22 October 2007 – Monday

Before I get started some random worldly thoughts. There were well over 500 deaths of motorists over the week long holiday. Over 75% of them were on motorcycles. If this was to happen in the U.S. motorcycles would be banned from the roads. Of course here there are more motorcycles than cars and they weave in and out of the traffic. Add the problem of the riders falling asleep or being very tired due to the length of trips – many were traveling for 12 – 20 hours on their motorcycles – and whole families traveling on one motorcycle – and it is amazing that more were not killed.

I was sorry to read that Cal lost again. How quickly they have fallen from 2nd to off the board. Upsets have become almost a given in college football. It seems on any given day one team can surprise another. At least USC got up for the Notre Dame game and basically destroyed themwith a back-up quarterback.

We got a letter this morning from Rachel that mentioned that snow has fallen in the valley and stuck on the ground. Hopefully this means a great snow year so there will be lots of water when we get released. We also got a great letter from McKay and she is doing well. It is good to get news from home. Of course the blogs are great – lots of pictures.

I woke at 4 and could not go back to sleep so at 4:30 I was reading from the Indonesian PMG. It is not the best way to learn what is there, but it is a good way to learn more Indonesian. When it was time, I went to the gym and had a good workout – I am up to about 150 sit-ups. Which is good since about a month ago when I started again, I killed myself doing 30.

After that is was a normal morning including reading in the Kitab Mormon. The only problem was that I was really tired before we had even left for the church. The day went well. While Mary taught the morning class, I made lots of copies of vocabulary, organized the afternoon lesson, and answered what seemed like an unending amount of e-mail. The best one I got at the office was one from the man who we have been trying to home teach for the last two months. He agreed to a time in November and also said that he would interview Daisy for a job. So now we must get her a resume and teach her how to do a good interview. I will ask Lukito to give her a short Career Workshop.

After lunch – we had nasi goreng off the street – we split the class. I worked my section very hard. I am working on getting them to write and speak correct sentences. I am also working a lot on vocabulary. Hopefully I can get them to a point where they will be able to get a good score on the Michigan test.

When the afternoon class was over we all piled into our car and they brought us home before going on to the Walkers for FHE. We read from the Kitab Mormon and then I studied some from PMG. Later we read again from the Kitab Mormon – we completed the Book of Mormon and are into Ether. We are about 50 pages from the end and only had to look up maybe 10 words all day. The Lord I am sure is blessing us for our diligence. I am beginning to better understand the scripture about ‘prove me herewith.’ But in regard to the gift of tongues instead of tithing.