29 December 2007 – Saturday

Morning of going to the gym and reading from the Kitab Mormon.

We go to the office where I work on a couple of lessons about the Career Workshop and Mary does more on activities. We are down to less than a week before we have to have some kind of a lesson plan that will take up 16 to 20 hours – we need to have at least a month’s lessons which we can give to the Roberts and the Barnards. We arranged for Daisy to come on Monday and help Mary get some of the game pieces ready. I think we will use her for other things also.

There is a lot of activity in the building because there is a graduation program for Institute. We have a chance to talk to brother Tandiman for a while about the program and about scholarships. I later talk to president Bob and any students who might need a scholarship to go to high school or the university. He is going to look at his branch and get back to me. I see no reason why we should not use brother Limbong’s offer to help our young people find jobs and careers.

After office hours we caught a taxi back to the apartment so we could grab a little rest before going to the party at the Limbongs. We were the first ones there – as usual we could only guess how long it would take to get there. Soon the rest of the missionaries arrived including the Kanes and the Walkers. The Marchants and their children also came but much later. We had a nice meal – the sate was a little more spicy this time – and a good talk with the Kanes. Brother Limbong asked each missionary to tell a little about themselves and share a special experience that they had in Indonesia. Also he asked them to sing a song. The Kanes and I sang a quartet and this led to the young missionaries to sing as a group – making things a lot shorter than if each companionship had done one. The one interesting thing I learned was that Elder Morano only joined the church about 18 months ago after being introduced to it by a friend.

The party broke up at about 8:00 and we gave the sisters a ride home. We had a good time talking to the sisters – they are a great pair of missionaries. They are always up, full of energy, and have a positive attitude.

As an aside, we received copies of the new lesson manual for PH and RS – The teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It is a two year manual and that means it is rather thick and heavy – especially in Indonesian because it is about 100 pages longer. It is going to be a challenge to take both languages to church. I started to read it in Indonesian and found that I had to look up about 10% of the words. The missionaries say that the manuals are written in medium difficult Indonesian…I hate to even consider what really difficult might be like. What is encouraging is that I can figure out some words because I know the root and also because of context. My guess is that I know more of the language than I think I do but I am afraid to use it. Mary remembers much more than I do…but she always has.

A mission is a great growing experience. It has not been anything like what I expected and in talking to Elder Kane tonight he said the same thing. That each day is an adventure and a learning experience that goes beyond that which we considered when we put in our papers.