13 November 2007 – Tuesday

It was a full day for us and it touched all the areas that we work in.  We open the office for helping with employment and Wawan came in to send some resumes. He seems to be really trying to find work, so I am torn between wanting him to succeed and wanting him to go back to Semarang and strengthen the branch. Much of the time, I worked on more vocabulary. Mary got her English material together, practiced the piano, and did some genealogy. She really likes the new Family Search program and is excited that it should be available to everyone next year.

Next came our trip to the mission office. While we were driving I got a call from Lukito saying that he needed the office laptop for our meeting tonight. Since it was back at the apartment, that meant we dropped Mary off so she could teach English and then Sam and I would get the computer. About the time the call came, Mary realized she had left her purse in the office so while we were in the area, we would stop and get it also. And so it happened!

When we got back I found Mary sitting and reading. I thought that they had cancelled the class, but it seems that as soon as she got there, the few students she had asked if they could start early – it seems they all wanted to leave early. Since my meeting with the District Presidency did not start for almost 3 hours, we decided to go to the Mall to look for some more posterboard for Mary’s music and to have dinner. We decided to splurge and eat at BurgerKing. And so it happened.

I had an opportunity to talk to Elder Subandriyo and got some counsel on a problem that had come up. We talked about the teaching of English to the high school students in Central Java. I think it is an inspired idea. I certainly hope it works well. He suggested that we might need to go to Central Java and observe some of the classes to see what might need to be taught.

The meeting that I had with the presidency was very interesting. They want to do something to help with the unemployment and underemployment in the district. They wanted to review the Self-Employment workshop and if it was helping anyone to become successful. We could not point to anyone that had seen their business grow after taking the class.

They had brother Putranto come in. He is the man who is looking for salesmen throughout Indonesia. He has developed a very successful sales organization and he started with nothing. To make a long meeting short, the presidency asked us to come up with a program that helps the youth prepare to be successful and to help those who have no job, and little in the way of skills, to understand they can make a good living by selling products. Either for someone else or for themselves. Brother Putranto is living proof of what can be done with vision and hard work. We will meet again in two weeks to give our ideas.

After the meeting we had a chance to say goodbye to Elder Tuxworth who is heading home to Australia on the Red Eye. We did not work very long with elder Tuxworth but I will miss him – especially his soft voice with a great Aussie accent. The new office elder with elder Rowberry is Elder Smith who we first meet in Tangerang. The new AP with elder Teng is elder Bastian who we do not know at all. The new Zone leader with elder Hadi Suyatmo is our old friend Elder Thiemann who we met at the MTC when we first started learning Indonesian. I wonder how many of these young men and women we will ever see again? Hopefully we will see some at reunions – but if we go on another mission in January of 2009 – that means the first reunion we could go to would be April 2011!

12 November 2007 – Monday

It is interesting that 4:00 to 4:30 seems to be the time I am going to wake up. It is like the Lord is telling me that spiritual exercise comes before physical. I continued to read in PMG – I am now in ‘Sifat-sifat seperti Kristus’ and I can move through it fairly quickly. I enjoyed my trip to the gym – I seem to be sweating less and doing more reps. I am also happy to see that my weight seems to be going down once more – perhaps I have broken a plateau. As I wrote that I thought about how there are times when I seem to be stuck on a spiritual plateau and I only start going up when I make some change in my routine. Often it does not need to be a major change but it has to be something that is different and possibly not at first comfortable to do.

The rest of the morning was fairly normal, except a call from Elder Bennett that took some time but was very informative and necessary. There are some things we need to do and perhaps some fences that need mending. Indonesia is a small country when it comes to the Church. The ripple from waves travel far and fast – especially with cell phones and SMS.  Anyway that interrupted out Kitab Mormon reading for a while but we ended up getting the better part of 4 pages. The reading was challenging but enjoyable. We are getting good at the lists of things that come up so often in the writings.

