05 February 2008 – Wednesday

Woke at 5:00 and read the Indonesian translation of Elder Ballard’s conference talk about service. I found it more difficult than other talks because it uses phrases and words that were not familiar.

After that Mary and I watched the press conference where the new First Presidency was introduced. It was wonderful to see President Monson, President Eyring and President Uchtdorf walk in. President Uchtdorf said in his remarks that it was obvious that his call must have come from God because no man would have chosen him. As they spoke, I felt the spirit confirming that they were called of God.

It is a shame we did not thing about watching KBYUTV earlier in our mission. It would have been a great way to spend some of our time at the apartment. What is really great is that we can go back a couple of weeks and watch just what we want with fairly good video and audio.

After breakfast we read one page from the Kitab Mormon. That does not sound like much but since time was short it is all we had time for. It takes 15 to 20 minutes for us to read a page out loud in Indonesian, do our best to translate it into English and then read the English version. So reading 6 to 10 pages a day takes anywhere from 1 ½ to 3 hours. But it is a great blessing for us for we learn Indonesian and get to know the Book of Mormon better. Now if I could just remember all that we read it would even be better.

Today was our last regular one for our IEC-3. Tomorrow we will give the young ladies and Sam the Michigan test and then in the evening we will have the graduation. It is the best of times and it is the worst of times. We divided the teaching for the morning class and then Mary went to the mission office to teach an then to Solo to do our grocery shopping. So that left me teaching the afternoon period.

I must confess that my heart was not completely in it. But one great thing happened. Sesi pointed out that I was teaching them incorrect grammar. We were doing an exercise about ‘I wish’ and I said that a sentence should say – ‘I wish I was  home.’ She very nicely said that she wanted to disagree with me and that it should be ‘I wish I were home.” She then turned to the page in the book that showed me I was wrong and she was correct. I was both embarrassed and happy and I told her so. But I always knew I was not the one to teach English grammar and will always be amazed that the Lord has me doing it.

At the end of the morning class, I gave them my pep talk about how it was up to them as to what they do with what they learned in the class. I gave them the example of an aircraft carrier that launches a plane and then it is up to the pilot of the plane if they fly or crash. I also encouraged them to get an education but to be sure to come back to Indonesia and help the Church grow.

After class we came back to the apartment. We had so many groceries that Titan and Hani had to help Sam and I carry them up.

For the second day in a row, I took a much too long nap. But we managed to read 6 more pages from the Kitab Mormon tonight. I listened to a talk by President Eyring on BYUTV and read the latest Church New. It was dedicated to the life and accomplishments of President Hinckley.

We got an e-mail from Puji, one of the students from our second IEC. She wrote that she was getting married today and she knew that it was the right thing to do. We had heard that she was thinking about getting married to a non-LDS man and members in the area were worried. I wrote back wishing her a happy marriage and told her to keep up her English and stay active in the Church.

04 February 2008 – Monday

I slept well and so did Mary. We read from the Kitab Mormon before going to the chapel. I had to stop and get some money because the cost of getting all the kits ready for the other missionary couples is very expensive. It is a good thing that we have a budget.

The students were really loose today. They worked hard and had done all of their homework, but they were breaking up and out a lot. They have become comfortable with us and that is good. I think they would do whatever we asked.

One thing we did today that impressed me was I gave them a list of about 115 vocabulary words – including 24 that they had not had as official vocabulary words. I gave them about 18 minutes to write as many definitions as they could in that time. Our four best students all got over 105 definitions – I am not sure they were all right because I did not take the time to check that. But we went through those words they did not get and any that they had questions about. I did not ask the other two how they did, but they both worked hard at the exercise.

Mary did most of the morning class and I did most of the afternoon class. This allowed both of us to work in the office for a long stretch. As we were closing up for the day, I mentioned that there were only two days left. Erna said she was sad that it was coming to an end. It was nice to hear that – hopefully they have all gained from this month of classes. They certainly have a wider vocabulary now and hopefully they have more confidence in their language skills. Now if we can just get a couple of them to pass the Michigan test it will be great.

Soon after we got back to the apartment, we started reading the Kitab Mormon. However I was really tired so we cut it short and I took an hour nap. I hope that it was just the fact that I much of the last three hours and that I am not getting ill.

We got another great letter from the Taylors about their High School English class. It is a joy to read about how they are doing with their students. I am adding their letter to the bottom of this page…it is things like this that makes all the effort and time worth while.

I did write back and ask them to evaluate how all the time and effort that goes into this class is affecting their other work. It will be interesting to see their response.

“We’d like to report another super successful week in our Intensive English Program.  Our class is increasing in size.  We now have a non member attending our class and he seems to be enjoying it.  We have several others who have inquired about it so we may end up with quite a large class.

The other day while compiling a list of our students and their birthdays I noticed that we had just missed one of our student’s birthday, so I baked a cake for him (Mega) at our next class and served it with ice cream (a favorite of all Indonesians).  He was asked by our class president to say the closing prayer.  He is our extremely shy young man that has been inactive for a number of years.  He knew no English when we started this class.  He had never said the prayer in English.  When he stood to say the prayer he said, “Before I say the prayer I want to thank Elder and Sister Taylor for my cake,” then he said the prayer.  He said all of that in ENGLISH!!!  We all were so surprised and excited.  The class cheered him.  This and other great experiences make all the preparation time worth it.

Our Relief Society provides the meals on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.  We do the meal on Fridays.  We call it American Friday. We were not to have our class this last Friday because we had to be in Solo for our missionary zone conference so we had our American night on Thursday.  We actually fed them Mexican food, but explained “Tex-Mex”  food.  We had chicken enchiladas, Spanish rice, refried beans, guacamole, and salsa.  These were new flavors for them but they loved it, especially the Spanish rice and the enchiladas.  We sang “This land is your Land , This Land is My Land.”  They had never heard it, of course ,because it is an American song.  We gave them the assignment to rewrite the first two verses to make it an Indonesian song.  It will be fun to see what they have come up with.

Because of President Hinckley’s  funeral we only met long enough to pass out a Book of Mormon in English to each of them and explain  that each class one of them will be assigned to give a scripture in English.  We shared our own experience of reading the Book of Mormon in both languages in our effort to learn Indonesian.  We know they will be blessed if they will do it.

Our driver, Sikta is going to teach our classes while we are in Bali.  We still have to have everything prepared for him but this will be a good experience for him and for the students.  Thank You for letting us be a part of this inspired program.

From Yogakarta,
The Taylors”

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.