23 April 2008

23 April 2008 – Wednesday

It was a rather busy day for a P-day. We read from the Kitab Mormon in the morning and the afternoon. For about 4 hours we had the lovely young Muslim lady cleaning our house and a crew in replacing the air-conditioners in two rooms. We kind of worked around them because at times it was hard to find any room someone was not working in. I worked on my talk – I especially pondered a talk by Elder Packer about the Light of Christ that he gave at a New Mission President seminar. It was a long talk and I was surprised that he felt a group of established PH leaders such as that gathering would need a detailed – I imagine it ran a good 45 minutes – lesson on the subject. It brought home the fact that we all need to review again and again the basic doctrines of the Church. Each time I do I learn something new.

In his talk Elder Packer said that after the apostasy “the heavens were never closed.” That the Light of Christ is always in everyone who comes into the world, the Holy Ghost still visited the earth to testify and inspire, and that God still answered the prayers of the righteous. What was missing was the Priesthood – the authority to administer the ordinances of the Gospel.

After everyone left we had a short break before getting ready to go over to the mission home to be escorts for elder Bastian and Burr so they could go to president Smith house. We had to wait for a taxi and when we got one it turned out that he had no idea where to go so we had to coach him. The traffic was terrible until we got to Sudirman and then it opened up. We got to see a true fender-bender that turned into a hit and run. Unfortunately for the runner the traffic was so bad that those who were hit could get out of their car and confront him. They finally got him to pull over to the side. At least we had some entertainment while we waited in traffic.

When we picked up the elders, we told the driver where we needed to go and he had no idea how to get there and neither did we, so we paid him off and got into another taxi with an experienced driver.

President and sister Smith’s have a gorgeous apartment. Sister Smith and their daughter – who just was released from the Fort Lauderdale Spanish speaking mission- came home about 15 minutes after we got there. Not long after that president Smith showed up while sister Smith was still helping Elder Bastian with his headache problem. Since that was going to take some time, I helped the president take apart and put back together his TV – Stereo system in their beautiful new cabinet. Since they have a lot accessories, it took some time and a lot of work. But we finished just before it was time to leave. We were very happy when he turned it on and everything worked.

After a very interesting taxi ride with a driver who again had no idea how to get to where we wanted to go, we made it back to the mission home in time to share the Hashes farewell dinner with them, the Marchants, the Walkers and a brother Ron Smith who happens to have been the Walker’s next door neighbor in Utah and was visiting Jakarta on business.

We had a nice dinner and lots of good table talk for a couple of hours before brother Smith and us said our last goodbyes to the Hashes. We shared a taxi to our apartment and saw brother Smith off to the Marriott.

We got home rather late so while I did some work on the computer, Mary relaxed for a short time and then went to bed. I read some from the Liahona and then also went to bed.



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