blessed because they were thrown out of their churches. They are now humbled to a point where they will listen. I wonder how often we must be humbled in some way – great or small – before we truly open our ears and mind to what the Lord has been trying to tell us. Until we are humble enough to realize that we need the Lord each day and not only occasionally when we are in trouble or have a problem. I am afraid that there have been and probably still are too many times in my life when I needed the Lord but relied instead on my own thoughts and my own power to solve the problem. Not that the Lord does not expect us to do things on our own – that is to be a profitable servant – but in all things we should seek the guidance of the spirit to help us. I think this is especially true as we serve in the kingdom.

We went to the office at our regular time and the patron that we could not help on Saturday came in and Sam got his resume on Jobsdb and he sent in a whole pile of applications for jobs. I do not think we are going to have a difficult time getting him to send 10 resumes a week. Of course this tied up one computer for almost the whole time we were in the office. So as Mary worked on English and putting together our reimbursement voucher, I sat in another room and read from the Kitab Mormon. I went back over what we read this morning and tried to learn the words that we had to look up, plus those that I was not sure about.

We then went to the mission office where Mary taught her class, while I passed out pineapples to the Walkers and the Davises while leaving one for the Marchants who were in Sumatra with elder Subandriyo checking up on the earthquake area to see what more we can do there. I had lunch from BYU – they still only have tempe and potatoes – it is good but not great. After that I read from the latest Church News. Elder Bateman is going to be the new temple president in Provo – it will interesting serving with him when we get back. There were a number of recently released 70s called to be mission presidents. The Lord certainly has prepared men and women to serve as temple and mission presidents at this time.

We were disappointed to find that the Tobings are not ready for us to hometeach tonight. We thought that this was a regular thing set up by the Petersons so they would know we were coming. I was careful to tell them that we would see them this week and bring the new couple who will home teach them. We will try again next week.

This with us with an unexpected afternoon off. I decided I would work on this journal – making the single days into months – but when we got home I took a nap that lasted way too long. So I will do my consolidating tomorrow instead. We read from the Kitab Mormon for over an hour. The reading is quite easy but there are still times that we miss the actual structure of a sentence or who is doing what. Sometimes it is because the translator has chosen to somewhat change the wording, but most of the time it is because we do not look closely enough or can not figure out the word sequence. As we finished I said to Mary that I hope we will reach a point where the spirit and feeling of the Indonesian comes through as well as what the words say or are trying to say to us.

I realized I had not posted the last few days of this journal so I got busy. It took forever because the internet is really, really slow tonight. Pictures took forever to get from the computer to WordPress and then to the blog. I finally gave up and will post the remainder tomorrow.

Before turning off the lights I read the PH lesson about strengthening the family. As I read I realized how much more I could have done to prepare our children for being better spouses and parents. I hope that each of them have done or will do a better job than I did. I am sure that I mentioned earlier about president Faust after receiving a new calling gathering his family around him and telling them that he can not be successful in his calling unless he was successful as a husband and father. There is a great lesson to be learned there. Hopefully my example of going on a senior mission will be a good one for our children and grandchildren.

I forgot to mention that we were excited to see that Cindy posted a lot of pictures and comments on her blog on Monday – her Sunday – and so we got to learn about their trip to the zoo and more. It is interesting that Olivia’s blog also had pictures from a trip to the zoo. I guess it is zoo time through out the US. Blogs are not as good as letters but they sure beat not hearing from our family at all. We wake each morning and immediately look at the mail in case someone has sent us an e-mail. We are grateful and excited when there is one from our children, grandchildren or friends.

 

17 September 2007 – Monday

Normal morning but shortened because we needed to be out of the apartment by 8:10 to start our day of adventure with the Christensens.

There is not really much to say about the day, but that it was a nice trip that was longer than I thought it would be. The drive from Bakasi to Bandung has some wonderful scenery. Unfortunately the day was overcast – the way it usually is when Mary and I go to the mountains – so a lot of the great scenery was not available to us. The drive from Bandung to Bogor would been much nicer on a clear day or if we would have stopped more. If I was doing it again we would start at 7 a.m. instead of 8:30 – I misjudged the time to Bandung. We stopped in Bandung only long enough to buy a dozen pineapples that we will share with all our friends in Jakarta – also the Christensens will try to get one home.

But the Christensens enjoyed it and they now have seen new parts of Indonesia and I think have a better idea of what the country is like. They have seen the humble villages, the people working to just exist. They have seen the smiles of the children and the beauty of the landscape. They will certainly go home with good memories of Indonesia.

We had a problem finding anywhere to eat – most places were closed because so much of the population is fasting for the month. We ended up at a Japanese fast food place that was not very good. It is a shame we could not have let them taste good Indonesian food for one meal.

It of course rained as we came down out of Bogor. But I managed to sleep through much of the trip back to our apartment. The Christensens and us then had Walls Classics and yellow watermelon – a good combination. We talked more about our families than about our callings. It was fun to share stories about our children. We found out that the Christensens adopted their children. After about an hour or so we wished them goodbye and a good trip back to Hong Kong.

