17 July 2009 – Friday

Slept well and woke to a cold house. When I went on line so I could read the latest news while eating breakfast the headlines were that there were bomb blasts at two hotels in Jakarta. One was the Marriott where any visitors from the area office or church headquarters stay. I wrote to Elder Subandriyo and then the Rebers to find out if anyone from the church might have been hurt. I would imagine that Indonesia is about to go on the dangerous for traveling list.

We spent most of the morning waiting for the garage door serviceman to come and finally called to find out where he was. He ended up coming just before we had to leave for Esikhawini’s youth meeting. He took the whole unit in to be repaired. Waiting gave me the opportunity to post a lot of pictures and catch up the blog.

At Esikhawini we had one of those days that tries your faith. It is next to the last time we can have a rehearsal of the road show and only 5 youth showed up. But we did not let that stop us from running through the whole thing a couple of times and then splitting them into groups and having them practicing their parts. I took the two young ladies who are going to open the show and rehearsed their whole scene until they seemed to understand what they should do. By the time we were done they were even adlibbing a bit and having fun. Hopefully they will get their parts memorized because they have the best scenes in the show. As they left one of them said that she used to act and really enjoyed being part of the show. It is things like that which makes up for the stressful times. After the meeting Mary gave a piano lesson and then we locked everything up before heading home.

I forgot to mention that before the meeting started I sat and talked with Sister Mathe. She is one of the gogos who tend their gardens here. I asked her about her husband and found that he died in 1991. I learned more about her children – 3 died quite young from AIDS – and grandchildren. Like so many grandmothers here, she is raising most of her grandchildren and trying to make it possible for them to go to good schools. We spoke about how it is so important to have the youth understand that by living the commandments they are safer.

On the way home we stopped to buy what we need to feed the missionaries on Sunday night. As we were checking out Mary mentioned that we could buy electricity along with our groceries so I did. However when she tried to actually get the pin number to put into the meter, the municipality site was off line and we had to get a refund. But while the woman was working on trying to help Mary two people we knew joined the line. One was a woman who was investigating the church we went with the elders to meet and the other was Calwyn Baldwin who is the district clerk. I guess every one needed electricity tonight.