Hi all – for the last four or five days, we have not been able to connect with this site from our apartment. We do not know why and Jim could not figure it out either. Since we can get on from the office – or I would not be posting this – it is either a problem with one of our computer settings or something to do with giganet, our provider. We will be able to check if it is our computer when we go to another city for four days to start to set up the new English class.  If it works there, we will complain to giganet…if it doesn’t I do not know what we will do.

 I sent Jim the last few day’s journal and he will post them for me. After that I will probably just load things on to a memory stick and do the posting from the office.

 We are about to leave and go to two BBQ’s. One to support the District and one to meet with the English branch who are so important to us for job information and to help us with our English class.

 Everyone have a great weekend.

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.

18 November 2007 – Sunday

I just had a small lesson in patience. Just before going to bed last night I tried to post my Saturday journal along with a couple of pictures. When I hit ‘publish’ the computer came back that it could not reach the website and I thought I had lost the post. This would not have been a big thing except I wrote a decent amount about the pictures. So I went to bed a little frustrated but I thought that it might have posted before the internet disappeared. This morning when I checked the blog, there was no post. But just now as I went to rewrite the entry, there in drafts was the whole thing. So hopefully I learned a small lesson in patience.

The morning however is impatient – it seems to be going by in 30 minutes leaps. I woke at 5:30 and the next thing I knew it was 6:00 and then 6:30 and then 7:00. I know they say when you get older time flies by, but this is ridiculous. I have managed to study from PMG – I am trying hard to get some vocabulary into my head. I think this stretching of my mind is one of the great blessings of the mission. I can not imagine me doing this at home but here it has almost become a hobby – certainly it is a goal.

We go to Jakarta Raya to see their Primary presentation. They have a very small primary and there is only one young man. I think the number of teachers and leaders outnumber the primary children. But they put on a good program and at the end the four active young men join the Primary for the last song and do a great job of singing. The rest of the meetings are normal – I really need to find someone who can do a good job of translating for us. I try hard to hear what they are saying but it just does not work. But meeting with the members, letting them know we want to help them with their employment, etc. makes it well worthwhile.

Our Sunday afternoon was about the same as always. About 3 hours of reading from the Kitab Mormon, studying from PMG, catching up pictures and journal, napping, etc. We like to give Sam the day off so he can be with his branch, go to his leadership meetings, and participate in whatever is going on there. The young adults and single adults of the Selatan branch are a very closely knit group who like to do things together. Most of the time it is just sitting around talking or watching a movie, but it allows them to be with men and women with the same values. I think it is great and we are glad to give Sam Sundays off as often as we can.

I was surprised by these pictures. In the first one I did not notice the big box that the passenger is holding because I was interested in the ladder. Mary says that she noticed it and how awkward he looked trying to hold on the ladder with one hand and this big box with the other. In the second one I was trying to capture the nice looking box with its distinct logo and did not notice that I also got another picture of a ladder carrying motorcycle. After months of not getting any shot of ladders, I got three in as many days. Two of which I did not even know were there.

17 November 2007 – Saturday

I was really tempted not to go to the gym this morning, but I decided that I really needed to go. Why is it so hard to keep up good habits and so easy to keep up bad ones. Especially when it come to eating and exercising. If I looked forward to feasting on the words of Christ as much as I do to having Thanksgiving dinner, I would be much better off spiritually. Anyway I enjoyed the gym and later enjoyed reading from the Kitab Mormon.

When we arrived at the office, we found that there would be a wedding and that we were invited. Other than the missionaries from the branch, we were the only bulais there. I have mentioned before that an LDS wedding here is about the same as home. Since they do not have a temple nearby, they use the chapel. The only real difference is that after they are pronounced husband and wife they kiss each other on the forehead. This is because public display of affection by kissing is considered gauche. The other difference is that after the vows and rings are exchanged, a member of each family some time to express their thoughts and thanks. Then everyone gets in line to congratulate the families and the new couple. Sam played the piano – Mary told him to make sure he did not play too loud and he was perfect until it come to the postlude where he started to pound a little until Mary told him to tone it down.

