Our romantic Valentine Day dinner – A young man waiting for luggage at the airport. I loved his hat when the temperature was about 80 degrees and very humid. Another motorcycle load during rainy season. Note the load on the bike between his knees.

18 February 2008 – Monday

Woke about 5 and after reading some of a conference talk in Indonesian and checking out the latest mail while it was available, I went to the gym for the first time in about 6 weeks. I did a very light workout so as not to hurt anything. Stepping on the scales was not a joyful experience. But it felt good to do some sit-ups and ride the bike.

I have just about caught up with my journal. It will be a relief to get my thoughts and memories on paper. Right now I am waiting for the November 2005 conference report to load so I can get a copy of then Elder Eyring’s talk on spiritual preparation.

We read from the Kitab Mormon but only 3 pages as neither of us seemed to be fully with it. Sometimes that is just the way it is. I went on and read President Eyring’s talk in Indonesian. There are still too many missing words to be able to read it well but I can certainly get enough to clearly understand what he is writing about.

Before going to the office we stopped – that sounds much easier than it is in Jakarta – at Carrefour to get 8 reams of paper for the copier. I had the paper and was at the check-out line in a couple of minutes. But as usual it became the longest line in the store. To make it short, every customer in front of me and myself had a problem so a 5 minute stop took about 15 minutes. It is a good thing that I am learning to be patient.

At the office I started cleaning up from the last English class. Mary worked on things she needs for her class tomorrow and some other English activities. We are slowly recovering our office. I answered a lot of e-mail. The best thing was that we were able to get a call through to Tom using the phone card. Unfortunately it had a terrible delay and it broke up often. However just hearing a few words and sharing some thoughts made the day better. I do not think the family knows how much we miss them and how much their letters, blogs and calls mean to us.

Sam went and got a lot of things done. We need to get the car repaired before the insurance runs out. He had to go to the police station to make a report and to the insurance company to get an OK to get it done. When he got back he called the repair station and found that it would take 10 days to get it repaired because they are going to paint the whole car.

When we found that it would take 10 days we decided that we could use cabs for many of the days and President Marchant said we could use his car on Thursday so we can go to Tangerang. We then decided to go to Central Java next week to check up on the English classes.

Speaking of that, Elder Subandriyo wrote to tell us that yesterday he was in Semarang and the class will start there this week. So we will end up visiting three cities on our trip. Hopefully Ed will not be coming at the same time. We will probably take 4 or 5 days to do this. Hopefully when we get back the car will be finished.

When we came back to the apartment we read again from the Kitab Mormon and then I got my journal ready to send to post or send to Jim so our blog will be caught up. I also have a lot of pictures that I need to post. So I imagine I will spend much of tomorrow at the office doing this.
I watched a couple of programs on BYUTV – actually I fell asleep during the second one about a poet that was a convert to the church and teaches/taught at BYU Provo. Mary kept busy all night getting packets ready for the HS English class. She had to figure out in what order to put everything together. I am not much help because she kind of makes it up as she goes. She still needs to write instruction for all of the games that she made card for.

As I was working on the computer, I decided that just for the fun of it I would see if I could post on our blog. I have not been able to do this for over 6 weeks and during that time I have fallen way behind in posting from the office. To may amazement, the first post went right through without a hitch – in fact it was very fast. So I ended up catching up the journal part of the blog and then posted a lot of pictures. It is a lot easier to do it from here because I can just use the Word Perfect files – if I take them to the office I must change them to Richtext files. Hopefully the site will not shut me out again.

As I sit here there is lots of thunder and lightening going on outside. The rain has been heavy for about an hour. The rainy season should be winding down soon.

Before turning off the light, I read the Church News of Feb 9th about President Hinckley’s funeral and the new First Presidency. Then I picked up the November 2005 conference talk by President Eyring where he outlines “four settings in which to practice quick and steady obedience.” One of these is the command to feast upon the word of God and talks about his our experience of reading the Book of Mormon as President Hinckely challenged the Saints to do. He says that he was already planning to read it again.

I made the same plans for reading the Book of Mormon during our mission. In the MTC it was pointed out that if we read 5 pages a day we can finish the book in about four months. I thought that was a good goal to set. I am happy to say that we have managed to average about 7 pages a day with each page being read 3 times. It is a good way to start and finish a day.

One of the blessings of the mission is getting together about every 6 weeks with all the missionaries in the Zone to get instruction and to share their great spirit. This one was on January 31st. The first is of course all the Zone. The second show the Kanes and Walkers discussing the finer points of eating off paper plates without the help of a table. The Kanes and Walkers are on Humanitarian Missions and are doing some great things for the Indonesian people. Especially with clean water projects and wheelchairs. The last one is of an elder who decided the best way to enjoy the conference was too stretch out on one of the benches. Actually he had terrible headaches for a few day that really left him weak.

We stayed at Kuta beach which is where the terrible double bomb attack happened. The first shot is the memorial that commemorates the tragedy. On Monday night we all went out to dinner at a restaurant that featured some Balinese dancing. This was us with them.  The main feature of the trip was the actual Senior Couples Conference – 13 hours of instruction and sharing. The picture shows the Hashes and the Barnards – two of the 10 great couples that are serving in Indonesia.

