22 January 2008 – Tuesday

During the day we received the following letter from Elder Subandriyo.

Dear couples,

Thank you for your devotion to the program.  I just returned from Cambodia and
had a youth fireside attended by large number of youth.  I challenged the youth
in the next 3 years they should hear my message without interpreter.  I shared
what we did in training our youth in English with mission president and the CES
couple and they are excited about it.  Cambodia mission has probably 15
couples,one for each unit.  Cambodia also has large number of youth who are
hungry of learning.  The state education level is a little bit low than
Indonesia, but the spirit of our youth will compensate it.  I will be back to
Cambodia Feb 9, I hope I will be able to gather up date information of our
program and its curriculum and present it to mission president and CES couple. 
The CES couple informed me that their seminary attendance this year is down
compare to last year.  We are hoping the English program could help improve
seminary attendance.

Terima kasih banyak atas kasih dan pelayanan anda semua.

Eld Subandriyo

Later in the day he dropped by the chapel and we talked for a short time. I asked if this meant we needed to get a teaching package together so he could take it to Cambodia in three weeks and he said yes.

 Since we had talked about the idea of introducing the program in Cambodia, I was not surprised that he was going to do this. What surprised me was the timing. We have only been actually holding classes for two weeks in two cities and while it looks promising, I thought he would wait until some of the kinks had been worked out. But since he was the one who had the inspiration to get us moving on the High School program, I will not question his decision to move it forward at this time.

If – or better when – this program proves successful, who knows where it will go. Perhaps in a few years we can see it stretching across Asia or the world.  We are just excited – and at times overwhelmed – by the idea of all LDS high school students being proficient in English when they graduate.

Other than that it was a fairly normal Tuesday. Mary and I taught the morning class and then Mary left for the mission office so she could teach her English lesson there. (Later she said nothing went quite right.)  I stayed behind so I could teach the class until the Walkers came. They had a luncheon to go to and knew they would be late. I had a good time teaching the students – I gave them a repeat of the test they had on Saturday to see how much they improved.  After correcting the test I found that all of them improved their grade, but only two of them really did well.

When the Walkers came, I caught a taxi and went to the apartment. It was not long before Mary got back. We spent the rest of the evening reading the Book of Mormon, working on English projects, and watching some T.V.

I forgot to mention that in the morning I was studying PMG in Indonesian and found that one section of the Holy Ghost was completely different in Indonesian than the English version. My guess is that the English version was changed after the Indonesian one was already printed. There is more information in Indonesian than English.  I have found this true with other publications but with so many languages and so many books and manuals it not surprising. What is surprising is how few times this is so – at least from what I have worked with.