Anak-krakatau erupting – the picture that is everywhere

Digitally saturated

Special effects … I have found playing with some pictures is a lot of fun.

09 November 2007 – Friday

I managed to sleep in until after 5:00 which was great. Yesterday I was up for 18 plus hours without a nap – I tried to take one but the phone rang. Today is a true day off – or at least that is how it planned. I went to the gym for almost an hour. If the adage that ‘no pain, no gain’ is true – I must be gaining. The truth is that I enjoy the workout – except for the sweating which I could definitely do without.

I should mention that I have started once more to keep a study journal – I am not sure how long I will keep it up but I find that unless I write down my thoughts soon after I get them, that they just disappear. Of course PMG points this out very early on, so I am trying to be obedient. It is a way to focus my thoughts on what I am reading and hopefully this will wedge it into my mind so I can use it in the future.

Although the Intensive English Class has ended both Mary and I are still working on finding new things to use in the class. I do not remember this happening at the end of the last class. We were just glad to get it over with. Some of what Mary is doing is for her twice a week classes at the mission office – she is really trying to tailor that class to the needs of the students. Elder Subandriyo wants the to be able to handle business correspondence and phone calls.

We read from the Kitab Mormon – we are in the first part of 2nd Nephi where Lehi is worrying about his wayward sons and has just started to bless Jacob. We found ourselves struggling through only 3 pages in an hour – for some reason this section is difficult for us to translate properly. It is almost like the writer has changed styles – in this case it has moved from Nephi speaking to Lehi’s words. There is no doubt that there are different ‘voices’ in the Book of Mormon. Reading it in another language really brings this home.

We really are having a lazy day – naps, lunch, some studying, and some writing causes the day to float by. It almost feels decadent. We read another hour in the Kitab Mormon and then I spend time writing more ‘vocabulary in context’ reviews. Each review takes over an hour and then they have to be reviewed. I am using excerpts from newspapers and the Church new site so that it is modern and often used words that they will hopefully learn.

I talked to Daisy about her interview and it seems she may have a job in brother Tobings pre-school. I did not know he had one but he seems to have a wide range of businesses. Daisy was proud to tell me that she did the whole 90 minute interview in English! Yeah for Daisy. If I heard correctly, she is going to have a 3 day trial and then they can decide if she wants the job and if so what job she will have. I hope it is in administration because that is what she is best at.

We read a final hour in the Kitab Mormon – we are making up for some of the time we lost during the last week. Lehi finished his blessings and ‘grew old’ and died. We are now to the point where the Nephites will leave the original settlement and start out on their own.

I finish four pages – eight exercises – of vocabulary in context. As I was finishing the last of them, I realized that they may be too difficult for some of the students and so I am going to write some that are easier and contain better clues as to the meaning of the words.

It was a good day. There was lots of time to rest, but there was also lots of time to read from the Kitab Mormon, PMG and to write a number of exercises for our English classes. Of course the best news was Daisy’s interview and possible job. What a blessing it is to be on a mission – to touch the lives of people we would never have met if it was not for this calling. To be able to answer the question – ‘have you done any good in the world today’ in a positive way almost every day. But service in any way is so important for our welfare as well as the welfare of others. In the kingdom, no pain, no gain is just as true as it is when exercising.

I should mention that Anak Krakatau erupted on Thursday and no one wrote to ask if we are OK. I told Mary that we have been out long enough that our children are not as concerned about us as at first. Either that or they know where the volcano is located and know we are safe.