I was surprised by these pictures. In the first one I did not notice the big box that the passenger is holding because I was interested in the ladder. Mary says that she noticed it and how awkward he looked trying to hold on the ladder with one hand and this big box with the other. In the second one I was trying to capture the nice looking box with its distinct logo and did not notice that I also got another picture of a ladder carrying motorcycle. After months of not getting any shot of ladders, I got three in as many days. Two of which I did not even know were there.

17 November 2007 – Saturday

I was really tempted not to go to the gym this morning, but I decided that I really needed to go. Why is it so hard to keep up good habits and so easy to keep up bad ones. Especially when it come to eating and exercising. If I looked forward to feasting on the words of Christ as much as I do to having Thanksgiving dinner, I would be much better off spiritually. Anyway I enjoyed the gym and later enjoyed reading from the Kitab Mormon.

When we arrived at the office, we found that there would be a wedding and that we were invited. Other than the missionaries from the branch, we were the only bulais there. I have mentioned before that an LDS wedding here is about the same as home. Since they do not have a temple nearby, they use the chapel. The only real difference is that after they are pronounced husband and wife they kiss each other on the forehead. This is because public display of affection by kissing is considered gauche. The other difference is that after the vows and rings are exchanged, a member of each family some time to express their thoughts and thanks. Then everyone gets in line to congratulate the families and the new couple. Sam played the piano – Mary told him to make sure he did not play too loud and he was perfect until it come to the postlude where he started to pound a little until Mary told him to tone it down.

After the wedding we went back to the office where I tried to send letters to all the Indonesian BYUH students. Unfortunately I seemed to develop an aptitude for making mistakes. I managed to mix up two sisters – real sisters not church sisters – so I made one about to graduate in mathematics when she is really a freshman in math – with her sister who is graduating in 2008. Then there was the case of sending an e-mail to two wrong addresses. Which is good since it seems I had already sent him one a couple of weeks ago. I was about to give it all up when I decided that was not right and so with patience and perseverance I got through them all. I hope we can be some help in getting them to major in careers that they will provide them with good jobs.

During part of this time Mary and Sam were off to Sogo. Where they picked up orange juice and BreadTalk along with Sam’s new girlfriend. When they got back, Mary dropped a bomb by saying they are planning to go to the temple before June. Talk about going from acquaintances to engaged in a flash. It was not two weeks ago that we were trying to convince Sam to go out on his very first date to a point where they seem to be seriously talking about marriage. Of course we think it would be great because we could go with them if they actually go in May.

We worked on our new English class material. We are basically looking for good activities that can be used over and over again. We had one of our regular Friday afternoons and evenings. We had some lunch, read from the Kitab Mormon, napped, read more, dinner, and now I am working on this journal. Later we read from the Kitab Mormon for the third time. We find that we are reading almost exactly where we were 3 months ago.

I guess it was important that I did not give up on sending those e-mails this afternoon. We just got an answer to the last one I sent – one of those I would not have sent if I had given into frustration. It was from a brother who I thought would graduate in about 6 months telling us that he would be graduating in 28 days and was returning to Indonesia in February. At that point he wants to get a job. It seems that the Lord knew his need and made sure I did not stop. Here is the start of his letter that touched me:

“I am so surprised but at the same time so happy to receive this eMail. The past weeks I have been pondering what I want to do after my graduation, and again I reflected back to my experience toward the end of my mission when my Junior Companion asked me what had I planned after my mission? I told him the Lord would provide me, and I did get a job right after my mission. I am not saying you would provide me a job, but it is just encouraging to know that there’s someone in Indonesia who care a lot about my future plan, in fact more than I do care about my own future plan :). How did you guys know about me?”

And we wonder at times if the Lord knows our names!

Mary bead shopping. This little shop probably has more beads than what you might find in a large mall store. Mary had a great time looking through all of these goodies for just what she wanted for her necklace.

These are for Shauna – you might want to expand your business into a Dental Boutique and Beauty Clinic with a branch here in Jakarta. Also you might consider making false teeth. There seems to be a big market for them here.

Elder Tuxworth about 3 hours before he got on a plane to head home to Australia. Sam snapped the picture without warning us. Elder Whitmore on the day he was to be released with our good friends elder Roper and Thiemann. Elder Thiemann was just called as the Barat Zone leader and elder Roper was just being released as an office elder and has now been transferred to Solo…I think.

