03 February 2008 – Sunday

When we found out that we did not record the funeral last night we looked for a re-broadcast. I was about to give up so Mary took over and quickly found one that would start in 15 minutes. Luckily we got connected and were able to watch most of the funeral before we left for church.  Since the first hour was a KSL special on President Hinckley’s life and I was recording it, we decided to read from the Kitab Mormon until the funeral actually started. We are in Ether and they are about to be told to build some boats.

Sam picked us up and took us to Jakarta Raya and then headed to his own branch. We found out that they would be using the last hour of the block and a couple more to watch the funeral. Since it would all be in Indonesia and we had already seem most of it in English we decided to come home after Sunday School.

A number of the members gave testimonies about their meeting President Hinckley. He was here in 2000 and a number of Saints got to see and meet him then. Hendra meet him when he was a translator for conference. And told the story of that and then later meeting him when he came to Jakarta for a visit. The Saints here have tender memories of the Prophet.

Unlike most Sunday afternoons and evenings, this one was rather busy. We had invited the class over for dinner and an activity. So Mary spent much of the afternoon fixing things for dinner – a Creole dish, salad, and biscuits. I was in charge of cleaning the living room and making the fruit salad. Mary also baked a cake for dessert. We even managed to read from the Kitab Mormon for about an hour.

They arrived at about 5:00 and when we were all sitting down while the food finished cooking they gave us presents. This really surprised us because none of the other classes even gave us a thank-you card. Mary got a really nice butterfly necklace and I got a shirt. We were greatly touched.

Dinner was a success – they hardly used the hot sauce I bought especially for the dinner. While we were eating I started ‘The Bee Movie’ and they laughed all the way through it. Another way we found that this group was different was that they washed the dishes before they left. Since that is usually my task, that made it much easier for me.

Once they were gone we started to read from the Kitab Mormon but not too long after we started Mary hit the wall and had to go to bed. She was asleep before 9:00.

02 February 2008 – Saturday

I have repented of my failure to keep up this journal in January and hopefully will write each day.

As the English Class winds down, the days are starting to blur together. Mary seems to not feel too well this morning so we cut short our reading from the Kitab Mormon so she could rest for a few minutes more. Hopefully she will get to feeling better because she has the High School class to teach today. I will try to take most of the morning so perhaps she can get more rest for this afternoon.

I should note that due to the rain, there is flooding in parts of Jakarta. This is not new for Jakarta but it was enough flooding to make the news and to get people talking about it. It is nothing like last year at this time so there was no need to start a public kitchen.

We taught the IEC – both morning and afternoon. We shared the morning and then in the afternoon I taught our class while Mary taught the High School class. We are only getting 2 to 4 to the class. Once we get done with IEC and the couple’s conference, we will try to meet with all the young people and their parents and see if we can get more of them to come regularly. It would be good for them and also for the seminary class that comes after the class.

After the class we came to the apartment and read from the Kitab Mormon – once soon after we got home and once before heading off to bed. During Zone Conference, the Zone Leaders challenged us to each choose 4 or 5 things that we could do one more of each day. One of the things we chose was to read one more page from the Kitab Mormon and we are trying to do that by reading a page or two before we go to bed.

Later in the evening I tried to hook into one of the streams that would broadcast President Hinckley’s funeral. We watched a special program on President Hinckley and I set Total Recorder to kick in when the funeral started. Unfortunately when we woke, we found that the stream had stopped before the funeral started so all we got was noise.

1 February 2008 – Friday

It started raining about 10 last night and it was still going strong this morning. Heavy rains continued to about 1:30 when it finally slowed down and then stopped. It reminded me of last February when the big floods hit on February 1 and 2. Hopefully that will not repeat this year.

We had a normal IEC day. The Walkers could not take the afternoon class – it was rather fortunate because we need the time to catch up with the homework assignments – and so we had them for both class periods. They are a great group – mostly relaxed but also wanting to learn. It is usually a pleasure to teach them. They still need lots of work on grammar but their conversational English is very good. I think for the next class we are going to start earlier work more on pronunciation.  I really think with some work three of the students and maybe four could pass the Michigan or TOEFL test and get accepted to BYUH.  That is our goal.

Mary spent much of the evening working on getting sets of materials for the High School English classes put together. We read from the Kitab Mormon – about 60 pages left for this trip through. In thinking back I am not quite sure what I did as the night just seems to have run by.