We went to the mission home to deliver the Michigan tests that our students took last week, talk to president Sujud, speak with the Walkers about home teaching tomorrow night, and just saying hello to others – as well as goodbye to elder Whitmore who is heading home tomorrow. I thought we had missed saying goodbye in person to elder Tuxworth but I just called him and he does not leave until midnight tomorrow so we will see him at the office when we go for Mary to teach her class.

Then we went to SoGo for assorted things. While we were there I went to the ATM to get some cash and came across a modern art display. There were some nice pieces but they wanted too much for them. I think we will go to the gallery sometime and see if we can do some bargaining. The young ladies who were running the exhibit did not seem to care one way or the other.

We then went out to make one of our home teaching visits. Brother Salim has a nice little in house business that has allowed him to send his two children to good schools – including one to BYUH – and to have a nice Indonesian home. His son is in Taiwan learning some graphics so he can work for his uncle’s international business.

It takes about an hour to 90 minutes each way – and that is if there is no real traffic jam. So the round trip including the visit took 3 hours. I figured out it would take me about the same time to home teach a family in Salt Lake or Bountiful. No wonder they have a very low home teaching percentage.

11 November 2007 – Sunday

This morning was very special. As we were reading from 2 Nephi 8, where Jacob is warming up for major Isaiah quoting, I started my usual complaining, I do not see how Mary puts up with it for almost all of 2nd Nephi, on how impossible it was to translate it well. Mary pointed out at one point that we should not be surprised that we do not understand it in Indonesian when we can’t even understand it in English. I started to agree with her when some thing caused me to pause. It did not feel right.

After we finished I started thinking about this problem when it came to me that the Lord did not include these section in the Book of Mormon just so I could complain or so we could make jokes about it. I thought back almost 50 years ago when I came out of a stake meeting complaining to those who came with me about what a waste of time it had been. As I said that I got the message that the Lord did not send us to any meeting to waste our time. If I had found it a waste of time it was because I did not come prepared to hear the reason I needed to be there.

From that time on I have tried to make sure that I did not ‘waste my time’ by paying attention to what was being said or taught. Seldom have I been disappointed. Something comes up that is important to me or brings up a thought that leads me to ponder on.

As I considered this I decided that I would read the Isaiah chapters in English and ponder what was said and what about them I need to ‘liken unto me.’ This is one of the main ideas of the section on the Book of Mormon in PMG. So I started a study journal – another important PMG idea – record what I read and what thoughts the reading and pondering brings.

The first scripture that caught my attention is in 2 Nephi 6:7 where at the end it says ‘for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.’ The promise is that patience will be rewarded, but also that we must not be ashamed of what we know is true. That we should share it at all times with those we meet, even casually. So while we wait patiently for Him, we are to proclaim his gospel to others.

I am not going to write all that I find to ponder in this blog, but I trust that I will learn much as I read and ponder Isaiah. But that does not mean that I am going to enjoy trying to translate Bahasa to English.

We go to Jakarta Raya for church and we are the greeters until the elders get their with their investigator. He is a young man of 20 and this is his first time at church. He is very neatly dressed and seem to know quite a bit of English. Elder Erikson and Elder Simatupang are teaching him and have set a baptism date of December 9th. Since Elder Simatupang will be release either Monday or Tuesday, he will have to come back as a civilian for the baptism. But since he is in the Selatan branch that will not be hard.

Since he is about to be released, I talked to him a little about what he would do when he was released and suggested he come to the office so we could talk about it. His English is quite good – we had him translate for us during sacrament meeting – and he seems very sharp, so perhaps we can get him in an educational path that will lead to a good career.

During SS, while we were in the Gospel Principles class. The electricity went off and since the windows of the room we are in is covered by the security doors, we were literally in the dark. But we continues to discuss the Holy Ghost and I put in a couple of comments to keep things moving along. During Priesthood, brother Kancana was made the Quorum president with Lukito as his first counselor. After church we caught a cab back to the apartment. It turned out that the driver had enough English and we had enough Indonesian to get to know each other a little. It makes the drive much more interesting that way.