I shot the first picture so I could get the bread cart. As I looked at it, I discovered that I had captured almost all means of transportation in one shot. What is missing is an ankat and a bus. I also noticed I had a picture that I have been trying to take for quite awhile – a motorcycle carrying a ladder. This is not as big a ladder as some we have seen but it is a decent sized one. The bread cart is one of a fleet of carts that go out each morning and travel through the living areas delivering and selling bread. They pedal down the main streets right along with the cars, motorcycles and buses. Jakarta is an amazing city.

Two motorcycle loads that, while not spectacular, are interesting. The first is carrying badminton racquet, towels, and other goods. The blue and gold baskets carried bread. All of these loads adds interest to our many hours in the car.

Three pictures of scenes I found interesting. The first is a soccer team. What is not clear is there is a bus behind this first group that is filled with fans and another 20 or 30 are sitting or standing on top of the bus. It is stopped right now, but they will stay up there when it starts to move. It is amazing that we don’t read about 50 young people dying when one of their buses is in an accident.

The second scene I call – Competition. On the far side of the lamp post you can just see a fruit seller. For many months he was the only seller on this corner and he was always busy selling mangos. About two months ago the seller nearest the camera moved next to him. He brought in mangos and papaya. So the first seller brought in papaya. Now it appears that the newest seller is getting more business than the first one. What is really interesting about this is that both of them probably pay some gang that allows them to set up their stand there. If this is true, obviously the new man on the corner paid enough to get this choice spot that whoever is in charge allowed him to compete with the first seller.

It just goes to show that location, product diversity, competition and in this case probably a bribe works in Jakarta as well as the rest of the world to produce a successful business.

16 November 2007 – Friday

Study Indonesian from PMG – I never cease to be amazed at how quickly I can forget what a word means. The Lord seems to be testing my patience by letting me slog on without the gift of memory! I am stretching out my exercise routine – trying to get back in shape at the age of 69 is not easy. To anyone who might be reading this – stay in shape from your youth. When it says ‘super-size’ it is talking about your waist as much as it is the portion. Take it from someone who has said that way too often.

I had a rather busy morning, mainly doing a lot of writing. It seems I spend a lot of time at a computer writing journals, lessons, e-mails, etc. I am not sure that a computer is always a blessing. Perhaps the Luddites have the right idea?  We read from the Kitab Mormon and finished the Isaiah sections – it is like coming out of a storm into a peaceful countryside. At least even Nephi realized that Isaiah was difficult to understand.

We went into the office to get some things done and to pick up some books before heading to the mission home and our second district meeting. When we got there, I took just a couple of minutes to talk to elder Subandriyo about Ezra and the English program. The district meeting went well and they were nice enough to do it in English. I gave the spiritual thought – about the call to implement an English class. Elder Teng gave a lesson on ‘Goal Setting.’ It was the same topic that we discussed last night in the Tangerang district. I mentioned to the A.P.s that PMG carefully says that district and zones are not to set goals for missionary companionships – they can set Standard of Excellence, but the companionship should set any goals.

After the meeting I spent another couple of minutes with Elder Subandriyo and my thoughts on branches where they are too far away from the branch to meet there each day. I said I thought that what would be needed was a 3 – 4 hour class, once a week. He seemed to agree, but ask me to run it past President Mac. We would try it here first before initiating it in other areas. I just thought about the problem of where there is no couples.

As I spoke with elder Subandriyo, I could see and feel the urgency that he seems to have about this program. He wants to get it started right now. It must of been how Nephi felt when the Lord told him to build that ship. All he could think of was what he needed to do first and had faith that everything would fall into place if he just got started. I think that is how elder Subandriyo feels.

I made Mary’s day by suggesting we go to Majestik so she could shop for some beads and material. It a truly wild place where you can get anything that has to do with clothing, hobbies, and just about anything else. Mary wanted to buy some beads so she can make a necklace. She knew right where it was and a great time picking out just what she wanted. The whole bead shop is about 4 feet by 6 feet and was just jammed with shelves covered with little boxes of beads.

While Mary shopped I walked around and got hot. I took a short movie of a man who free-hand embroidered a piece of material. Mary said that she had seen him sew lace.  As we were walking back to the car, she stopped in to look at some material. We found a gorgeous piece of blue print, that even I was excited about her buying for a skirt and blouse – to be worn separately.

