The famous ant that Mary had to have – it is about 2 feet tall – and so we had it wrapped so we could carry it on the airplane. The other one is a picture of a Muslim wedding that the Kanes went to. Very traditional and according to the Kanes the most beautiful wedding they ever attended outside a temple sealing.
23 May 2007 – Wednesday

When to bed late and slept in this morning. It felt good.

Yesterday we got pictures from Cindy and a great letter from Tyler. I find it hard to believe that Taylor and Tyler are getting ready to graduate from high school. It seems like yesterday that they were born. I will always remember hearing Taylor, long before we got to see her. She was born with a good set of lungs – as we all know! And Tyler is learning to drive Arthur – I remember buying Arthur for Cindy so she could get around in Provo while going to BYU.

Unfortunately Mary has caught some kind of bug that keeps her attached to the kamar kecil. Sam says that every missionary gets it twice so you might as well get them out of the way so you can enjoy the rest of the mission. I am not sure Mary would agree with him at this point. Hopefully it is a passing thing – no pun intended – and she will soon be feeling 100% again.

We continue to read from Kitab Mormon – each day is a revelation of some kind. I find things that are new and exciting – after 50 years in the Church I continue to find new things that make it exciting and helps me grow. I think one of the reasons the Prophets keep reminding us to read the scriptures is that it is a way to bring new light into our lives and keep the Gospel new to us. As I have often said – when I was young I thought I knew all the answers. As I grow older I am just starting to know the questions.

Mary decided not to go to work today – we were worried that we would get caught in a traffic jam at the wrong time. So she stayed home to work on TOEFL and other things and I went to the office. On the way we stopped and dropped off some printing that we needed done. I will have to take a picture of our favorite copy shop – it is not Kinkos. I doubt if any piece of equipment in the shop is under 5 years old – and that is the new pieces. But the cost is less than a penny a sheet so it is hard to complain about the equipment.

I spent most of my time in the office working on e-mail. I did have Sam call one of our patrons about a job I found in the paper today. I try to keep an eye open for those jobs that I think some one who has contacted me might be an opportunity for them.

Agus and Lukito came in about 12:30 and we had our monthly ERS meeting. We made all our plans for the workshops over the next month or so. We will not be going to any of them for at least a month – the English class will take care of that. We talked about the need for more information about placements so we can make a fuller report. This is going to take some time to get through to them, but hopefully by the time we leave there will be some real progress.

While this was going on Sam took the seamstress over to the apartment to give Mary her new things and to take orders for others. She is going to end up with a great wardrobe. She was disappointed in the dress she got and sent it back to be re-worked. Mary thinks she does some things – blouses and skirts – better than others – dresses and jackets.

After the meeting I closed up the office and we went to the mall to buy some books for the English class and to get some printer cartridges refilled. One of the biggest office expenses we have is printer cartridges and paper – I would guess we do a lot more copying than the Leishmans. The mall was not crowded but busy – it is always busy. I meant to take some pictures to show what a middle class mall looked like, but I of course got busy looking at things and forgot.

The evening at home was quite normal. Mary seems to be getting better and that must be a real relief to her – I know it is to me because I was starting to worry. I had lunch off the street – way too much food – so I was not very hungry. I settled for a bowl of rice with green beans – not that different from what I had for lunch. We struggled through two pages of Kitab Mormon – we had a very hard time working out what was going on. It was one of those sections where things are compared one to another and Indonesian is not really good for that. Especially not deep theology and philosophy. I am becoming impressed with the words that are used in the Book of Mormon. We have decided that while the thoughts are complicated in English and Indonesia, they were simple – that is they did not take many symbols -  in Reformed Egyptian and that is why they were used.

While Mary watched a movie and crocheted, I wrote in my journal and caught up with some of the news – I also watched the movie in bits and pieces which did not take a lot from it because the plot was not all that difficult. As it ended I decided that I had seen it before but it obviously did not make a big impression.

