18 February 2008

couples-valentine-dinner-feb-14-2008-the-piers.JPGyoung-man-waiting-for-luggage-jakarta-airport-feb-15-2008.JPGmotorcycle-load-prepared-for-the-rain-feb-2008.JPG

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.



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