That was it for our outside work for the day. Back at the apartment we spent time reading from the Kitab Mormon, taking a nap, and eating our date night meal of Pizza Hut pizza. Then I sat down at the computer and hammered out a very early proposal for the new class which I then sent to president Marchant and elder Subandriyo. It gives a basic time line for getting things started with a short pilot program and then a little longer one. We will fly to Solo on the 26th to run the short program for four days. We hope to have the first full time class up and running by the middle of the month and with the Lord’s help it will come to pass.

15 November 2007 – Thursday

This is the first Thursday in over a month that we will go to Tangerang for the district meeting and to teach our English class. We are going early to have a meeting with Lukito and Agus about employment – I am afraid it a backseat to our IEC last month. We are going to have to do something about that for future IEC.

Normal morning but we had some extra time because we do not have regular office hours today. I continue with my exercise. Next I posted a lot of pictures and comments on the blog. Keeping up the blog takes more time than I expected. I can see why Cindy and Kristy do not post each day. We diligently read in 2nd Nephi – we continue to work our way through Isaiah.

We go to the office for about 45 minutes so we can do some necessary work and to pick up some things that we will need later. I make the agenda for tonight’s ERS meeting. We get away early enough that we do not get caught in the lunch time rush.

However as we are about to the mission office, I got a call from elder Subandriyo that rapidly changed what we will be doing for the next couple of months. Possibly it will change the rest of our mission. He told me that he had a vision of a version of our Intensive English Class but on a local level for all the high school students. He feels that they can meet and be taught 4 days a week right after school is out. They would get a meal and a lesson. Mary and I are to make it work.

When I asked him for more details, he said that he had the vision but not the solution. That sometimes that is the way things happen. I immediately thought of when President Hinckley announced PEF as an inspired program that would change the church. He then called men to figure out how to make it work. It took them about 2 years to get it working correctly but it is changing the church in some areas of the world.

Since we were just getting to the office, I went right in and talked to him. I hoped to get a little more instruction. The only new thought I got was that he felt that in 3 years, all high school graduates would be able to converse, read and write English with confidence. I told him we were for it but before we could suggest a curriculum we needed to find out the level of the students it would be aimed at. We decided that we would need to go to Solo for a few days and see for ourselves. So on the 26th we will be in Solo and will hold classes with the students.

It is a humbling experience to be told that we are to be in charge of developing a program that he feels with change the church in Indonesia. However it is not the first time we have been in a position where a program we would help to develop would have a major effect on the future. When we were serving our first mission at the MTC, we help develop the system where the missionaries practice teaching in their languages. There has been some changes since we left over 10 years ago, but the basic principle has not changed and it is now one of the main features of a missionary’s experience at the MTC for learning their language. Hopefully we will set in motion something here that is as effective and long lasting.

While Mary taught her class, I started brain-storming some basic ideas. While I was doing that I got a call from elder Roberts in Solo asking what he was supposed to do with this new program. I told him we had only got the assignment 40 minutes earlier and I had not quite worked out the details yet. I told him we would be in Solo on the 26th to get some feeling for what needs to be done and then hopefully come up with how it is to be done.

When we left the mission office, we headed for Tangerang and our other meetings. We stopped on the way so Mary could buy some poster board for her music. She also found Uno and Monopoly in Indonesian. While we were in the Mall it begin to rain but not very heavy.

We had out 4 p.m. ERSC meeting with Agus and Lukito and basically told them that while we will be able to help somewhat, that they will need to run the country program themselves. So Agus will make the work class schedule for next year and will have it for our next meeting.

We then went to our first Tangerang District Meeting in 5 or 6 weeks. It is always a blessing to sit in one of these and hear how the missionaries are doing and to share in their great spirit. Elder Cheney is the new district leader – I think he will do fine once he gets a little more confidence. The other new elder is elder Worwood who we had met once before but did not get to know well. He has only been out two or three weeks but is doing well.

We did not have an English class because no one showed up. For some reason they did not have a seminary class and Agus and his family told us that they would not be there. So we packed it up and came home. We read from the Kitab Mormon and I have been busy with English matters ever since.

Two other things happened today. First elder Subandriyo mentioned that someone in the states is starting a fund to help members who do not have enough money to send their children to high school. The Bennetts will be happy to hear about that one. I will send them the information as soon as he sends it to me.

Ezra Subandriyo has been accepted to BYU Hawaii and will go there on December 26th.  He showed up for Mary’s English class and I told him that we would be happy to teach him one on one during the week. He is excited to do this and we will probably start on Saturday. It is good to find someone who is eager to learn as much as he can.