We had only one full day to see some of Bali. This is the restaurant where we ate lunch on Thursday with the Kanes and Roberts. The first is a view of the men’s bathroom. The next is the main dinning room. The dinning areas are tucked away within the garden. There are plants, water features, statues, and art work everywhere. The last is our personal dinning area. The food wasn’t bad either.

As I said in a post, there are temples everywhere in Bali and this was a very large one because it was basically an art temple.

We held our Senior Couples Conference in Bali – the first picture is all the couples, the second is the Western group arriving at the airport. The last one is a family of three on a rainy day. We had never seen anyone use an umbrella – and this one is soooo pink – on a motorcycle. I do not see how she managed to hold it up straight. It just goes to show you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Especially in Jakarta.

I have not been getting many good motorcycle loads lately. The first one is a neat load of crepes – usually they are over flowing the bike but this guy liked to keep things in order. The second picture does not do the load justice but I could not get it from the side. This is a huge, unbalanced load. I was sure he was going to fall over and spread the load all over the street.  The last one is a load of empty paper cement bags. Sam said that they would re-use them. In Indonesia they re-cycle just about everything, but I wonder if he was not going to use them for something else

Our third Intensive English Class – we came to love each of our students

The class chipped in and bought us some presents. I got this beautiful shirt and if you look really close you can see Mary’s new necklace.

Hi gang -  As you can clearly see I have brought the posts up to date. The great thing about this is that I did it from the apartment. For about the last 6 weeks I have had to either send my posts to Jim or do it from the office. But about 30 minutes ago, because I was having trouble with some other sites, I decided to give it another try and BINGO the first one went through so I quickly posted the rest. Now I am going to try pictures and since that is what seems to have cut me off last time, I am writing this first. If there are not some pictures after this, you will know that the site decided to throw me out again.

17 February 2008 – Sunday

Normal Sunday morning. Mary did not sleep well but other than that everything is good. We read four pages from the Kitab Mormon.

We were happily surprised to get a call from Bob this morning. We talked about the apartment and perhaps going to Disneyland this summer. We are not at all trunky but it is hard not to do some planning ahead. It is always good to hear from the family and Bob can call for only about $3 for a 30 minute call.

We go to the Jakarta Raya branch meetings. Elder Herman – one of the new missionaries that came in on Wednesday – is serving there with elder Thiemann and elder Suseno. Elder Herman is from the Kirtland, Ohio area. He is not actually in the Kirtland ward but is in the same stake. That would be rather cool to be there and volunteer as a tour guide.

The President has done something different. He has split the Zone Leaders between Bogor and Jakarta. I do not think I have heard of this but it does make some sense since this way two districts have good leadership instead of just one.  We got there early enough to greet most of the members before going in and sitting down in the chapel.

The talks were on Charity and I was pleased to find that each talk covered different ideas and scriptures. I could follow a little of what was being said but not much. Mary was asked to play for the rest song and of course accepted. I do not think she knew the piece but played it well. We were really happy to see Marie Saunders at the meeting. She still does not have a job so they have very little money and so everyone can not come. She was wearing jeans but no one said anything.

Gospel Principles class consisted of 5 missionaries and two newer members. They did not have any investigators. Our lesson was about ‘The Church Today’ and I brought up the 3 fold purpose of the Church for discussion. At the end I bore testimony about the first vision and that Joseph was a prophet.

PH was also very lightly attended. Half of the class was missionaries and Sam. I hope this does not become a regular thing. There was very little give and take during the lesson on the divinity of Christ. I participated a couple of time but did not get much out of it. I was able to follow the reading in the Indonesian manual – that made me feel good.

We came home to the apartment and after eating a peanut butter and jam sandwich I decided I really need to catch up this journal and send it to Jim for posting. I am also trying to get to our mail. I can see that there is not much there but it is frustrating not to be able to read it. If it is like this tomorrow I will call and complain. I am determined not to watch much regular TV today so I plan to study PMG, read scripture and watch things on BYUTV.

We read from the Kitab Mormon and then both of us took naps. After the nap we watched a good program about Nauvoo and the temple on the computer. Then we read another hour in the Kitab Mormon. While Mary was fixing dinner I tried to get into the mail but did not have any success. But after a dinner of macaroni and cheese with fried Spam I found that I could access the mail.

There were a number of letters to read and answer. Sister Creer’s letter from the Dublin mission said that President Creer just got back from a one day conference in England where a seven page letter from the new First Presidency was read with a major emphasis on missionary work. It seems that no time is wasted in taking up the mantle and setting to work. It will be interesting to hear the conference talks in a couple of months and see what they have to say to the Church.

I called and talked to Elder Kane this afternoon and found that Sister Kane is better but not well. I do hope she does not have anything serious wrong. At couples conference Sister Hash talked about the month it took her to recover from a bout of Dengue Fever. It did not sound like it was fun.