I continue to try to increase my Indonesian vocabulary. I know that it is increasing and more and more words are sticking in my mind, but at other times I find myself forgetting simple words that I should know because they are used all the time. Depat, dengan, and datang (can/able – with – to come) are three words that I have struggled with for months – I can usually remember two of the three but often I have to stop and think really hard what they mean.

When I finally learn this language I am going to do all I can to never forget it. Once we get home I plan to listen, read and try to speak Indonesian as much as I can. Maybe I can help out at the MTC. There is no use wasting all this effort after we are released from here.

Primary Choirs are the same everywhere – this one is from Tangerang 2 and includes a number of our regular English students. A big, colorful load – not heavy but very wide. My Indonesian Giraffe that Mary bought for my birthday.
22 May 2007 – Tuesday

The start of a new work week. Most of it will be dedicated to trying to figure out what to do with a group of English students for a full month. We have a number of TOEFL study guides to go through and to decide how we are going to go about this thing. It is going to need a lot of study, thought, work and above all prayer. As I mentioned before, I think I now know what Nephi must have felt when the Lord told him to build a ship. Or maybe more like Bill Cosby’s Noah when the Lord told him build an ark – “What’s an ark?” “How big is a cubit.” In my case it is “What is a particle?” I suppose I am going to be mumbling about this English class for the next 5 weeks. I need to remember it isn’t raining rain, its raining opportunities to grow.

Regular morning at the ranch. We read through 3 pages of the Kitab Mormon and Mary suggested we stop. This does not happen very often. Usually it is me who calls a halt to our reading. The problem was that she was falling asleep as we read. So I had her lay down and take a short nap before Sam came.

We actually had two visitors today at the office. One was a patron who we helped a week or so ago to fix up his resume. Today we added his picture which should mean he gets more interviews. He is such a nice man and very good at what he does. I certainly hope he gets a good job. The other was a real surprise. It was brother Basuki, the branch employment specialist from Semarang. We had met him when we went there for a Career Workshop. The Bennetts are working with him to help people find jobs. He was in town for his work – he sells insurance – and he dropped by to see us and to meet with a customer. He is the father of four boys – the two middle ones are twins and are serving their missions. One of them is in our district and is as cheerful as his dad.

We got started on looking through the English books we have. There is certainly plenty of information and things to teach. The hard part is going to be choosing what the students need and teaching it in such a way that they become good enough to pass the TOEFL or Michigan test if that is their goal. I do not see any problem with those who just want to improve their English. I am sure we can teach them to speak, read and write English well, as well teaching them ways to keep up their English after they leave the class.

After office hours we went to the mission office to meet with Elder Subandriyo about the English class. He has decided that he would really like all the class to be returned missionaries so he wants to see if he can get a couple of returned sisters to come the class instead of the two young ladies from Bogor. If he can not find them by Friday we will tell the Bogor sisters to come. I am rather hoping that he does not find any since the two young women seem to me to be the strongest candidates and I would really like the pilot to have some strong English speakers.

We also talked some about the mushroom project. I am going to ask the Kanes to buy 10-20 packages of fresh medium and let us try to grow mushrooms in different parts of Bogor and Jakarta to see if it can be done. I am hoping that even if we can not grow mushrooms down here we can get the medium to fill in and in that way we could at least sell it for people to grow in their own homes for food or even to make a few extra rupiahs a month. A kilo a day would provide about 7000 R a day which would mean about $24 US a month. The difference between surviving and doing OK.

After reading another three pages from Kitab Mormon, we watched ‘Letters from Iwo Jima.’ Although it was pretty well done, I must say that it was not the quality I have come to expect from Clint Eastwood. The human interest was good but the true ugliness of war did not seem to come out. Also the Americans looked much too clean – the pictures I have seen of what soldiers looked like after a month on the lines were that they were in rags and looked haggard from keeping their eyes open for the enemy.

