Mary teaching our class. All of the class – back row – Rudi, Wawan, Ronald – front – Puji, Daisy, Femmy. The motorcycle load is a milkman delivering fresh milk. The orange box is just because we do not see a lot orange delivery boxes.

15 October 2007 – Monday

I was up and exercising by 5:40 this morning. It felt good to walk, jog, do sit-ups, etc. This is the first time since last Thursday. Normal morning except I did some laundry. We continued reading about Christ’s visit to the Nephites – the part about “other sheep.” We enjoyed reading about the Creers week in Ireland. They seem to be living in their van about as much or more than we do. They also talked about the terrible traffic in Dublin. We then had a brief Skype call with Tom’s family. William is really starting to speak. Kelli is growing up quickly. It is good just to hear their voice. We miss them but we know we are doing what we should be doing.

A normal day of classes. I enjoy teaching the youth. One of the young ladies came to me and said that she just could not keep up with the others. I told her not to judge herself against the other. Just do the best she can do and that is all the Lord expects. I talked to Mary about maybe giving her easier work or working on a one to one basis with her for part of the class.

The class really likes my sentence relay game. They usually come in very close together and so it is a lot of fun. It gives them a chance to work alone and also together. At the end of the afternoon class, we come home and they head off to have FHE with president and sister Marchant.

We have macaroni and cheese with Spam for dinner. It has always been one of our favorites and is easy to fix. We read for a couple of hours from the Kitab Mormon. It is a wonderful thing to do together. We not only can share the scriptures but also we are learning the language together.

Before going to bed, I start going through my notes from conference and picking out the one or two things from each talk that I think are most important for me. The things I need to learn and work on more. The purpose of the conference is to hear living prophets give us guidance and to share their wisdom as lead by the Holy Ghost. As I read the notes I was reminded of a number of attributes I need to work on. As I thought about them, I realized that even though I am approaching 70, that I can change habits and values so that each day will be more joyous and valuable for me. You are never too old – or too young – to grow closer to Christ. When you put everything into an Eternal prospective, I am still very, very young. Of course I am not sure that age has any real meaning when discussing Eternity.

14 October 2007 – Sunday

This was a great Sunday. We studied the Kitab Mormon in the morning and then went to the chapel to watch conference. Once again the main part of the audience for the English version were missionaries and our class, but there were a couple of the English branch families there.

Each talk had something for me. I must admit that I could not get into one of the talks and even wrote down that it was boring, but then I remembered another speaker warning us about just this thing and so I quickly repented and soon I heard the one point in his talk that I needed to hear. It reminded me of my battle with pride – the learning of men – and the need to be humble so that I can take advantage of the tender mercies the Lord extends to me.

I will not write about conference at this time because there was too much to absorb. I am going to write up my notes and ponder them. Also we will watch and listen to the talks over the next few weeks. I think we will use some of the talks in our class.

After the conference we came home and read from the Kitab Mormon – we are about 100 pages from the end – and then took naps. It is great to have time to take a nap – something we do not get to do enough when teaching the English class. After that we watched the Priesthood Meeting together. Elder Hallstrom – the one of the Bicardi Rum Cake fame – is the area president and will be at our Zone Conference in a couple of weeks. Again lots of notes to be re-read and typed up. We finished up the day reading once more from the Kitab Mormon – we find reading what is basically the Sermon on the Mount – difficult. We should be able to translate it with ease but it does not work that way for us. Before turning off the light I again read from Elder Holland’s talk about this being the greatest Dispensation from the Liahona.

13 October 2007 – Saturday

It seems that I do not have much desire to write in this journal during an IEC. I am not sure if it is because the class takes so much energy or because there is not much new going on during that time. What ever it is, I do not make time to sit down and write.

This morning I got up and decided I really needed to exercise. But as I started to prepare to go to the gym I realized that due to the holiday, the gym would not be open. For some reason I did not even think of just going down and walk/jog for a half hour. I guess I did not really want to exercise. However I did not go back to bed. I got out the Liahona and started reading an article by Elder Holland. I was rather surprised about how much of it I could read without looking up words. So maybe all the reading and work is starting to pay off. I am still determined that before we leave, I will learn Indonesian to a point where I can read just about anything. Anyway that is what I keep asking the Lord to help me with.

We went to the church and Mary taught the class for an hour before it was time for conference to start. We all went into the English version – they also have Korean and of course Indonesian. The only people there was our class and missionaries – including president and sister Marchant.

After the morning session, we came home and spent the day watching the DVDs of conference and reading from the Kitab Mormon. I took lots of notes from the conference and will put them in some kind of order and put them in this journal.

10 October 2007 – Wednesday

The class went well today but we did have to make a quick adjustment. Just as we were finishing the afternoon class and the young people were about to leave for Joel’s place, he called and said he could not make it – he was in a meeting that was never going to end. Later he called again to apologize and we talked some about the class. He feels they are a sharper class than the first one. I guess we are too close to them to really see this.

I am worried about one of the young ladies – actually two of them but for different reasons. One does not seem to be able to keep up with the work. She is really struggling with the vocabulary. I worry about the other one because I am afraid she is struggling with being away from her family in strange living conditions. Hopefully the other young women will grow closer to her. The young men seem to be all doing well. They are all returned missionaries and have pretty good English. Everyone needs to be better about not using Indonesian when they are not in class. I am just going to keep working on this, I really feel it is one of the most important parts of the class experience. If they can master the reflex of dropping back into the comfort of their own language, they will be able to move ahead much quicker.

Mary and I read from the Kitab Mormon both in the morning and evening. This continues to be one of my favorite things to do each day. I still have too much trouble with words I should know, but I can read about 95%.