We have our normal Sunday afternoon and evening. We had naps and read for a couple of hours from the Kitab Mormon. I studied PMG, wrote in this journal and continued to spend a lot of time making vocabulary exercises. I am really convinced that this is one area where we can really help our students. I think Mary is correct about the grammar lessons. We are not going to work on tenses very much but work on their writing and speaking correct sentences so they just learn what is correct as we did when we learned as children. Before turning off the lights I read more Isaiah from the Book of Mormon.

It was a good day – I especially feel blessed for meeting with the missionaries and members in the Gospel Principles class. They had a good discussion about the Holy Ghost. I also feel real good about the vocabulary work I am doing. It may not seem very spiritual, but hopefully it will help to change lives of some people here in Indonesia long after we have gone home.

10 November 2007 – Saturday

I got in almost an hour on PMG before heading down to the gym for an hour. So I managed to exercise both my spirit and my body and all before 7:00! It is interesting that both studying Indonesian and working my muscles bring some temporary pain – How could I forget THAT word? & Do I have to do two more? – but hopefully long term gains.

I spend the rest of the morning on this journal, reading the Kitab Mormon with Mary, and doing some more vocabulary in context exercises. The time goes by quickly and we take a taxi over to the chapel. Sam is using the car to drive out to see his folks and later go on a date.

We have one client – Wawang from our English class – it is almost good that there were not more because we did not have Sam to help with translation. It takes almost 2 hours to get a person set up on Jobsdb and run them through how to use it and then apply for a few jobs. Mary did most of it because of the typing needed.

I spent most of the time cleaning up the office by putting away a lot of the things we used for the English class. For some I found storage space and for a large part I just got it all together in a single box so we can go through and organize it later this week. I also worked on the vocabulary exercises. Mary wants me to do some that are specific to her business class. Later in the day I decided I needed to do easier ones for beginners.

Just about the time we were packing up to come home, President and sister Lee dropped in to chat. We spent about a half hour with them – I gave sister Lee a vocabulary book to take home – and then caught a cab back to the apartment. We caught a ‘Silver Bird’ taxi – this is an upscale version of the ‘Blue Bird’ that we usually use. The strange thing about this is that while all Blue Birds are blue, all Silver Birds are black. Silver Birds are a little more expensive but are bigger and nicer – also the drivers usually speaks much better English. Our driver was great and we taught him Volcano, eruption and lava. He learned English so he could drive the better taxi and talk to his riders. He had learned from reading English books. So even if you drive a taxi, it is important that you speak English for the best jobs and tips.

Until Mary left for choir practice, we spent most of the day reading Kitab Mormon, napping, and such. Off and on I read from PMG Ind. I am reading are re-reading the part on the Kitab Mormon. Both to learn the language but also to understand the message the bretheren are trying to get across to us as missionaries.

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.

08 November 2007 – Thursday

I woke much too early but I still had a great morning. Since we did not have any place we had to be until 1:00, I spent almost a full hour at the gym. Then I worked on the blog while drinking my breakfast of orange juice. We than read from the Kitab Mormon until Sam arrived to deliver Mary’s clip board which had her lesson for her 1:00 English class at the mission office. While he was here we made a snap decision to go in so I could try to read a member to get an interview for Daisy. So in 10 minutes we went from a full rest to out the door.

At the office I tried to call the brother but they said he was not in. I then sent him another e-mail asking him to either write me at our personal e-mail address or to call me on my hand phone. I then spent a couple of hours working on ‘vocabulary in context’ examples. While I was doing that Mary went to the Family History office and learned all about the new consolidated search program. Later when we talked about it she said it was great and looks forward to using it.