When I went to bed I started to re-read the Kitab Mormon sections that we had read earlier. As I read again the part where Alma is explaining what he has learned about the resurrection, I was touched by the fact that Alma states that part of what he is telling his son is definitely true because he had a spiritual witness to the facts. However he also gives his ‘opinion’ about some ideas or questions that come up in a discussion. In this he differentiates between a testimony ‘I know’ and an opinion ‘I think’ and shows that the source of real truth lies in the witness of the Holy Ghost. The section also shows that when we really want to know if something is true, we can sincerely ask God and he will answer our prayers.

These are all the couples who are now serving in Indonesia. Most we know well and they are now close friends.
21 May 2007 – Monday

Up early to study some Indonesian – I went back through some of the verses we read yesterday in the Kitab Mormon and picked out the words I still did not know. This – as usual – led to me digging into the roots of the word and then expanding that to look up words used in the examples the dictionary gives and then… So it ended up – like so much of my study does – in not getting very far with what I started to study but way off on a tangent. It like when in Sunday School class the discussion starts out talking about Eternal Marriage and ends up talking about the beginning of the practice of polygamy in the Church.

After breakfast and a quick trip through the paper – corruption continues to be part of every front page – I finished yesterday’s journal and got it posted. I noticed that the number of posts continue to grow each month. I am glad I do not have to read it all.

It is P-Day so we do the laundry, clean up, and then Sam picks us up to go shopping. First it is we stop at Carrefore to get supplies for our English class. Then it is up a few floors to get TOEFL books so we can have lots of different tests to use in the classes also a couple of books on teaching that we hope will help in the Intensive English Class that starts in about a week.

The next stop is SoGo and BreadTalk – we are still too early for a good selection. I guess Mondays is catch-up day and they had not caught up yet. We will have to try it at about 2 p.m. next time. Our final stop of the day is the mission office where I drop off a bill and talk to Elder Subandriyo. He says it is a go for the English class – he seems to feel that we need to find a place for the students to live. I guess that everything but supplying the money for housing and food will be our responsibility. We talk briefly about the mushroom project – I do not think he is ready to spend much time on this. If it is to work I am afraid we will have to do much of the start up work.

Once we are home we eat some lunch and then watch a movie. We then do a final clean-up before the maid comes. Why does that word some wrong – cleaning lady sounds so much less pretentious. I was surprised to find that one of the members that was visiting the Tangerang branch had nannies for their children – I had never really thought about a member having nannies. Of course there is nothing wrong with that and it does provide a couple of people some work, a good place to live and food to eat. I imagine if we were living here with our young children and could afford it, we would hire nannies, maids, etc. For $250 a month you could hire – 3 to 4 people and they would all love to have the job.

The maid comes we are reading from Kitab Mormon. She gets to hear some of the gospel in our poor Indonesian. I am hoping that it will make her curious about what we are reading. As we have just read – the Lord does great works with small things. After we read, I fall asleep on the bed – Mary wakes me to get money to pay her. She puts in her full three hours because Mary asked her to clean the refrigerator – it really needed it.

I was just thinking about the mushroom project. If it worked a single system could provide 3 families about $200 a month which is a good level of living for a family here in Indonesia. It would be exciting if we could provide enough projects to help 30 or 40 families to earn enough that their children could go to good schools. I feel that there are other things like that which we can start that will do the same thing. I trust the Lord will point me in their direction when I have the time to do something about it.

I am tempted to watch another movie, but I feel that I need to be obedient to trying to learn the language so I spend the time re-reading from the Kitab Mormon and trying to get the words I do not know to stick in my mind. While looking for a pad to write down some of the words, I found some notes I made about the last day we were home . We did a lot of things – including almost getting stuck in the driveway, almost not getting a flight to Las Vegas, and almost being to late t catch our plane to Korea. It was an exciting day to say the least. I wrote that the two hours between when we finished getting ready and Brooke Alexander showing up to take us to the MTC seemed like two of the longest hours I have ever lived. Little did I know how great of a spiritual adventure we would be going to.

This a flower that I have not seen before and no one could tell us what it was called. Sam only knows what a rose is, everything else is ‘a flower – like dat.’ This woman collects sticks of wood in the tea plantation to sell and to use.