After the wedding we went back to the office where I tried to send letters to all the Indonesian BYUH students. Unfortunately I seemed to develop an aptitude for making mistakes. I managed to mix up two sisters – real sisters not church sisters – so I made one about to graduate in mathematics when she is really a freshman in math – with her sister who is graduating in 2008. Then there was the case of sending an e-mail to two wrong addresses. Which is good since it seems I had already sent him one a couple of weeks ago. I was about to give it all up when I decided that was not right and so with patience and perseverance I got through them all. I hope we can be some help in getting them to major in careers that they will provide them with good jobs.

During part of this time Mary and Sam were off to Sogo. Where they picked up orange juice and BreadTalk along with Sam’s new girlfriend. When they got back, Mary dropped a bomb by saying they are planning to go to the temple before June. Talk about going from acquaintances to engaged in a flash. It was not two weeks ago that we were trying to convince Sam to go out on his very first date to a point where they seem to be seriously talking about marriage. Of course we think it would be great because we could go with them if they actually go in May.

We worked on our new English class material. We are basically looking for good activities that can be used over and over again. We had one of our regular Friday afternoons and evenings. We had some lunch, read from the Kitab Mormon, napped, read more, dinner, and now I am working on this journal. Later we read from the Kitab Mormon for the third time. We find that we are reading almost exactly where we were 3 months ago.

I guess it was important that I did not give up on sending those e-mails this afternoon. We just got an answer to the last one I sent – one of those I would not have sent if I had given into frustration. It was from a brother who I thought would graduate in about 6 months telling us that he would be graduating in 28 days and was returning to Indonesia in February. At that point he wants to get a job. It seems that the Lord knew his need and made sure I did not stop. Here is the start of his letter that touched me:

“I am so surprised but at the same time so happy to receive this eMail. The past weeks I have been pondering what I want to do after my graduation, and again I reflected back to my experience toward the end of my mission when my Junior Companion asked me what had I planned after my mission? I told him the Lord would provide me, and I did get a job right after my mission. I am not saying you would provide me a job, but it is just encouraging to know that there’s someone in Indonesia who care a lot about my future plan, in fact more than I do care about my own future plan :). How did you guys know about me?”

And we wonder at times if the Lord knows our names!

Mary bead shopping. This little shop probably has more beads than what you might find in a large mall store. Mary had a great time looking through all of these goodies for just what she wanted for her necklace.

These are for Shauna – you might want to expand your business into a Dental Boutique and Beauty Clinic with a branch here in Jakarta. Also you might consider making false teeth. There seems to be a big market for them here.

Elder Tuxworth about 3 hours before he got on a plane to head home to Australia. Sam snapped the picture without warning us. Elder Whitmore on the day he was to be released with our good friends elder Roper and Thiemann. Elder Thiemann was just called as the Barat Zone leader and elder Roper was just being released as an office elder and has now been transferred to Solo…I think.

I shot the first picture so I could get the bread cart. As I looked at it, I discovered that I had captured almost all means of transportation in one shot. What is missing is an ankat and a bus. I also noticed I had a picture that I have been trying to take for quite awhile – a motorcycle carrying a ladder. This is not as big a ladder as some we have seen but it is a decent sized one. The bread cart is one of a fleet of carts that go out each morning and travel through the living areas delivering and selling bread. They pedal down the main streets right along with the cars, motorcycles and buses. Jakarta is an amazing city.

Two motorcycle loads that, while not spectacular, are interesting. The first is carrying badminton racquet, towels, and other goods. The blue and gold baskets carried bread. All of these loads adds interest to our many hours in the car.

Three pictures of scenes I found interesting. The first is a soccer team. What is not clear is there is a bus behind this first group that is filled with fans and another 20 or 30 are sitting or standing on top of the bus. It is stopped right now, but they will stay up there when it starts to move. It is amazing that we don’t read about 50 young people dying when one of their buses is in an accident.

The second scene I call – Competition. On the far side of the lamp post you can just see a fruit seller. For many months he was the only seller on this corner and he was always busy selling mangos. About two months ago the seller nearest the camera moved next to him. He brought in mangos and papaya. So the first seller brought in papaya. Now it appears that the newest seller is getting more business than the first one. What is really interesting about this is that both of them probably pay some gang that allows them to set up their stand there. If this is true, obviously the new man on the corner paid enough to get this choice spot that whoever is in charge allowed him to compete with the first seller.