We went to the mission office and it was still without electricity. All they had was a generator that supplied enough for a few lights, the computers in the finance office, and a couple of fans. Sam got us lunch off the street and we enjoyed that until it was time for Mary to teach her class.

She had to hold it in the dinning area because the usual room was without lights. I sat and read from the Kitab Mormon for most of the hour. I am happy with how much I can read without looking up words or reading the English translation. At times Mary’s class got really noisy and I later told them that they were having much too much fun for really learning English.

We then came home to an afternoon of relaxation. Mary was very tired and took a nap. I read the Kitab Mormon section of PMG. This is my second time through and there are still words I do not know. But that is OK – as long as the number of them go down each time. We later read together from the Kitab Mormon and even Isaiah is becoming easier. I don’t look forward with excitement to all those in 2nd Nephi but I also do not look forward with dread.

Cindy and Krista posted comments on our blog. I was especially happy to read Krista’s and I sent her an answer. She is going to all grown up when we get home.

I am still working on Vocabulary in Context exercises. I am enjoying trying to come up with short excerpts of articles that have words that the students might actually use. Hopefully I can tie this in with a vocabulary list that they can study. But the real reason for the exercises is so they can develop a feeling or technique for figuring out the meaning of unknown words by examing the words around them.

I feel great – brother Johnson Tobing sent me an e-mail setting an interview tomorrow for Daisy. I called Sam to make sure I had the correct number for Daisy and found that she was sitting next to him. It seems that those students from this class that decided to stay in Jakarta will stay close friends. That is good. If Daisy gets this job, I have been told that Wawang will move in with Sam and Ari and Daisy will take the other room in the apartment building.

We read for one more hour from the Kitab Mormon and finish 1st Nephi and I read from the Book of Mormon before turning off the light. It has been a good day and much busier than we expected.

Here is the whole gang on after the last class we taught on Tuesday November 6th. I told them I wanted one with them being serious and one for fun. I am afraid Wawang did not understand the difference. From left to right – Rudi, Puji, Ronald, Daisy, Femmy and Wawang.

We all made it – or that is what the certificates say. President Marchant with Femmy and Ronald after presenting them with their certificates.

Daisy and my favorite missionary companion handling the music for the graduation.

07 November 2007 – Wednesday

It is the last day of classes for this IEC. We are torn between feeling sad that we will not be teaching these fine young people any longer and the relief of not needing to prepare and give the lesson each day. I do not think we taught them the idiom ‘Bitter Sweet.’

The only activities of the day are opening exercises with their last reports – well for some their next-to-last report or talk since some will speak tonight at graduation – and the taking of the Michigan Test. Mary handled most of the opening exercises and I took over for the test. Which meant I got to sit for 75 minutes reading the Ensign and the Kitab Mormon. After the test we bid them goodbye until tonight. Sam then took us to Carrefore for a few things we needed for refreshments and then we came home.

We expected that our cleaning lady would show up at 1:00 but she did not. We are thinking she will be here at 4:00 which means she will only have an hour before we must leave for the church. We need to write down the date and time when she is to next come. She never did come. So we spent the afternoon reading from the Kitab Mormon, PMG, cleaning the apartment and taking naps.

The graduation went well and we had the Marchants, the walkers and their drivers as guests. It is too bad some of the English branch does not come, but they give us lots of help during the month so that is good. We had the students write thank you notes to all those who helped in any way. President Marchant gave a nice talk about how with hard work he overcame some early learning problems to be successful in school and life. He said they could do the same with English. Daisy had earlier talked about how it was up to them to continue to improve their English. The President handed out the certificates of completion and we took pictures of him with each student. We then had our refreshments and – after more pictures – we had everyone out the door by 7:30.

By the time we got home we were both exhausted. I think as much mentally and spiritually as physically. We kind of numbly watched something on TV – I think it was Law and Order – and then went to bed. I read some from PMG before turning off the light.

