08 October 2007 – Monday

I got up and went to the gym – it is really an enjoyable experience and if I ever figure out how to keep my mind occupied I would spend more time exercising. Regular morning with Kitab Mormon and such.

When we got into the car, Sam said some of the young ladies had already arrived and were now on their way to Bogor to visit some friends. We dropped Mary off at the office and then went to do a number of chores. First to the mission home to take some packages that sister Mongan asked us to bring to friends in Jakarta, pick up a few things, and ask elder and sister Walker to teach some of our classes. Next we went to Sogo to get some orange juice – my breakfast – but found that they did not have any. Also we tried to buy a new ink cartridge for our broken printer but again without success. After that failure, we went to Carrefore where we got the print cartridge and all the other things we needed for the students.

It was then back to the mission office to drop off the cartridge so Hendra could find out for sure the printer was broken – it was and he will get it fixed. We had lunch from BYU and I had a great talk with Soewigno about his businesses. He is very successful at what he does and has built two houses with the profit. He uses one to live in and for his store. The other one is a warehouse and a restaurant. I learned all about making meat balls and the rest of the business. I also talked to elder Subandriyo about the IEC and invited him to come and speak to the students tomorrow. We decided to raise the daily food budget to R20000. The Walkers agreed to teach two afternoons a week.

When we finally got back to the office, I called Joel and he said president Smith was getting people to help with the class and the evenings. I called the president and he gave me the names of five families who were willing to help. This means we should have each evening covered and most of the afternoons.

We then came back to the apartment to rest up before starting the class at 6 p.m. We read from the Kitab Mormon before taking our naps.

Everyone was waiting for us when we got back to the chapel, so we got started early. The students seem to all have fair to good English. Daisy even used the word siblings when introducing herself. That is a word that is not well known in Indonesia. We gave out the supplies, went through what was expected, gave them a pep talk about studying, speaking only English, etc. I tried to get across the importance of doing their best in this class and then continuing to study after it finishes.

We had Sam go get KFC and after eating that we called it a day and sent them home to rest. We came home and read from the Kitab Mormon before going to bed. It is a humbling experience to have the responsibility to teach these young members. I feel developing this program was one of the important reasons we were sent here to Indonesia and Jakarta. Hopefully the Lord’s trust in us will not be shown to have been misplaced. We certainly need all of His help to succeed.