This is a mobile gas station. I do not see many on bikes, but there are lots of them with carts. He is either taking this load to his own station or is taking it around to sell to others for resale. See the ‘Things go better with Coke” picture to see a typical small gas station.
16 October 2007 – Tuesday
I woke at about 5 and read from the Kitab Mormon before heading down to exercise. It was a very pleasant morning to be on the track. It was drizzling for about the first 3 or 4 minutes and then a nice breeze came up. The combination kept the temperatures down. This is only the second time this has happened since I started using the track. After a normal morning we read a couple of pages from the Kitab Mormon. Christ institutes the sacrament and talks about its importance. We only look up a couple of words today.
At the chapel Mary teaches the first half of the class while I work on getting ahead on the vocabulary. Then we switch places and she comes into the office to catch up on some paper work. The students are working very hard and I think by this time next week they will have a lot of confidence. They are still not working together well so there is not a lot of synergy but I am trying to get that going. As I was writing this I realized I have not felt the spirit very often when I am teaching. I think I need to work more on that. Brigham Young said that nothing should be taught without the spirit.
We spend our lunch hour working on more English stuff. It is amazing how much time we put in on preparation, grading, etc. I can not imagine what it is like being a professional teacher and having to do this day after day for years. I have even more respect for teacher than I had before. Especially those who must teach all day, every day in public schools.
The Walkers taught the afternoon class so we were able to leave and go to Sogo. We did not need a lot so we were not there very long. I need to put in a point about the traffic this week. It seems that the week after Ramadahn is vacation week in Indonesia. All the offices shut down – even the LDS office staff has it off. What this means is that the traffic in Jakarta is amazingly light. Normally if we leave from the office and go to Sogo it will take us about 2 hours. Today it took one!
After we got back to the apartment we read from the Kitab Mormon for an hour. We are now reading about 4 pages an hour because we do not need to look up many words. I am not sure how much of the spirit of the writing we are getting. I guess it is like any time we read from the scriptures. That is if we are open to the spirit we receive the spirit of the writing and if not they tend to be just words. Not too long ago we were reading where Christ tells the Nephites to search the scriptures that were laid out before their eyes. Not to read them but to search them. In the New Testament he reminded the Jews that ‘they are they that testify of Me.’
Which reminds me that as I read through my notes about the latest conference talks, again and again the speakers point out that whatever subject they are talking about is based on the atonement of Christ. Also both Elder Packer and Elder Cook pointed out that the only real qualification that was necessary to be a general authority is an unwavering personal testimony. I thought it was interesting that Elder Packer learned it from the first presidency and Elder Cook learned it from Elder Packer.
We finish our companionship study by reading another hour in the Kitab Mormon.