It was a good day with lots of blessings and tender mercies.  Hopefully some of the students did well enough in the Michigan Test that they will continue to work towards going to BYUH. Rudi mentioned that his boss wanted him to thank us for teaching him English. During the afternoon Daisy was called to be a part-time Family History Missionary where ever she ends up living. I am most worried about Wawang who is staying in Jakarta on the hopes that we will be able to help him find a job. I am not sure that is a good idea, but we will help him as much as we can. Puji knows just what she wants to do. Rudi will probably go back to working in construction and hopefully get more education. Femmy will become a famous hairstylist. Ronald will be a solid member of the church and hopefully find a young lady to marry. I certainly hope he gets this job in Bandung. It has been a good, if tiring, month for us. We have been blessed with good health, inspiration, and happiness. I think we also learned more about what is needed in this program so the next one will be even better.

I love this motorcycle shot. I call it ‘Indonesian Limo’ because of the partition between the driver and the passenger. The hole is so the passenger can tell the driver where to go, etc. The next picture is me with Edward Jung, a branch president in Korea. Over the next 7 months, I should get to know him better. We really do keep Sam busy. Here he is collapsed on the couch in the foyer when he should be in class.

06 November 2007 – Tuesday

I slept in until 5 which felt good. Normal morning from there on including reading from MIN. I hit a section with a lot of new words and thoughts. I had a good exercise session at the gym. We read some from the Kitab Mormon – the build the boat and get ready to sail.

When we get to the office we get the second printer working. As we are waiting for class time, we start talking about their test scores and we realize that the main problem is vocabulary. We did a lot more on vocabulary this time but we just do not have time to give them more than 300 or so new words. But I realized that we can spend more time working on recognizing vocabulary by context. So next class we will start them from day one with exercises working on that area. Hopefully that will help. Each class we hold we learn a little more and hopefully the next class will be better. As they say, live and learn.

I started the class while Mary worked on some material for her class for the office staff. After opening exercises and going through the words of the song, I gave them a little pep talk based on a thought that came to me this morning. I likened our class to an aircraft carrier and each of them as a plane. We can catapult them so they can get up to flying speed, but once they leave us in a couple of days it is like the airplane that drops off the end of the carrier. If they keep up the speed they can sour as high as they want into the air of English. But if they decide to cut the power – that is stop using their English and building it up – they will plunge into the sea. So their success or failure is up to them, because we have done all we can to get them going.

We kept them together for a couple of hours and then broke into two parts. Our group went through vocabulary and some vocabulary in context exercises and then called it a morning. Then everyone piled into our car and we went to the mission home. Mary to teach an English class, me to keep busy while she taught, and the students to go to the Walkers for their afternoon lesson.

While we were eating lunch, Mary remembered that the lesson was at three and not one – we went though this last week but we both forgot again. So we decided to go to SoGo. That worked well and we got back in plenty of time.

While Mary taught her lesson, I talked to president Marchant and he invited us to have dinner with them and the Wassons a Family History couple from Bankok. Because of the traffic, the Wassons were an hour late getting back to the mission home so we got to sit around and just talk to the Marchants. After the Wassons got there – they are staying in the mission home – we had a lovely dinner with lots of conversation. When it was over, we excused ourselves and caught a taxi back to the apartment. We kind of broke a rule and took a non-BlueBird cab home. We got a little worried when he took a way we did not know but Mary soon figured out we were going the right way. It turned out his way seemed faster than the way Sam usually takes so I gave him a nice tip.

Our students were busy all this time with the Walkers. They had a short lesson and then watched two of the ‘The Work and the Glory’ books. I have decided I am going to read those when we get back. Maybe they are on CD and we can listen while we drive all over the country seeing our children and grandchildren. Anyway I gave Sam enough money to take them all to the Steak House for dinner – a whole $20 investment. They also had some shopping they wanted to do so it worked out well.

By the time we got home it was late and we were tired so we did not read from the Kitab Mormon. I did do some studying from PMG before turning off the lights.