11 March 2007 – Sunday

The alarm went off at 5 but I did not crawl out of bed until after 5:30. We have to get moving because we need to leave by 7:15.

I must confess that I was not looking forward to 5 hours of church meetings. However I had a very good time. We went to sacrament and part of SS at Tangerang 1. I did not get much out of first sacrament meeting because I could not hear very well. But they had the primary sing and that was special. I felt sorry for the missionaries because they did not have any investigators show up.

Tangerang 2 meetings were great. It is a vibrant branch with a lot of PH. The branch president is much like I was when I was bishop. That is he gets right in and is part of his branch. He goes to SS and to PH and participates. He smiles a lot. We were asked to speak in Sacrament in two weeks – they will give us the theme.

I actually look forward to doing this in Indonesian. Since the elders had two investigators, we went to Gospel Principles. The lesson was on the fall and Elder Roper was the teacher. I love Elder Roper – he is very spiritual and yet he always is smiling and enthusiastic – I will really miss him when he is transferred. At the end of the meeting I pointed out that Eve had to choose between two goods – something we are often faced with.

After the GP meeting I mentioned to the branch mission leader that I had that calling until about 4 months before we came on our mission. He asked me if I had any words of wisdom for him. I challenged him to have the branch give a minimum of 10 referrals to the missionaries each month. I promised him if they would do that, then they would have at least on baptism each month. I think he took up the challenge – we will see if it works. PH was lively – I contributed a couple of points and Elder Roper and I shared favorite scriptures on prayer.

I continue to try and learn Indonesian by reading from Gospel Principles – I am working on the section about prayer – and reading Kitab Mormon with Mary. Today we got back into the Isaiah verses. I have decided that he got paid by the word and that is why instead of just saying that Jerusalem and all it’s people would be destroyed, he went into great allegorical detail about what was going to happen to the Daughters of Zion. On most of the verses we did not even come close. I am ready to just skip them but Mary reminded me that in the last WW Leadership meeting Elder Packer said that we needed to read all of 2nd Nephi. So we have decided to read the next 20 pages in English.

We decided to prepare beef stroganoff for dinner and that project turned into a comedy of errors. First we could not find the stroganoff mix that we knew we had bought. When we found that I put the water into the wrong part of the rice cooker and then realized that I had not washed the rice. Here in Indonesia you must wash the rice twice to get out the dust and other stuff. I learned this from Elder Subandriyo during our service project. After getting all this done and having everything ready to go, Mary discovered we are out of fuel for the stove. End of cooking stroganoff. (A note here – as I was typing this, I realized that the Leishmann’s kept an extra tank of fuel in the storage room. So we could have had stroganoff. At least we could have if I did not blow up the apartment changing the tanks. Tomorrow the fuel and water man – we are also on our last 5 gallons of clean water – will take care of all of this.) I had tomato soup and toast for dinner. Mary is still figuring out what she will have.

Looking back it was a good Sunday.  The highlight was the men choir that sang during sacrament in T2. I chickened out and did not join them but sat and enjoyed their singing. As I looked over that small group of humble PH holders standing shoulder to shoulder, the spirit touched me. These are the men – young and old – that will someday see Indonesia a fruitful place for missionary work. Some will live to see a temple built here. The strength of the Lord’s church is in the hearts and hands of these people. It is wonderful to be able to add even a little to the growth of the Kingdom through our missionary work.