23 November 2007 – Friday 

A wonderful busy day. After I went to the gym, we got a call from Bob.  We got to talk to most of the grandchildren who were there as well as Bob, Lisa, Mike and Cindy. Then we got to Skype with Jim, Kristy and Olivia. Olivia sang us her ABCs. Jim could not figure out why we can not access our blog from here – everyone else can. He took control of our computer and did about everything he could think of but nothing worked. 

Sam picked us up and we spent 5 hours home teaching one family and seeing Agus K’s home and office. The family we saw move here a few months ago from Malang where they were baptized by elder Hash. The 7 of them live in two small rented rooms with almost no furniture. They do not have enough money to get to church so Agus drives them. We had a nice visit and we are trying to get them good jobs so they have something to live on. Right now the son and one daughter are working at minimal jobs. Of course because we were visiting they had to go out and buy bottled water and some cookies. We knew they did not really have enough money to do that, but it would be impolite not to accept it gracefully. We did manage to leave most of it for them. It always touches our hearts to listen to members like this who have little but are so grateful for the gospel and any help they get. They are lucky to have Agus in the branch presidency, he will do what he can to see they get some jobs.  Agus and his family are going to Bekasi this Sunday so there will be one to give them a ride. I am thinking of sending Sam over to pick them up and we can take them home afterwards.

We hurried back to the office to give Ezra Subandriyo his lesson. When we pulled up to the gate I found I had once more left the keys in the apartment. Mary suggested she teach Ezra while I head over to the mission home to pick up all the things we need to take to the couples in Solo.  That way we could get a couple of necessary things done – and it worked.

As Sam and I drove over to the office I called one of the Surakarta district presidency and talked to him about the new program elder Subandriyo wants to get started. He told me their concerns and we talked about times and day. I made the decision to change from going Monday thru Thursday to Tuesday thru Friday and addressed some of his concerns. I also told him how this program came to be started. That it came from a vision that elder Subandriyo had and so the goals were not his or mine but the Lords. We have just been called to come up with a plan that will make it work. I do not think he realized this and he said that they would discuss it with the district leadership. He also suggest they call the Solo branch presidents in for a meeting while we are there so we can explain it to them and get some feed back.

When I got to the mission home, I sat down and talked to elder Subandriyo about what we had discussed and he was behind it 100%. He says he wants to be there for the meeting with the branch presidents. We shared our testimony that this was the Lords will we are doing and not our own. I think when the leadership and the youth realize this, things will start to draw together more. It sends chills down my arms just thinking about how this all came about.

I talked to everyone involved with getting things to the branches and missionaries and told them we would be happy to take anything they can get together. I gave them a list of what was needed and I think they will get it organized. President Sujud will change our tickets for the right dates. It should be an exciting week.

When I got back to the apartment Mary was finishing up her lesson with Ezra. When he left we read from the Kitab Mormon. Then we ordered our Friday Pizza Hut dinner. I have spent the last 2 hours cataloging pictures, writing e-mail to some of the couples about the change in plans, and catching up this journal so when I can post again I will be all ready. I studied from PMG before turning off the light. It does seem that it is becoming easier to read and some words that have been giving me trouble since we started studying are starting to stick – either that or I can guess better than before.

It was a wonderful day – most days are – with some very spiritual experiences. It is impossible not to see the Lord’s hand in so much that we are able to do. I feel that we are truly blessed for being able to serve here in Indonesia.

22 November 2007 – Thursday – Thanksgiving

For the second day in a row I woke late and did not go to the gym. Tonight I will set the alarm for 5 so it does not become a habit. I tried to post to our blog but obviously something is wrong there  because I can not get a connection. I checked to see is WordPress was down but it was fine so I guess there is a problem with the blog itself. Hopefully Jim will get it fixed so I can get back to posting.

We read from the Kitab Mormon before Sam came to pick us up. He took us to the mission home and dropped us off with all our goodies. The rest of the day was spent with all the missionaries from the zone except for the Walkers and the Kanes who were off to the closing of the water project. The first couple of hours were spent practicing for the Christmas program – I am not sure what Christmas program we are singing in but one of the many that will be held during the season. Sister Moore is the choir director and program producer. Our own Jin-Young plays the piano – it was good to see her again.

Sister Miller from the English branch was also there and told about her experiences as a missionary in the German area of Switzerland. It was a very hard mission and they could tract all day and not have anyone answer the door. They were excited when anyone would talk to them for even a minute. But she bore her testimony that the Lord sends each missionary out for a certain reason and they need to make sure they accomplish it. Later I asked her what hers was. She said that one Sunday she sat next to a sister in church who turned out to be the non-member fiancé of an active member. Later the man called and said his fiancé had been going to church for 2 years but would not take the missionary lessons. But after meeting sister Miller (who was sister something else then) she wanted her to teach her about the gospel. It turned out to be the only time her and her companion had ever taught all the lessons. In fact she had only taught the fourth one other time. The woman ended up getting baptized.

What was interesting was that sister Miller had torn up her knee a couple of time and had a surgery. The mission president wanted to send her home but she told him that she felt there was something that she needed to be there to take care of. After the baptism she did go home 2 months early to have corrective surgery. It was a powerful story and we both had tears in our eyes when she was done. Hopefully we are doing whatever special thing we were sent here for.

We had our Thanksgiving dinner with all the missionaries – there was a little turkey and lots of ham, potatoes, fruit, gravy, sweet potatoes, and dressing. Everyone had all they wanted to eat and the president even invited the office staff to come down and eat. They did and then ended up doing most of the dishes – without being asked of course. I took the task of cleaning off plates so they could be washed.

