13 December 2007 – Thursday 

Woke just before 5 and studied conference talks from the Liahona before going to the gym. I returned to the apartment to see gingerbread houses on the Mitchells site and rusty snowflakes in the living room. Unfortunately all the crocheted snowflakes that Mary stiffened last night has rust on them because it seems that Indonesian straight pins are not stainless steel so they rusted. Hopefully she can get the stains our with bleach.  

We went into the office early so Mary could get some practice on the piano and because we thought the seamstress was coming to pick up some more fabric so Mary could have a new Christmas wardrobe. She did not make it before we had to leave but hopefully we will be able to meet up with her on Monday. 

I did ERSC work and then switched to trying to lay out the goals we want to accomplish while teaching English to the highschool students. Besides becoming proficient in English we want them to realize the value of work, become spiritually stronger, and become goal and career oriented. I would also like to see them develop hope and vision for the future. 

After our office hours, we went to the mission home where we had lunch and then Mary taught her English class to the staff. While she was doing that I talked to elder Subandriyo, met the new missionaries, order air-line tickets for our trip to Solo in January so they appeared on this year’s budget, and later talked to the president about a number of things.  

We then headed for Tangerang where we did a lot of shopping for the January Intensive English Class. Once again it was to use up more of our 2007 budget so they would have plenty for 2008. I think that we will be doing much more traveling in 2008 as the High School English program is started in more areas.  

Then we had a good District Meeting with the elders. I gave them my LeGrand Richards’ talk about how we can only solve our own problems and not others. So we need to figure out how to make the problems our instead of saying things like ‘they are not willing to help us with missionary work.’ We must say instead, how can we make it so they want to help us with missionary work.’ I also talked to them about how they were going to implement the president’s call to work around the chapel to try and build centers of strength. I suggested that they concentrate on areas that included two or more active families. Hopefully they could get the families to help them find and teach in their neighborhood. In this way the investigators would have instant support. I think they might try this and hopefully it will work. There is great new – the first baptisms in Tangerang in 2 years will take place this coming Sunday.  

Once again we did not have any students for an English class. It is getting discouraging. We need to come up with some idea on how to get the people excited about English class. Especially the younger people. I must ask president Sudjud about switching it to another night. 

The trip home was a mess going on 2 hours. With Mary not feeling very good, it made for a long trip at the end of what was a long day.