20 May 2007 – Sunday

It is our early Sunday so we do not have time – or perhaps it would be better to say we do not make time – to read from the Kitab Mormon. I do take some time to study vocabulary.

The best part of going to church is meeting the members. I still can not remember many of their names, but I keep trying. I hope to learn at least one person’s name each week but it does not always work. Of course I can not remember peoples name in English so it is not a great shock to realize that I can not remember the Indonesian names.

President and Sister Jensen came to our branches so we got to hear the president speak twice and sister Jensen once. He does very well speaking and for the most part we could basically understand what he said. I still do not hear the native speakers well enough to know what they are saying – more individual words are becoming clear but not enough to follow a talk even when I know what it is about. But while it can be a little discouraging, I am not discouraged. Only more determined to learn the language. In fact after seeing president Jensen carry on conversations with the members, I am more determined than ever to become at least adequate in the language.

We went into the Gospel Principles class and Elder Smith taught. He is struggling with the language and I was glad that the president came in for the last half of his lesson so he could listen to him. Right after the class, the president interviewed him and his companion Elder Widodoe. Since missionaries are not supposed to be left alone, I stayed outside with one while the president interviewed the other. Elder Smith got a much longer interview. It was interesting trying to communicate with Elder Widodoe – his English is not very good but it is a lot better than my Indonesian – even simple ideas were almost impossible to be discussed.

Once back home, we ate some lunch and then took a nap. After our naps we read an hour from the Kitab Mormon. Later we read for another hour so we caught up for the day. We are reading where Alma is telling his son about the experience of his repentance. The vividness of his story shows how it was etched into his soul. He uses the story as Paul does to emphasis the fact that the Lord will forgive almost any sin – he likens his rebellion against God as murdering those who believed his anti-church campaign – if people truly repent and then spend the rest of their lives serving others.

They have huge Koi here – these were at the hotel we stayed at for Couples’ Conference. The next is a shot of my garden – slightly smaller than the one at home. Another different motorcycle load. They cut the grass and then take it home to feed their animals. At least if this one fell over, nothing much would be damaged.
19 May 2007 – Saturday

It is going to be a long day – I woke at 3:30 and Mary at 4:15. I could not get the English program out of my head long enough to fall back to sleep. I am not sure what was Mary’s problem. Her eye looks about the same except for some reason this morning the eyelid is quite red. It does not hurt, it only looks a little strange.

I spent much of the morning studying Indonesian. If we get nothing else from this mission, we are going to be able to read Indonesian fairly well. Hopefully we will also be able to communicate. Today was a good day – I managed to remember most of the vocabulary I learned yesterday. We read from the Kitab Mormon and found that a section of a verse is completely left out of the Indonesian version. Mary thinks it is because it was translated before the new scriptures came out with some corrections.

We had a normal Saturday at the office – that is no one came in and so we took the time to write and study. Mary did have a diversion when a sister came in to have a piano lesson. She is a real beginner so she has a lot to learn.  I wrote to Elder Subandriyo about the Intensive English Class and the Mushroom project. Hopefully we will move ahead with the first and later the second. Mary started a long letter to be sent to our family and friends. We read from the Kitab Mormon for an hour. Alma and Amulek teaching the Zoramites.

When 2 came around we were ready to head home. The rest of Saturday was very quiet. We studied some – another hour from Kitab Mormon – and Mary finished her letter. Before we knew it, it was time for bed.

One thing that is very positive for me is that I feel that my prayers are drawing me closer to God and Christ. Whenever I feel a need to talk to my Father in Heaven I just stop and let my prayer run through my mind and I feel His presence. It is wonderful feeling to sense that God and Christ are so close and ready to hear my voice asking for their help. I think this is such a special time in our lives – to be here in Indonesia serving Them by serving the people of Indonesia. It is a shame that more couples are not taking this great opportunity to do so much good. I am already looking forward to doing it again for as long as our health allows us to serve. I know why Ron and Anne Jamison and other go home for just long enough to re-connect with their children and grand children and then go out again.