We then all watched the first of ‘The Work and the Glory’ movies. It is quite good – too bad the second one was so poorly done. The missionaries all reacted when there was any kissing. After the movie we all had dessert. Sister Walker had made banana cream pie – which was the favorite or myself and elder Collings.

When dessert was over and I had help cleanup, we sat down with the Davis’ and went through an English program that sister Davis has been working on. Actually it was organizing some lessons that sister Peterson had done. It is a very good program with lots of activities and three skill levels. It is quite possible that we can use it as the basis for the English program for the whole country. It would be great if we did not have to start from scratch. The Davises have put a lot of work in on this. The Lord seems to want this program to move forward.

We then gathered up all our stuff – it had been increased by our Christmas package from Jim’s family – and caught a taxi home. We were quite tired by that time, but we decided to read a conference talk in Indonesian. I thought we would have a very hard time, and although it was not as easy as some of the Kitab Mormon, we were able to get most of it without looking up many words. However at times the translation came out much different than what the Ensign had. I would not want to be a translator.

21 November 2007 – Wednesday

I woke up not feeling well, but as the day went on things got better. Instead of going to the gym, I spent the time reading PMG. After breakfast we read from the Kitab Mormon.

As I was writing in my diary for yesterday, I had the feeling that elder and sister Walker should invite the Tobings to come to the English branch Thanksgiving get together on Saturday afternoon. So I called them and I think they will at least give it a try.

Sam picked us up and we went over to see our friend Rudi. He is the 74 year old Chinese fellow that we made friends with when the elders taught him a couple of times. We have not seen him in a number of months so it was nice to find out what has been going on in his life. One thing is that he seems to have lost quite a lot of money in the U.S. mortgage funds. He was confused as to why they had fallen so badly and I tried to explain it to him. He said that the losses were really bothering him until he started thinking about what it really meant as far as what is of greatest values. He is quite religious and once he started thinking in those terms he decided that he still had plenty to live as well as he wants so why let it cause him so much distress. I told him that was the right idea and that it fit in right with what Jacob 2 says in the Book of Mormon. So we had a good visit for about an hour and then headed back to the apartment.

The rest of the day has just flown by. Most of my time has been spent working on some lesson helps for Mary’s English class for the service center staff. We are creating special business vocabulary lessons for them. I think we can use some of them for other classes. Also I sent out a number of e-mails to let the couples know how we are planning to reach elder Subandriyo’s English goal.

Mary has been busy getting some things ready for the dinner at the mission home tomorrow. She made a carrot cake for one of the elders who had never heard of a carrot cake before. She is also make candied sweet potatoes – we think they are sweet potatoes.

For some reason I crashed at about 8:00 – just fell asleep on the bed while studying Indonesian. Of course I woke up at around 2 in the morning and stayed up trying to read a conference talk until after 3:30 when I managed to fall back asleep.

20 November 2007 – Tuesday

Study, gym, wrote some letters about the English class, and read from the Kitab Mormon. We continue to plant, prune, graft, dig, dung, cut down and lay up fruit against the season.

The above is as far as I got yesterday before we headed out for a really full day of activities. At the office we taught English to Ezra, help a recently returned missionary start looking for a job and gave him some exercises to help him work on his already excellent English, and did the usual amount of e-mailing. Before we knew it, it was time to head to the mission office so Mary could teach her class.

Since there was a long shopping list, we dropped Mary off at the office and went to SoGo. Sam and I walked through the store a half-dozen times in our search for all the things on the list. They do not have yams but they do have sweet potatoes – in fact they have purple sweet potatoes but I did not buy those. What they do not have in Indonesia is walnuts or pecans…we did not think peanuts or almonds would be good substitutes. Marshmellows sell for $6 a package – and they are not great looking marshmellows. Next time Mary gets to go shopping and I will teach her class.

When we got back to the mission office, I had a nice talk with elder Subandriyo. He told me that while President Marchant was in Hong Kong he was told that starting in 2009, all Indonesian missionaries would go to the Manila MTC for a month’s training. He said he now knew why he had received the vision for teaching English to highschool students. The training will all be in English so the better they know English the more they will get out of the MTC experience.

After that we talked more about the program we will be starting next week in Solo. He is not worried about anything – he will find the money and the way to get this to work. I can feel the power of the spirit working in him and a fire in his eyes when he talks about the program. I feel we are really being blessed to at least be in on the start of this program. Of course I am also a little daunted with the responsibility. I imagine there will be a lot of trips to the mountain.

Mary had two new members for her class. It seems everyone has got the bug for learning English. The main problem she has is the wide range of the level of English skills. I told her about the problem of no nuts and suggested Sam take her over to Grand Lucky to see if they had any. While the did that I went down and talked to the Walkers. When Mary came back – without any more luck with the nuts than I had – she joined us and we invited the Walkers to go to dinner with us.

A little later we were joined by president Marchant so we had a nice discussion of some of the things going on in the mission. The president had to send a young missionary home today for health reasons. It must be hard to call the parents and tell them that a missionary is coming home. At least it is not because of anything moral. As the time came for us to go to dinner we invited the President and sister Marchant to come along so we could show them this great Chinese restaurant.

To make the story short, they came along, the restaurant was closed today, and the substitute one was not very good. But we had a good time talking and it at least filled our stomachs.

We took the Marchants back to their home and the rest of us went home teaching to the Johnson Tobing family. What a great family and what an asset they would be to the English branch. We had a good visit and I tried to give the young people as much attention as possible. After our visit we went back to the mission office one more time to drop off the Walkers and pick up our groceries that we had left there so we had enough room in our car for everyone to go to dinner.

By the time we got back to our apartment we were completely bushed but in a very happy way. It was a full day and I think a lot got accomplished. I did not even look at a word of Indonesian before falling into bed and going to sleep.