06 February 2008 – Wednesday

Mary woke too early and could not go back to sleep. Hopefully she can get a nap sometime during the day. I slept OK but not great so it should be an interesting day. In keeping with that theme, the internet completely down. It seems to be a regular occurrence lately and it does no good calling the company because they just do not seem to care. The one bright spot of the morning is that we read from the Kitab Mormon.

This was the last day of our IEC. In the morning we gave five of them the Michigan Test – Hani and Titan could not take it because they had taken it just before they came to our class. Hopefully they can take it in a month or so. I do not think any of those who took it today will get above 70 but we can always hope. I think they could function in a US college but doubt if they could do well. While Mary was giving the test I read from The Wizard of Oz with the two young men. We had a pretty good time and carefully went through the vocabulary – hopefully they will continue to work at reading and vocabulary.

After the class, we stayed in the office. Mary worked on things for the HS class and I started downloading and saving a very good English Grammar book that is on the web and can be used for free. It not only has excellent, but difficult, lessons, it also has exercises and the answers for each chapter. My guess is that there are 600 plus pages in the book. I am amazed anyone would do that much work and then give it away. I am going to write her and tell her how it is being used in Indonesia.

We came back to the apartment for a few hours to rest up for the Graduation program tonight. Mary needed to make the certificates and wrote some nice cards for the students. She is very thoughtful in this way.

The Graduation program ran much longer than we expected. There were terrible traffic jams over all the city and the Walkers were a half hour late getting there and this held up our starting because Hani’s father is the Walkers driver. Once we got started things went well and we were happily surprised when the Venturas came in. This was the first time someone from the English branch came to our graduation program. Also President and Sister Marchant and Elder and Sister Subandriyo came.

Everyone had a part in the program – Mary and I gave very short remarks. President Marchant and Elder Subandriyo gave some remarks and then the President gave out the certificates of graduation. After we closed it was time for lots of pictures, ice cream and final hugs and goodbyes. We will always remember this class – and all of the classes – and hope that their time was well spent and that they will keep studying and learning English.

By the time we got home we were quite tired but we read again from the Kitab Mormon before going to bed.