It just goes to show that location, product diversity, competition and in this case probably a bribe works in Jakarta as well as the rest of the world to produce a successful business.

16 November 2007 – Friday

Study Indonesian from PMG – I never cease to be amazed at how quickly I can forget what a word means. The Lord seems to be testing my patience by letting me slog on without the gift of memory! I am stretching out my exercise routine – trying to get back in shape at the age of 69 is not easy. To anyone who might be reading this – stay in shape from your youth. When it says ‘super-size’ it is talking about your waist as much as it is the portion. Take it from someone who has said that way too often.

I had a rather busy morning, mainly doing a lot of writing. It seems I spend a lot of time at a computer writing journals, lessons, e-mails, etc. I am not sure that a computer is always a blessing. Perhaps the Luddites have the right idea?  We read from the Kitab Mormon and finished the Isaiah sections – it is like coming out of a storm into a peaceful countryside. At least even Nephi realized that Isaiah was difficult to understand.

We went into the office to get some things done and to pick up some books before heading to the mission home and our second district meeting. When we got there, I took just a couple of minutes to talk to elder Subandriyo about Ezra and the English program. The district meeting went well and they were nice enough to do it in English. I gave the spiritual thought – about the call to implement an English class. Elder Teng gave a lesson on ‘Goal Setting.’ It was the same topic that we discussed last night in the Tangerang district. I mentioned to the A.P.s that PMG carefully says that district and zones are not to set goals for missionary companionships – they can set Standard of Excellence, but the companionship should set any goals.

After the meeting I spent another couple of minutes with Elder Subandriyo and my thoughts on branches where they are too far away from the branch to meet there each day. I said I thought that what would be needed was a 3 – 4 hour class, once a week. He seemed to agree, but ask me to run it past President Mac. We would try it here first before initiating it in other areas. I just thought about the problem of where there is no couples.

As I spoke with elder Subandriyo, I could see and feel the urgency that he seems to have about this program. He wants to get it started right now. It must of been how Nephi felt when the Lord told him to build that ship. All he could think of was what he needed to do first and had faith that everything would fall into place if he just got started. I think that is how elder Subandriyo feels.

I made Mary’s day by suggesting we go to Majestik so she could shop for some beads and material. It a truly wild place where you can get anything that has to do with clothing, hobbies, and just about anything else. Mary wanted to buy some beads so she can make a necklace. She knew right where it was and a great time picking out just what she wanted. The whole bead shop is about 4 feet by 6 feet and was just jammed with shelves covered with little boxes of beads.

While Mary shopped I walked around and got hot. I took a short movie of a man who free-hand embroidered a piece of material. Mary said that she had seen him sew lace.  As we were walking back to the car, she stopped in to look at some material. We found a gorgeous piece of blue print, that even I was excited about her buying for a skirt and blouse – to be worn separately.

That was it for our outside work for the day. Back at the apartment we spent time reading from the Kitab Mormon, taking a nap, and eating our date night meal of Pizza Hut pizza. Then I sat down at the computer and hammered out a very early proposal for the new class which I then sent to president Marchant and elder Subandriyo. It gives a basic time line for getting things started with a short pilot program and then a little longer one. We will fly to Solo on the 26th to run the short program for four days. We hope to have the first full time class up and running by the middle of the month and with the Lord’s help it will come to pass.

15 November 2007 – Thursday

This is the first Thursday in over a month that we will go to Tangerang for the district meeting and to teach our English class. We are going early to have a meeting with Lukito and Agus about employment – I am afraid it a backseat to our IEC last month. We are going to have to do something about that for future IEC.

Normal morning but we had some extra time because we do not have regular office hours today. I continue with my exercise. Next I posted a lot of pictures and comments on the blog. Keeping up the blog takes more time than I expected. I can see why Cindy and Kristy do not post each day. We diligently read in 2nd Nephi – we continue to work our way through Isaiah.

