27 November 2007 – Tuesday

None of the alarms went off but I woke at exactly 3:00 a.m. We had not trouble getting ready to leave at 4:00. However we came close to having a major problem. On the way to the airport we ran into a traffic jam on the toll road. There was a flood on the road and the three and four lanes had to be reduced down to one. This was bad even at 4:00 when there are hardly any vehicles on the road. 3 hours later it must have been impossible – both ways. Later we read in the paper and saw on the news that it had been there for at least the last 12 hours. However it seems no one had told people to stay off the road. But once again we were blessed and got through it with lots of time left for us to get to the airport, check in and catch our flight.

Sam and Wawan made it to Solo with a detour through Semarang and met us at the hotel so we could get all of our luggage when we checked in. We got a very nice room – all of them seem to be – and after unpacking we read from the Kitab Mormon. We arranged for inter-net service and one of the first things we checked was if we could get to our blog. We could so we now know it has something to do with Giganet and I will call them when we get back to Jakarta to solve the problem.

The Roberts came and had lunch with us. They are very familiar with Novotel – they stayed here for a couple of weeks before getting their own house. After lunch we got everything together for our class and then Mary had Sam take her to a book store while I caught up with the posting of our blog. Then we went to the chapel. The Roberts and the Barnards were already there. They are two wonderful couples. The Roberts shared some letters that students of an English class that they visited wrote in appreciation. They were amazingly clear and touching. Mainly they talked about how the Roberts had cleared up some things about American society and life. But one was really funny. It said that the Roberts were a perfect couple. “Elder Roberts was fat and Sister Roberts was funny.”

Elder and sister Barnard are from Australia and are doing a great job with teaching Family History to the members. Each couple that we know have special talents that makes their calls so important to the members here. None are alike or have the same talents, but they are one in purpose and in that way they are able to serve with joy and success.

During the time between the Roberts leaving and the class starting, a huge and violent storm moved across Solo. The rain poured down and the wind blew the rain horizontal instead of vertically. It hit the window of our room so hard that we ended up with a good sized puddle because it forced the water through the edges of the window. Later when we were driving to the chapel we found a large tree limb had fallen down and blocked most of the road we were traveling on. their was only one lane open – not going our way – and even there we had to drive over small branches. It looked at first like we would be stuck there for a long time, but one of the instant traffic directors – that is someone who decided to direct traffic – stepped in and soon had the cars taking turns. No one honked their horns or got angry. They just dealt with it.

The rain was so bad that no one showed up for our 4 a.m. class. So, as I said above we just sat around talking about our mission. Priesthood leaders started showing up for our 6:00 meeting to explain the program – including elder Subandriyo who had to fly in to Yoga to get here. While this was going on I checked in on the Seminary class and found there were 7 or 8 students there. So I waited until seminary ended and I stepped in and asked if I could talk to them for a few minutes. So I gave them a pep talk for about 15 minutes and told them we would start class tomorrow at 6:00.  Since the leadership meeting was going to be held in the Seminary room, basically I kept the whole District Leadership sitting around for those 15 minutes but I felt it was important.

I think the meeting went pretty well. Elder Subandriyo told his feelings about the program and what he felt needed to be accomplished. I then asked of I could talk and told the leaders how we were asked to come up with a program and that I could testify that it was God’s program. Therefore while we can slow it down, we can not stop it from coming to pass. Elder Subandriyo then opened the meeting up for questions  – most of which we had no answers for. We did set a date for having a meeting of the youth, their parents and the leaders in Solo so we can tell them exactly what we were are going to do. It will be on January 5th and on the 8th we will start a new Intensive English Class. They told us that it looked like at least 3 students will come from the district. I think that means there are either 4 or 5 spots already filled – leaving only 1 or 2 more.

After the meeting we took the Roberts and Barnards home and then we went to KFC to have dinner. It was not our first choice – we would have preferred McDonalds – but it was OK. By the time we got home we were both very tired and after trying without success to get on the internet we went to bed.

It was a good day in many ways but disappointing that we will have only three days with the students.