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.