We go to the office for about 45 minutes so we can do some necessary work and to pick up some things that we will need later. I make the agenda for tonight’s ERS meeting. We get away early enough that we do not get caught in the lunch time rush.

However as we are about to the mission office, I got a call from elder Subandriyo that rapidly changed what we will be doing for the next couple of months. Possibly it will change the rest of our mission. He told me that he had a vision of a version of our Intensive English Class but on a local level for all the high school students. He feels that they can meet and be taught 4 days a week right after school is out. They would get a meal and a lesson. Mary and I are to make it work.

When I asked him for more details, he said that he had the vision but not the solution. That sometimes that is the way things happen. I immediately thought of when President Hinckley announced PEF as an inspired program that would change the church. He then called men to figure out how to make it work. It took them about 2 years to get it working correctly but it is changing the church in some areas of the world.

Since we were just getting to the office, I went right in and talked to him. I hoped to get a little more instruction. The only new thought I got was that he felt that in 3 years, all high school graduates would be able to converse, read and write English with confidence. I told him we were for it but before we could suggest a curriculum we needed to find out the level of the students it would be aimed at. We decided that we would need to go to Solo for a few days and see for ourselves. So on the 26th we will be in Solo and will hold classes with the students.

It is a humbling experience to be told that we are to be in charge of developing a program that he feels with change the church in Indonesia. However it is not the first time we have been in a position where a program we would help to develop would have a major effect on the future. When we were serving our first mission at the MTC, we help develop the system where the missionaries practice teaching in their languages. There has been some changes since we left over 10 years ago, but the basic principle has not changed and it is now one of the main features of a missionary’s experience at the MTC for learning their language. Hopefully we will set in motion something here that is as effective and long lasting.

While Mary taught her class, I started brain-storming some basic ideas. While I was doing that I got a call from elder Roberts in Solo asking what he was supposed to do with this new program. I told him we had only got the assignment 40 minutes earlier and I had not quite worked out the details yet. I told him we would be in Solo on the 26th to get some feeling for what needs to be done and then hopefully come up with how it is to be done.

When we left the mission office, we headed for Tangerang and our other meetings. We stopped on the way so Mary could buy some poster board for her music. She also found Uno and Monopoly in Indonesian. While we were in the Mall it begin to rain but not very heavy.

We had out 4 p.m. ERSC meeting with Agus and Lukito and basically told them that while we will be able to help somewhat, that they will need to run the country program themselves. So Agus will make the work class schedule for next year and will have it for our next meeting.

We then went to our first Tangerang District Meeting in 5 or 6 weeks. It is always a blessing to sit in one of these and hear how the missionaries are doing and to share in their great spirit. Elder Cheney is the new district leader – I think he will do fine once he gets a little more confidence. The other new elder is elder Worwood who we had met once before but did not get to know well. He has only been out two or three weeks but is doing well.

We did not have an English class because no one showed up. For some reason they did not have a seminary class and Agus and his family told us that they would not be there. So we packed it up and came home. We read from the Kitab Mormon and I have been busy with English matters ever since.

Two other things happened today. First elder Subandriyo mentioned that someone in the states is starting a fund to help members who do not have enough money to send their children to high school. The Bennetts will be happy to hear about that one. I will send them the information as soon as he sends it to me.

Ezra Subandriyo has been accepted to BYU Hawaii and will go there on December 26th.  He showed up for Mary’s English class and I told him that we would be happy to teach him one on one during the week. He is excited to do this and we will probably start on Saturday. It is good to find someone who is eager to learn as much as he can.

 

When we stopped at the restaurant, there was this chopped down scooter sitting next to the door. Sam decided to climb on for a picture. On the right hand side you can see an arm reaching for a green branch that is stuck in the fender. This is what they do when a vehicle has broken down. It lets folks know that it is not going to move anytime soon so they might as well go around. It is like us putting out reflective triangles or flares.