Our friend the monkey – lives on a fence in front of a cemetery.
18 May 2007 – Friday

A good morning. Mary slept well and does not have a black eye. The cut is clean and hardly shows but the bruise on her chin is quite evident. Her stomach has also quiet down so all in all she is in good shape.

I spent most of my free time catching up this journal and going through pictures we took over the last two days so I could put some of them in the blog. I am getting better at that and now it does not take as much time to get the pictures posted. We read in the Kitab Mormon and are now waiting for Sam so we can go to District Meeting.

I forgot to mention that yesterday we found our good young friend Elder Roper had developed a hernia and had been sent home to have surgery. His father agreed to pay his way back to Indonesia so instead of spending the rest of his mission in the States, he will come back in a month or so. Mary asked for his e-mail address so we could send him our best wishes and tell him to hurry back. I find it interesting that the Church medical people did not think that either Singapore or Hong Kong had good enough doctors to operate. Either that or they felt that since he will need a month to recover, that it would be better to do it where his parents could watch over him.

The rest of the day was normal with a visit to the mission office for district meeting – on the way there we stopped and Mary took some pictures of the monkey we have seen so often – and lunch followed by a quick trip to SoGo for necessities -mainly from BreadTalk. We found an alternate source for Mary’s Rye bread so it was a great success.

The Peterson’s invited us out for dinner so we came home and rested until it was time for them to pick us up. We had a great time – decent Mexican food and lots of good talking. It was celebrating my birthday. The Petersons are great, down-to-earth people who are always full of the spirit. But that is how we have found all couples we have met here.

We managed to get in our hour of reading before Mary headed off to bed and I sat watching TV until I was tired enough to join her.

On looking back on the last three days, they at first do not seem to have been very productive. However each of them fit in with what we are doing here. Wednesday we gain important information that will help us in the future – especially the mushroom project. We helped the Kanes come up with a program for teaching about the family. Thursday helped cement our relationship with one of the branches we work with. We got to talk to a lot of people and see them outside of church. Friday we learned from the district meeting and I think we also gave the missionaries an idea or two that might help them as they teach. On all those days we studied from the Kitab Mormon and each day improves our ability to read Indonesian. Hopefully it will eventually lead to us being able to communicate in Indonesian.

Tea Pickers – Mary with Band-Aid – A view of the valley above Bogor
17 May 2007 – Thursday

We were up at 3:30 and out the door at 4:15. The trip to the pick-up point was very quick and we were worried that there would be no one there yet. But when we got there, the bus and some of the people were already there – it turned out that the bus would leave at 5:15 and not 5:30. We were in the bus with Agus, Catherin, and their family. Almost everyone around us spoke good English. I managed to sleep about half the way there so the trip went very fast.

The tea plantation was started by the Dutch back at the turn of the century and stretches for what seems like miles in every direction. The day was perfect – at least the morning was. Clean and bright but not too hot because we were so high up in the mountains.

I am not going to write much about the day. The walk through the plantation was about 5K or just over 3 miles. It was up and down over a trail of what was once a paved road but over the years has become a rough trail of rocks. Mary did not have an easy time because she had to be really careful about where she walked so as not to slip. Even though it was much cooler than Jakarta it was still hot and I worked up a very good sweat. We were in the first group to leave but by the time we were finished we were the last couple back. We would have been way behind everyone except a very nice couple kept behind us to make sure we were not lost or hurt. So we took our time and enjoyed the walk – at least I certainly did.

