Here is the whole gang on after the last class we taught on Tuesday November 6th. I told them I wanted one with them being serious and one for fun. I am afraid Wawang did not understand the difference. From left to right – Rudi, Puji, Ronald, Daisy, Femmy and Wawang.
We all made it – or that is what the certificates say. President Marchant with Femmy and Ronald after presenting them with their certificates.
Daisy and my favorite missionary companion handling the music for the graduation.
07 November 2007 – Wednesday
It is the last day of classes for this IEC. We are torn between feeling sad that we will not be teaching these fine young people any longer and the relief of not needing to prepare and give the lesson each day. I do not think we taught them the idiom ‘Bitter Sweet.’
The only activities of the day are opening exercises with their last reports – well for some their next-to-last report or talk since some will speak tonight at graduation – and the taking of the Michigan Test. Mary handled most of the opening exercises and I took over for the test. Which meant I got to sit for 75 minutes reading the Ensign and the Kitab Mormon. After the test we bid them goodbye until tonight. Sam then took us to Carrefore for a few things we needed for refreshments and then we came home.
We expected that our cleaning lady would show up at 1:00 but she did not. We are thinking she will be here at 4:00 which means she will only have an hour before we must leave for the church. We need to write down the date and time when she is to next come. She never did come. So we spent the afternoon reading from the Kitab Mormon, PMG, cleaning the apartment and taking naps.
The graduation went well and we had the Marchants, the walkers and their drivers as guests. It is too bad some of the English branch does not come, but they give us lots of help during the month so that is good. We had the students write thank you notes to all those who helped in any way. President Marchant gave a nice talk about how with hard work he overcame some early learning problems to be successful in school and life. He said they could do the same with English. Daisy had earlier talked about how it was up to them to continue to improve their English. The President handed out the certificates of completion and we took pictures of him with each student. We then had our refreshments and – after more pictures – we had everyone out the door by 7:30.
By the time we got home we were both exhausted. I think as much mentally and spiritually as physically. We kind of numbly watched something on TV – I think it was Law and Order – and then went to bed. I read some from PMG before turning off the light.
It was a good day with lots of blessings and tender mercies. Hopefully some of the students did well enough in the Michigan Test that they will continue to work towards going to BYUH. Rudi mentioned that his boss wanted him to thank us for teaching him English. During the afternoon Daisy was called to be a part-time Family History Missionary where ever she ends up living. I am most worried about Wawang who is staying in Jakarta on the hopes that we will be able to help him find a job. I am not sure that is a good idea, but we will help him as much as we can. Puji knows just what she wants to do. Rudi will probably go back to working in construction and hopefully get more education. Femmy will become a famous hairstylist. Ronald will be a solid member of the church and hopefully find a young lady to marry. I certainly hope he gets this job in Bandung. It has been a good, if tiring, month for us. We have been blessed with good health, inspiration, and happiness. I think we also learned more about what is needed in this program so the next one will be even better.
I love this motorcycle shot. I call it ‘Indonesian Limo’ because of the partition between the driver and the passenger. The hole is so the passenger can tell the driver where to go, etc. The next picture is me with Edward Jung, a branch president in Korea. Over the next 7 months, I should get to know him better. We really do keep Sam busy. Here he is collapsed on the couch in the foyer when he should be in class.
06 November 2007 – Tuesday
I slept in until 5 which felt good. Normal morning from there on including reading from MIN. I hit a section with a lot of new words and thoughts. I had a good exercise session at the gym. We read some from the Kitab Mormon – the build the boat and get ready to sail.
When we get to the office we get the second printer working. As we are waiting for class time, we start talking about their test scores and we realize that the main problem is vocabulary. We did a lot more on vocabulary this time but we just do not have time to give them more than 300 or so new words. But I realized that we can spend more time working on recognizing vocabulary by context. So next class we will start them from day one with exercises working on that area. Hopefully that will help. Each class we hold we learn a little more and hopefully the next class will be better. As they say, live and learn.
I started the class while Mary worked on some material for her class for the office staff. After opening exercises and going through the words of the song, I gave them a little pep talk based on a thought that came to me this morning. I likened our class to an aircraft carrier and each of them as a plane. We can catapult them so they can get up to flying speed, but once they leave us in a couple of days it is like the airplane that drops off the end of the carrier. If they keep up the speed they can sour as high as they want into the air of English. But if they decide to cut the power – that is stop using their English and building it up – they will plunge into the sea. So their success or failure is up to them, because we have done all we can to get them going.
We kept them together for a couple of hours and then broke into two parts. Our group went through vocabulary and some vocabulary in context exercises and then called it a morning. Then everyone piled into our car and we went to the mission home. Mary to teach an English class, me to keep busy while she taught, and the students to go to the Walkers for their afternoon lesson.
While we were eating lunch, Mary remembered that the lesson was at three and not one – we went though this last week but we both forgot again. So we decided to go to SoGo. That worked well and we got back in plenty of time.
While Mary taught her lesson, I talked to president Marchant and he invited us to have dinner with them and the Wassons a Family History couple from Bankok. Because of the traffic, the Wassons were an hour late getting back to the mission home so we got to sit around and just talk to the Marchants. After the Wassons got there – they are staying in the mission home – we had a lovely dinner with lots of conversation. When it was over, we excused ourselves and caught a taxi back to the apartment. We kind of broke a rule and took a non-BlueBird cab home. We got a little worried when he took a way we did not know but Mary soon figured out we were going the right way. It turned out his way seemed faster than the way Sam usually takes so I gave him a nice tip.
Our students were busy all this time with the Walkers. They had a short lesson and then watched two of the ‘The Work and the Glory’ books. I have decided I am going to read those when we get back. Maybe they are on CD and we can listen while we drive all over the country seeing our children and grandchildren. Anyway I gave Sam enough money to take them all to the Steak House for dinner – a whole $20 investment. They also had some shopping they wanted to do so it worked out well.
By the time we got home it was late and we were tired so we did not read from the Kitab Mormon. I did do some studying from PMG before turning off the lights.