I spent some time making my February journal pages into one file and saving it as a Word file. This way I can open it anywhere and also can print it easily. I think that before I go home I will print it out and have it bound. It will certainly be cheaper here than at home. I think I will have about 700 pages or so of journal by then. I will need to add some pictures but I am not sure if I will just add pages or will work them into the journal itself. We ended our day by reading from the Kitab Mormon – we are having a hard time reading for a full hour. One of us seems to always get tired.

Elder Christensen bearing his testimony with Hendra translating. The Sunday Night dinner bunch – minus office missionaries – Walkers, Piers, Marchants, Christensens, Davises, and brother Meeks.

16 September 2007 – Sunday

I had a great night’s sleep and did not miss exercising at all. We read for about a half hour from the Kitab Mormon before Sam picked us up. We then got the Christensens and headed for Jakarta Raya where Sam dropped us off and headed for his own branch.

We were among the first ones there – even the elders did not get there before us. Soon after we arrived, President and sister Marchant pulled up with the President driving. I think he will soon be driving on Sundays and when the traffic is not too heavy. Also the president did not wear a suit coat – he wore a long sleeve shirt and tie. So I guess the standard for senior missionaries has changed.

It was a good set of meetings, we are hearing more and more words but we still seldom can put a complete thought together. Lukito interpreted for us and elder Erickson helped the Christensens. The highlight of the sacrament meeting was when President Marchant asked elder Christensen to bear his testimony. It certainly surprised him but he recovered nicely.

The four of us caught a taxi back to our apartment and then the Christensens continued on to their hotel so we could all get a rest before heading over the mission home for dinner. We read from the Kitab Mormon and rested.

Dinner at the mission home is rather like a family get-together. The president and sister Marchant like to cook and when we got there, we helped out where needed. The Walkers, the Davises, the Marchants, all the office elders and elder Whitmore, and a member who the president heard about that was stranded in Jakarta after all his papers were stolen, plus us were there for dinner – 14 I think. We had a great dinner with lots of good conversation. Elder and sister Walker talked about their experience helping the people in Sumatra who were affected by the earthquakes.

They told of how they were led by the spirit to areas that needed help. How people seem to just show up or were found who had the information or help they needed to have a successful program. They ended up giving out 500 plus food packages that should feed a family for at least 2 weeks. They had the experience of eating off the street, seeing areas and conditions that most of us will never see, and above all feeling that the Lord was guiding them in their work. They also worked from morning well into the night and did not falter. They are a lot tougher than they look. You could feel their spirit as they told us about the things they had seen and how it had touched them.

Sam had used the car while we were at dinner to take the Selatan branch president to the hospital to visit the member that Sam and Ari had taken there last night. Later we found out that she had died before they got there. He then came back to the mission home and waited for us.

After we got home, we read from the Kitab Mormon and then immediately crashed for the night. I do not know why I have been so tired the last couple of nights but I certainly have been.

 

We decided to let Sister Christensen travel in style on the LDS Charities Scooter. It comes in handy when we are delivering commodities in very tight quarters. Of course it takes a long time to move 500 hygiene kits but no longer than it would take in a truck.

15 September 2007 – Saturday

Regular morning with exercise and reading the Kitab Mormon. There was an e-mail from Fae Call saying that she and John Dahl were getting sealed in the San Diego temple. These are old friend of our from Lennox Ward and it was a real surprise to read about their getting married. We are very happy for them. Now they can go on missions together.

We picked up the Christensens and took them to the office where we spent most of the next 4 hours being trained and sharing experiences. They had a number of good ideas that we can probably incorporate into our work. They are a delightful and humble couple. Elder Christensen and I are both working on the same Christ-like attribute – that is patience.

Just at about the time we were closing up, a patron came in and we started to help him. Thank goodness for Sam who did most of the work. Unfortunately after getting his resume all done, it crashed. This is the second time this has happened and it is maddening. I told everyone that next time we will take down the information so if it crashes again we can just type it back in so the person does not feel like we are wasting his time.

After he was through, Sam took Mary home and the Christensens to their hotel. I stayed for a meeting of the District Welfare Council. It was a great meeting and besides being able to share some things and ask for their help in employment, I learned a ton. First of all I gained a greater appreciation of these humble men and what they are faced with everyday. Some of the decisions they have to make never came up in my 8 years of being a bishop. My heart went out to them as they talked about problems such as taking care of the aged, the sick, the dead, the crippled, the mentally handicapped, the poor, those who can not afford to send their children to school, and on and on. None of them were complaining they were just asking President Marchant and the other leaders for guidance.

As I heard how they handled these problems on a day to day basis, my heart was touched. And I was thankful that the Lord had chosen such dedicated and humble servants to be branch presidents here in Indonesia.

President Marchant basically told them that they were empowered to make the choice the spirit led them to make. That it was for this reason that the Lord had called them and ordained them to their calling. That although he might counsel with them, he would never overturn one of their decisions as long as they followed the proper Priesthood line to get permission for major expenditures. Elder Subandriyo gave the same counsel and President Mak was in agreement.

I believe that the branch presidents were glad to hear that they could use their wisdom and the prompting of the spirit to fulfil their calls. As I said I feel that I learned a lot more tonight than I shared. The power of the gospel and the priesthood certainly were in evidence tonight.

I got home about 8 and Mary said that she was certainly glad I did not have her wait for me. We read from the Kitab Mormon and I was in bed before 8:30 – I do not doubt that I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.