As we got back to the main area, we had a little trouble finding just which way we needed to go. When we finally were close to where the group was gathered for games, disaster almost struck. I was about 10 feet in front of Mary as we walked down the last path to the steps when a rock she was stepping on twisted and she basically fell flat on her face. She hit the rocks, cut her head just above her left eye, twisted her glasses, hit her chin and skinned her left knee. People came from everywhere – especially from our group to help her. All she really wanted to do was catch her breath so she asked them not to try to pick her up. She was really bleeding – she remarked that head wounds always bleed a lot – but a lot of tissue and some water soon cleaned it enough that they could put on a coagulate – they came with a fully prepared first-aid kit and someone who knew how to use it – and a band-aid and the bleeding stopped. After she had caught her breath we got her up – not an easy task because she could not get her knees under herself and walked her back to the meeting room. I gave her a couple of Aleve and she sat and recovered. I think she was more embarassed than anything else.

I found it interesting that the tea pickers expected us to pay for taking their picture. Unfortunately I did not have any small money so I ended up looking like a ugly American. Later I took a couple of pictures of a woman who was gathering up dead branches to either sell or use in her cooking. I found that I had a few coins in my pocket and gave them to her. When you are a survivor you do what you have to, to make a living.

I finally learned how to take movies – something I wish I had learned earlier – so we have a couple of short movies showing the people enjoying themselves. The children had a great time blowing bubbles that they bought from a peddler. He probably had one of best days in a long time selling to our group with a lot of children.

The rest of the time was spent playing games, eating lunch, and then having a discussion of physical, mental and spiritual health. This last part was not very interesting to us because it was all in Indonesian. But I was surprised how the adults all seemed interested in discussing this subject. I can not imagine a group of US LDS having a big ward outing where after fun and games they would sit around and discuss such a meaningful subject.

The trip back to the gathering point was different. Since it was a holiday, there were lots of people up in the mountains so there was a sting of cars, buses and angkats winding their way down the two lane road that runs through small town after small town. We stopped twice so people could buy fresh fruits and vegetables from larger traditional markets. But even with this we made better time than I thought we would in getting back. Once we got to the main road the traffic was light. The only problem was that it had started to rain – the dry season obviously is not all that dry – and by the time we got to the drop-off point it was pouring. Lucky for us we had won a prize – I think it was for the last group in but I am sure they called it something else – the prize was a nice big umbrella. So while Mary tried to keep at least a little dry, our friend Agus and I hailed a cab. He told the driver where we needed to go and away we went. He could have been taking us anywhere because for a half hour we had no idea where we were. He took nothing but surface streets that wound in and out of areas we had never been. Finally we came out on the street that had the big stadium and I knew approximately where we were. Mary had been saying that we had been going in the right general direction – her sense of direction is much better than mine. The end result was that we got home in good time – well before I expected – and the total of the almost one hour taxi ride was $6.50 – I gave the man $9.50 and hoped it made his day.

We were again beat when we got home. Mary said that she did not hurt but was very tired. So we  each found something that was easy to fix for dinner, read from the Kitab Mormon and then Mary went off to bed. I expected Sam to bring the car back so I tried to stay up. But about 9:30 I fell asleep on the couch and at 10 woke up enough to get myself to bed.

I think that the fact that we went with the branch and got to know the members better, to understand their culture better, and to see them as families was very important. I had a nice conversation with the member we thought had gone inactive because he did not get a job in Squaw Valley. He came out and seemed to enjoy himself. I wish either he knew more English – he does quite well – or I knew more Indonesian because I would have enjoyed learning more about him.

I had a nice talk with president Gjarot about education in Indonesia. He pays a lot of money to send his children to good schools. Up to $3000 a year which is a lot of money here. But they will end up being well prepared for life. I also spoke with brother Basuki, one of the attendees at the Solo Career Workshop who now has a great job as a management trainee in a bank. They will spend 9 months training him before sending him to his first real assignment. It is such a good training program that other banks pay to send their people to learn.

At the orphanage – A typical class and Growing Mushrooms
16 May 2007 – Wednesday

We had a good, busy day – and then probably as bad a traffic jam as we have experienced in Indonesia.

In the morning I quickly looked at the US Embassy website to see if I could help a member who called last night and was applying for a job there. What I found was not encouraging for him but I found that there were what is called ‘microscholarships’ available for those who want to become English teachers. Also there was other information that I think could be helpful there. I will spend some of our time on Saturday looking at this more closely.

