I have no idea what is in the first load, but over on the left of the picture you can see a small gas station. The owner can only afford a half-dozen or so bottles at a time. In the middle is a good one. From the back it it looked like they were carrying a rug or a roll of fabric. But when we got close we found that she had body parts! Finally there is the water delivery motorcycle. I also like the composition of the shot – the rich oranges setting off the main character. It is amazing what I find when I really look at a picture I have taken here. So often the background is as interesting or more interesting than what I was trying to capture.
19 November 2007 – Monday
I slept in and so did not go to gym this morning. I will try to get there this afternoon or evening. We read from the Kitab Mormon – we are almost exactly where we were 3 months ago. It is strange how we still must look up some words that we are reading for at least the third time. While frustrating we actually often laugh when neither of us can come up with the meaning. I call our Indonesian friend Rudi about visiting him today but he was busy with business and so we set it for Wednesday.
The first place we go today is the mission office to pick up an English book that they gave out in Hong Kong at the Mission Presidents Conference. We wanted to see if it was something we wanted to get for our highschool classes. We also talked to the president about the couples’ conference and got his OK for an agenda. He has not yet looked at the English class outline, but said he would ASAP.
Then we stopped at a cross-stitch shop so Mary could get some thread and another pattern. It was a stand alone shop so we did not have to fight the mall traffic. They also had places for Sam and I to sit while waiting. That alone was a big improvement. On the way to the office we stopped for some fresh nasi goreng. I turned out the shop was almost across the street from a Cheesecake Factory shop. It turned out to be the real thing and it is obviously only for the wealthy because one small piece of cheesecake is as much as some people make all day. But it looked so wickedly good, I bought a piece for us to share after lunch.
At the office we had our lunch and I sent out the probable program for the conference to all the couples and asked them to respond so we know they got it. By the time we got home, three had already responded. Ezra Subandriyo came in for his English lesson. He has excellent English and about all we are going to do is work on vocabulary and perhaps some reading for main ideas. He started to read Harry Potter and came with his list of words he did not know. I went through them with him. He read and speaks well. I have in mind to see how well he understands by giving a lesson on academic subject and see how well he does.
While I was doing that Mary was combing the internet looking for activities we can use with our highschool students. We want to make it fun for them while they learn. We shut down the office about 3:00 and came home. Since I missed the gym this morning, I went down and did a brief workout – sit-ups and upper body. It was nice in the gym because the air-conditioning has been on all day so it is cooler than in the morning. I still managed to work up a sweat.
We kept fairly busy for the rest of the day. Lots of e-mail traffic because of the couples’ conference. I worked on English activities for Mary’s class tomorrow. We read twice more from the Kitab Mormon – we are now into the parable of the Olive Tree. Mary made one my favorite dishes – the base for pork chops Creole – for dinner. It was perfect, except she put in a little too much chili powder so it was rather spicy. We will give the remainder to Sam who should love it.
This evening we got another application for our next Intensive English Class. That makes three so far and we have not really even started to advertise it. We were kind of thinking about not having it because we will be in the middle of getting the first high school English class really started. The pilot for Jakarta will start at exactly the same time. And the plans for the couples’ conference will need to be finalized sometime in January. It should make for a really interesting month. Maybe we will just sleep at the church….NOT.
We have always said the only reason we would extend was if there was something we really felt we needed to do before we left. The only thing that I can think of is the high school English program. We will have the Intensive English Class pretty much under control and we hope outlined before then so we can just turn it over to the couple that takes our place. But the high school program will be only 5 months old and since it will end up being a 3 year course, there is a question of where we will be in May of 2008. I do not think we need to have the whole program mapped out for three years, but we certainly need to have the first one in fair shape.
Oh and of course there is PEF which could be approved at any time. Once it is we will have all the work associated with getting that started to deal with. Thank goodness I have Lord and Mary to show me what to do. Like Nephi I am going to have to go to the mountain very often.
I did get one other great bit of news – we can home teach the Johson Tobings tomorrow night! Yeah! What wonderful blessing we have had all day – one of the best days of our mission.