14 December 2007 – Friday 

Up and worked hard at the gym. I have decided that I spend a lot of time sitting in offices, cars, and meetings. My only real exercise is at the gym. I am afraid I need to step up my exercise a notch or just be happy with very slow weight loss. I am afraid we turned this into somewhat of a P-day. Mary and two helpers made cookies all day. We could have definitely bought them for a lot less but Mary says they would not have been as good. But I am getting ahead of myself. 

After reading from the Kitab Mormon and each taking a short nap we got busy. Daisy and a friend arrived with Sam at 10:00. While the ladies started in on the cookie making, Sam and I headed out to do a number of errands. First we went to BCA and got our prize TV – I will not say free because there is a 25% tax on prizes – 1,250,000.00 in this case. The young woman who helped me was the one who had tried to convince me on the phone that I had won. She was very helpful but even with that it took almost 45 minutes for us to complete the transaction and get the TV loaded.  

We then headed for Carrefore where we did a number of errands before going back to the apartment. When we got there we found they were very busy baking lots of cookies. Sam and I installed the new TV. It is a very nice flat screen LCD with a very, very sharp picture. Well worth our investment. I will hate to leave it here in Indonesia but the only way we could get it home would be to ship it with the Kanes furniture and then pick it up in Canada. Or have them bring it the first time they came down to Salt Lake to see their daughter. 

Mary decided that she really should go to the chapel and practice the piano and to pick up some printing we were having done. So I stayed here and wrote a lot of e-mails – we got a nice letter from Hal Lonas which I answered – and worked on doing more organizing of our latest photos. I got a great shot of a very bulky load today.  

The rest of the day was pretty much dealing with cookies. Elder Walker called and said they needed more for some food packages they were making up so they sent Ari over on his motorcycle to pick up a couple of hundred. We still probably have 150 more – most of which we will take to work tomorrow and let the elders and sisters snack on them during the day. 

After the young ladies went home, we ordered in our Friday night pizza and then watched a DVD of ‘The Good Shepherd.’ It is a very strange, slow and dark movie about the CIA. I am glad I saw it once but would not care to see it again. I am now going to read from MIK before going to sleep. We have rehearsals of the missionary Christmas program all day tomorrow and then a performance in the evening.  

It was an interesting if not overly spiritual day today. I did feel the Lord in my life today but it had to do with praying and reading. I did not do anything wrong – but I am not sure I did any good in the world today.