27 December 2007 – Thursday
Both Mary and I slept in – that is we made it past 5:30. I went to the gym for a good workout. I managed to not gain any weight over the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday. I did not lose any either. I realized that I just do not do much in the way of exercise. I am either sitting in our office, our car or our apartment.
We went to the office and worked on English lessons. I also wrote and answered some e-mail. Elder Barnard wrote to say that the floods were a problem in their area. I wrote back to ask about damage to member’s homes. Floods and landslides have killed 60-80 people in Central Java. I hope none of our members are hurt. I have not heard back from the Hashes who live on a hill in Malang. We of course have little action on the job front at this time of the year. Everyone seems to be too busy to even worry about looking for a job. I also caught up our blog for the last few days.
In the afternoon we went to Tangerang for district meeting. We stopped at the mall so Mary could get some things from the store. She and Sam did the shopping while I bought donuts for the elders. Mary told me she liked not having me with her while she shopped because she did not have to hurry. Sam told us that he and Annie changed their plans and will get married on May 4th. It is hard to believe that it will happen so soon – just two months ago they had not even had a date.
The Tangerang district is doing better on getting progressive investigators. They are having problems getting 15 lesson taught. Elder Vatcher taught the lesson and seems to be quickly improving his language skills. It is amazing how quickly they pick it up. Of course they had two months intensive training before they come so they have the basics down before they get here. Still it is great how quickly most of them progress.
An investigator came for English class and elder Cheney was prepared and wanted to teach the class so once the class got started we left. Where it often takes 1 to 2 hours to get home, tonight we made it in just over 45 minutes. You just never know with Jakarta traffic.
Today we read twice from the Kitab Mormon – we are in the part of Alma where the Title of Liberty is raised by Moroni. It is not easy to understand how the Nephites or at least part of the Nephites so quickly went from being strong, faithful members of the Church to being apostates. As it says in the Book of Mormon – how quick we are at times to turn to iniquity and how slow we are to honor God.