14 November 2007

The pictures and comments below covers the time the ceremony was completed, everyone had been seen and hands had been shaken.  After we left the ceremony we stopped at the restaurant we found a few months ago that had the best chicken sate we have eaten. Elder and sister Kane agreed about the quality of the sate and elder Kane loved the nasi goring.
As we drove back into Jakarta we found that we missed a really big storm that blew down trees and signs all over the city. The rain also flooded streets. Sam took an alternate route to miss a mess he heard about on the radio. We hit one bad spot where the street was so flooded that there was only two lanes where we could get through. Since 5 or 6 lanes fed into this bottle neck we were lucky it only took us 15 minutes to get through. As we drove in to the complex we looked back to an area we had driven through not long before and saw that now it was a solid mess. The Lord blessed us in many ways on the way home.

It was a good day for us. We got to see the Kanes and share some experiences. None of us can believe almost a year has passed since we met at the MTC. We talked some about teaching English – we have learned a lot there also. The ceremony was quite interesting, but it was meeting and interacting with the families that made it so special. What to us looked like semi-finished eye-sores, to them were mansions. Hopefully they will not suffer such loss again.

We have truly been blessed to be able to serve this mission. To learn to work together to accomplish tasks and programs. To have good health, to make good friends, to see things we would never have seen any other way. I do not know if we will ever come back to Indonesia, but anything is possible. We will see what the Lord has in store for us. What I do know is that Indonesia will be a part of us the rest of our lives and for eternity. I am sure some of the friends we have met here we will see on the other side of the veil. The gospel changes lives, it unites families, and it provides opportunities to serve.

14 November 2007 – Wednesday

Because the Walkers in Aceh taking part in the handover of a major project, we got to go with the Kanes to a project handover above Bogor. While handovers can be big things – there is one next week that has 450 invited guests and who knows how many people who will just look on – this one was rather small. But it was huge for the people who were directly affected.

In the latter part of 2006, a fire raged through a section of houses that was home to some 23 families with a total of 132 people. After the fire they had no money to rebuild their homes and so they were all living crammed into tents. One of the members of Bogor’s Rotary Club asked them to take it on as a project and they asked LDSC to contribute some of the money.

Today 14 homes were handed over to these families – more than one live in a number of them. Unfortunately they decided to make some alterations to the houses – which they could do – that used up the alloted funds before they were completely finished. But they have waterproof semi-finished homes to live in while they finish them. They are much nicer than the dirt floored, single story wood homes they had before.

One of the alterations is the balcony you see below. It runs all the way around the second story and ties into other older houses. As you see they do not believe in railings – a truly dangerous situation but there was nothing LDSC or Rotary could do about their choices.

The outsides were supposed to be plastered but they used the money for this balcony and extra windows, etc.

The handover ceremony is very formal in an informal way. There were representatives from the home owners, from the local district, from the government, and of course Rotary and LDSC. Each head of household signed the documents in three places. Elder Kane greeted each one after they signed and then signed for LDSC. Afterwards everyone wanted to shake hands and Mary got in the mix with the Kanes.

This young lady in Red got Mary’s attention and she took many pictures of her. Latter the young lady got bored and fell asleep on her mother’s shoulder. The young man has polished off lunch -there is always lots of food at one of these programs – and is washing it down with a container of water. I liked these young ladies who could not stop giggling at having their pictures taken.

Everywhere we go in Indonesia we find small wonders. We had never seen these plants before – we need to get a book of the fauna of Indonesia to see if we can get names for them. When you ask most Indonesians what is the name of a flower, they say ‘bunga!’  Which of course means ‘flower.’

While we sitting waiting for the ceremony to start I looked across the yard and saw this great stone wall. This is another interesting thing about Indonesia. Even in small villages up in the puncak – top of the mountains – you find wonderful stone walls. Usually they are not as detailed as this one which stretched for about 100 feet or so. I can not imagine what it would cost to duplicate this in the US. But I would love to have it along the South side of our yard.

Jakarta fuel truck – this is a much nicer rig than most. Hate to be near it if there was an accident.

Jakarta’s version of a tandem rig – we had not seen this before, but about 20 minutes later we saw another matched pair. You can tell it is the rainy season when more and more loads are wrapped for protection. This is one of the neater ones.

The picture does not do this justice and we could not get next to it so I could show the side view. It was impressive.