 

When we stopped at the restaurant, there was this chopped down scooter sitting next to the door. Sam decided to climb on for a picture. On the right hand side you can see an arm reaching for a green branch that is stuck in the fender. This is what they do when a vehicle has broken down. It lets folks know that it is not going to move anytime soon so they might as well go around. It is like us putting out reflective triangles or flares.

14 November 2007

The pictures and comments below covers the time the ceremony was completed, everyone had been seen and hands had been shaken.  After we left the ceremony we stopped at the restaurant we found a few months ago that had the best chicken sate we have eaten. Elder and sister Kane agreed about the quality of the sate and elder Kane loved the nasi goring.
As we drove back into Jakarta we found that we missed a really big storm that blew down trees and signs all over the city. The rain also flooded streets. Sam took an alternate route to miss a mess he heard about on the radio. We hit one bad spot where the street was so flooded that there was only two lanes where we could get through. Since 5 or 6 lanes fed into this bottle neck we were lucky it only took us 15 minutes to get through. As we drove in to the complex we looked back to an area we had driven through not long before and saw that now it was a solid mess. The Lord blessed us in many ways on the way home.

It was a good day for us. We got to see the Kanes and share some experiences. None of us can believe almost a year has passed since we met at the MTC. We talked some about teaching English – we have learned a lot there also. The ceremony was quite interesting, but it was meeting and interacting with the families that made it so special. What to us looked like semi-finished eye-sores, to them were mansions. Hopefully they will not suffer such loss again.

We have truly been blessed to be able to serve this mission. To learn to work together to accomplish tasks and programs. To have good health, to make good friends, to see things we would never have seen any other way. I do not know if we will ever come back to Indonesia, but anything is possible. We will see what the Lord has in store for us. What I do know is that Indonesia will be a part of us the rest of our lives and for eternity. I am sure some of the friends we have met here we will see on the other side of the veil. The gospel changes lives, it unites families, and it provides opportunities to serve.

14 November 2007 – Wednesday

Because the Walkers in Aceh taking part in the handover of a major project, we got to go with the Kanes to a project handover above Bogor. While handovers can be big things – there is one next week that has 450 invited guests and who knows how many people who will just look on – this one was rather small. But it was huge for the people who were directly affected.

In the latter part of 2006, a fire raged through a section of houses that was home to some 23 families with a total of 132 people. After the fire they had no money to rebuild their homes and so they were all living crammed into tents. One of the members of Bogor’s Rotary Club asked them to take it on as a project and they asked LDSC to contribute some of the money.

Today 14 homes were handed over to these families – more than one live in a number of them. Unfortunately they decided to make some alterations to the houses – which they could do – that used up the alloted funds before they were completely finished. But they have waterproof semi-finished homes to live in while they finish them. They are much nicer than the dirt floored, single story wood homes they had before.

One of the alterations is the balcony you see below. It runs all the way around the second story and ties into other older houses. As you see they do not believe in railings – a truly dangerous situation but there was nothing LDSC or Rotary could do about their choices.

The outsides were supposed to be plastered but they used the money for this balcony and extra windows, etc.

The handover ceremony is very formal in an informal way. There were representatives from the home owners, from the local district, from the government, and of course Rotary and LDSC. Each head of household signed the documents in three places. Elder Kane greeted each one after they signed and then signed for LDSC. Afterwards everyone wanted to shake hands and Mary got in the mix with the Kanes.

This young lady in Red got Mary’s attention and she took many pictures of her. Latter the young lady got bored and fell asleep on her mother’s shoulder. The young man has polished off lunch -there is always lots of food at one of these programs – and is washing it down with a container of water. I liked these young ladies who could not stop giggling at having their pictures taken.

Everywhere we go in Indonesia we find small wonders. We had never seen these plants before – we need to get a book of the fauna of Indonesia to see if we can get names for them. When you ask most Indonesians what is the name of a flower, they say ‘bunga!’  Which of course means ‘flower.’

While we sitting waiting for the ceremony to start I looked across the yard and saw this great stone wall. This is another interesting thing about Indonesia. Even in small villages up in the puncak – top of the mountains – you find wonderful stone walls. Usually they are not as detailed as this one which stretched for about 100 feet or so. I can not imagine what it would cost to duplicate this in the US. But I would love to have it along the South side of our yard.

Jakarta fuel truck – this is a much nicer rig than most. Hate to be near it if there was an accident.

Jakarta’s version of a tandem rig – we had not seen this before, but about 20 minutes later we saw another matched pair. You can tell it is the rainy season when more and more loads are wrapped for protection. This is one of the neater ones.

