The Theme posters for T1 and T2 Primary program

30 September 2007 – Sunday

What a difference a week makes. It does not seem possible that it was only a week ago that I had the worst day I have had in Indonesia. Today has been a complete turn around. We went to the Tangerang branches so there was not time for the Kitab Mormon reading.

We had the opportunity to see two versions of the Primary Sacrament Meeting presentation today. Mary got to be in the first one – T1. Almost as soon as we arrived she was asked to play a song that they did not have any recording to use. She also got to play prelude and the opening and sacrament hymn. Their program was great with all the children participating and the teachers and leaders joining in for the songs. They have a good sized primary with a fair balance between boys and girls. The theme of the year is “I will follow Him in faith.”  We found that elder Cowan is leaving for Bekasi on Monday. We will see him at Zone Meetings and perhaps he will show up here again. He is going to be a very good missionary because he is committed to serving the best he can.

T2 branch had the children do everything without any help from the teachers. All the songs were sung with only children voices and it worked. Most of the time two children would come up and read the thought or scripture together and then sing. The only problem came when it was  the Sunbeams turn. Four lovely little girls whose chins did not always clear the rail of the stand, looked out with big eyes and closed mouths during their song, so we got a piano solo and it was great. I think every adult in the room was smiling at those big eyes and beautiful faces.

After the T1 meeting a man came up and said that he had talked to me yesterday about employment opportunities. I had a senior moment until he gave me enough clues so I realized that he was the man with the company that produces flexible pipe and is looking for some people to do promotion selling. Lukito had given me his card on Thursday and I had Sam post the job on the board at the Selatan branch.

We went to T2’s other meetings. The elders had 2 investigators at their GP class. Elder Wiryanto did not call on me to read and Elder Peate translated for us. The combined meeting was different. First the Primary discussed what the different ages were being taught and then President Gjarot spoke about family finances and staying out of debt.

I had two mission related experiences with T2. Before the meeting I spoke for a short time with president Gjarot about what was the best specialties ITC students should take while in school at BYUH. He pointed out that there are thousands of graduates with a general programming, web page background. He suggested they specialize in oil, CAD-CAM, or medical software. That there was a great need for all of those. He came up with Palm Oil production as a growing field.

After the block I happened to go out the back of the room – the exit furthest from the stairs down to the foyer – and struck up a conversation with a man I thought I knew. It turned out I was wrong as usual – I did not know him – but it turned out he is an important person in a business that always had need of good employees. So I took his card and now have another good contact for sources of jobs. The Lord blessed me and hopefully some of the saints today. PMG tells us to open our mouths – I guess I should ask more people what they do.

We spent the afternoon reading – 10 pages of Kitab Mormon, studying Indonesian and resting. I kept going back and reading from the Liahona. The words used there are much more up to date than those in the Kitab Mormon and more conversational. So there are many words which I do not know – often 4 or 5 in a paragraph. But I have the English version and my dictionary to help so it is a good mental exercise.