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.