The picture does not do this justice and we could not get next to it so I could show the side view. It was impressive.

13 November 2007 – Tuesday

It was a full day for us and it touched all the areas that we work in.  We open the office for helping with employment and Wawan came in to send some resumes. He seems to be really trying to find work, so I am torn between wanting him to succeed and wanting him to go back to Semarang and strengthen the branch. Much of the time, I worked on more vocabulary. Mary got her English material together, practiced the piano, and did some genealogy. She really likes the new Family Search program and is excited that it should be available to everyone next year.

Next came our trip to the mission office. While we were driving I got a call from Lukito saying that he needed the office laptop for our meeting tonight. Since it was back at the apartment, that meant we dropped Mary off so she could teach English and then Sam and I would get the computer. About the time the call came, Mary realized she had left her purse in the office so while we were in the area, we would stop and get it also. And so it happened!

When we got back I found Mary sitting and reading. I thought that they had cancelled the class, but it seems that as soon as she got there, the few students she had asked if they could start early – it seems they all wanted to leave early. Since my meeting with the District Presidency did not start for almost 3 hours, we decided to go to the Mall to look for some more posterboard for Mary’s music and to have dinner. We decided to splurge and eat at BurgerKing. And so it happened.

I had an opportunity to talk to Elder Subandriyo and got some counsel on a problem that had come up. We talked about the teaching of English to the high school students in Central Java. I think it is an inspired idea. I certainly hope it works well. He suggested that we might need to go to Central Java and observe some of the classes to see what might need to be taught.

The meeting that I had with the presidency was very interesting. They want to do something to help with the unemployment and underemployment in the district. They wanted to review the Self-Employment workshop and if it was helping anyone to become successful. We could not point to anyone that had seen their business grow after taking the class.

They had brother Putranto come in. He is the man who is looking for salesmen throughout Indonesia. He has developed a very successful sales organization and he started with nothing. To make a long meeting short, the presidency asked us to come up with a program that helps the youth prepare to be successful and to help those who have no job, and little in the way of skills, to understand they can make a good living by selling products. Either for someone else or for themselves. Brother Putranto is living proof of what can be done with vision and hard work. We will meet again in two weeks to give our ideas.

After the meeting we had a chance to say goodbye to Elder Tuxworth who is heading home to Australia on the Red Eye. We did not work very long with elder Tuxworth but I will miss him – especially his soft voice with a great Aussie accent. The new office elder with elder Rowberry is Elder Smith who we first meet in Tangerang. The new AP with elder Teng is elder Bastian who we do not know at all. The new Zone leader with elder Hadi Suyatmo is our old friend Elder Thiemann who we met at the MTC when we first started learning Indonesian. I wonder how many of these young men and women we will ever see again? Hopefully we will see some at reunions – but if we go on another mission in January of 2009 – that means the first reunion we could go to would be April 2011!

12 November 2007 – Monday

It is interesting that 4:00 to 4:30 seems to be the time I am going to wake up. It is like the Lord is telling me that spiritual exercise comes before physical. I continued to read in PMG – I am now in ‘Sifat-sifat seperti Kristus’ and I can move through it fairly quickly. I enjoyed my trip to the gym – I seem to be sweating less and doing more reps. I am also happy to see that my weight seems to be going down once more – perhaps I have broken a plateau. As I wrote that I thought about how there are times when I seem to be stuck on a spiritual plateau and I only start going up when I make some change in my routine. Often it does not need to be a major change but it has to be something that is different and possibly not at first comfortable to do.

The rest of the morning was fairly normal, except a call from Elder Bennett that took some time but was very informative and necessary. There are some things we need to do and perhaps some fences that need mending. Indonesia is a small country when it comes to the Church. The ripple from waves travel far and fast – especially with cell phones and SMS.  Anyway that interrupted out Kitab Mormon reading for a while but we ended up getting the better part of 4 pages. The reading was challenging but enjoyable. We are getting good at the lists of things that come up so often in the writings.

We went to the mission home to deliver the Michigan tests that our students took last week, talk to president Sujud, speak with the Walkers about home teaching tomorrow night, and just saying hello to others – as well as goodbye to elder Whitmore who is heading home tomorrow. I thought we had missed saying goodbye in person to elder Tuxworth but I just called him and he does not leave until midnight tomorrow so we will see him at the office when we go for Mary to teach her class.

Then we went to SoGo for assorted things. While we were there I went to the ATM to get some cash and came across a modern art display. There were some nice pieces but they wanted too much for them. I think we will go to the gallery sometime and see if we can do some bargaining. The young ladies who were running the exhibit did not seem to care one way or the other.

We then went out to make one of our home teaching visits. Brother Salim has a nice little in house business that has allowed him to send his two children to good schools – including one to BYUH – and to have a nice Indonesian home. His son is in Taiwan learning some graphics so he can work for his uncle’s international business.

It takes about an hour to 90 minutes each way – and that is if there is no real traffic jam. So the round trip including the visit took 3 hours. I figured out it would take me about the same time to home teach a family in Salt Lake or Bountiful. No wonder they have a very low home teaching percentage.

11 November 2007 – Sunday

This morning was very special. As we were reading from 2 Nephi 8, where Jacob is warming up for major Isaiah quoting, I started my usual complaining, I do not see how Mary puts up with it for almost all of 2nd Nephi, on how impossible it was to translate it well. Mary pointed out at one point that we should not be surprised that we do not understand it in Indonesian when we can’t even understand it in English. I started to agree with her when some thing caused me to pause. It did not feel right.

After we finished I started thinking about this problem when it came to me that the Lord did not include these section in the Book of Mormon just so I could complain or so we could make jokes about it. I thought back almost 50 years ago when I came out of a stake meeting complaining to those who came with me about what a waste of time it had been. As I said that I got the message that the Lord did not send us to any meeting to waste our time. If I had found it a waste of time it was because I did not come prepared to hear the reason I needed to be there.

From that time on I have tried to make sure that I did not ‘waste my time’ by paying attention to what was being said or taught. Seldom have I been disappointed. Something comes up that is important to me or brings up a thought that leads me to ponder on.

As I considered this I decided that I would read the Isaiah chapters in English and ponder what was said and what about them I need to ‘liken unto me.’ This is one of the main ideas of the section on the Book of Mormon in PMG. So I started a study journal – another important PMG idea – record what I read and what thoughts the reading and pondering brings.

The first scripture that caught my attention is in 2 Nephi 6:7 where at the end it says ‘for they shall not be ashamed that wait for me.’ The promise is that patience will be rewarded, but also that we must not be ashamed of what we know is true. That we should share it at all times with those we meet, even casually. So while we wait patiently for Him, we are to proclaim his gospel to others.

I am not going to write all that I find to ponder in this blog, but I trust that I will learn much as I read and ponder Isaiah. But that does not mean that I am going to enjoy trying to translate Bahasa to English.

We go to Jakarta Raya for church and we are the greeters until the elders get their with their investigator. He is a young man of 20 and this is his first time at church. He is very neatly dressed and seem to know quite a bit of English. Elder Erikson and Elder Simatupang are teaching him and have set a baptism date of December 9th. Since Elder Simatupang will be release either Monday or Tuesday, he will have to come back as a civilian for the baptism. But since he is in the Selatan branch that will not be hard.

Since he is about to be released, I talked to him a little about what he would do when he was released and suggested he come to the office so we could talk about it. His English is quite good – we had him translate for us during sacrament meeting – and he seems very sharp, so perhaps we can get him in an educational path that will lead to a good career.

During SS, while we were in the Gospel Principles class. The electricity went off and since the windows of the room we are in is covered by the security doors, we were literally in the dark. But we continues to discuss the Holy Ghost and I put in a couple of comments to keep things moving along. During Priesthood, brother Kancana was made the Quorum president with Lukito as his first counselor. After church we caught a cab back to the apartment. It turned out that the driver had enough English and we had enough Indonesian to get to know each other a little. It makes the drive much more interesting that way.

We have our normal Sunday afternoon and evening. We had naps and read for a couple of hours from the Kitab Mormon. I studied PMG, wrote in this journal and continued to spend a lot of time making vocabulary exercises. I am really convinced that this is one area where we can really help our students. I think Mary is correct about the grammar lessons. We are not going to work on tenses very much but work on their writing and speaking correct sentences so they just learn what is correct as we did when we learned as children. Before turning off the lights I read more Isaiah from the Book of Mormon.

It was a good day – I especially feel blessed for meeting with the missionaries and members in the Gospel Principles class. They had a good discussion about the Holy Ghost. I also feel real good about the vocabulary work I am doing. It may not seem very spiritual, but hopefully it will help to change lives of some people here in Indonesia long after we have gone home.