We left early so we would be sure to get to the Kanes in time. We got there in less than an hour including stopping for fuel. They were not ready but invited us in while they finished up. Elder Kane showed us lot of pictures of their trip to the seashore. They went to the South shore and it is very much like the scenes you see in advertisements for Bali. They are thinking of going there and staying overnight. We hinted that we would like to go with them.

Since their car does not have a back seat they were going to take two cars. We suggested we take our’s. It was a little crowded – especially for Elder Kane – but it worked. I was going to put Elder Kane up in the front but Sam wanted Sadim to ride there so he could instruct him on where to go. So at first Sister and Elder Kane sat in the back and we had a nice conversation during the hour it took to get to the first stop. Along the way they happened to mention that they had been asked to teach a class about the church’s position on the family. I suggested that they use Proclamation About the Family by going through it paragraph by paragraph. They thought that was a great idea and are going to try to get copies for each of the students in Indonesian

The orphanage was a major surprise. First it is tucked away down a small road that then opens up into a very large area. There we met the woman and her husband that run the organization. She is a tiny Muslim woman who according to the Kanes is the force behind all of what they have. Her husband is a fine man who does the work and is happy to participate. To make a long story short, the mushroom project is a real possibility but I want to learn much more before we even attempt to start one. The couple agreed to let us send up a couple of people to learn how to grow mushrooms from front to back.

The mushroom project main purpose is to help defray the expense of running an orphanage for 40 young people aged 5 to college age. Many of them are not true orphans, but are children that single mothers had to give up because they could not take care of them and themselves. At the orphanage they not only take care of them physically but also give them a good education and lots of love. They own a lot of land and the buildings – at least those the orphans are in – are well kept up and clean. The children are like all children we have seen in Indonesia – even those who are begging on the street at 8 or 9 p.m. at night – clean and happy. The Lord has certainly used this fine couple to do His work on the earth. If all men would do as they have, there would be a lot less poverty – especially spiritual poverty – on the earth.

On the way to our next stop – the textile school -we did some sightseeing in an expensive sub-division. It is a huge sub-division with some estates that would be expensive even in the US and other sections that are expensive for Indonesia – $70 – $100K US – but that would be considered inexpensive in the US.

The textile school was certainly worth visiting. It provides a number of programs – the manager was pitching only one – ranging in cost from $350 to $1500. Which is not cheap but since they place 100% of their students it is a great program. The school is run by a German program and it is beautiful. Everything is first class – Indonesian first class. What I found interesting is that for the year program the first 3 months concentrates on teaching English and getting the students use to making presentations to buyers or superiors. Something that the manager said is really not taught in Indonesia. He said that the students at first hate him because he has them speak and then criticizes them in front of the class. Another thing that is not done in Indonesia. This is a school we will certainly recommend to those interested in PEF.

After seeing that school we went for a late lunch at Hartz Chicken – an all you can eat place that had some really good food – including broasted and deep fried chicken. The french fries were good and was most of the other things they serve. We ate and talked for close to an hour – eating much too much of course.

The trip home from Bogor to Jakarta flew by but when we hit the road that takes us to our apartment the traffic came to a complete stop. A trip that on a normal day takes 10 – 15 minutes at the most took close to two hours. This is probably the most frustrating thing about Indonesia – the time you sit in a car going no where. This was the worse one that I have been awake for – Mary told me that the one I slept through was exactly the same way – but it was only an hour or so long. Just when I was about to get out and walk to the apartment – we were across the street from it but going the wrong way, we broke through the jam and just sailed home.

It was a long, exhausting, – but very productive -  day and after we had read from the Kitab Mormon we both collapsed in bed.

15 May 2007 – Tuesday

I woke early and Mary slept in. She said it made up for her tossing and turning all night. She is still not feeling 100% – something to do with her stomach.

I am amazed at how fast the morning goes by. I was up before 5 and the next thing I knew it was time to read the Kitab Mormon – three hours had just zipped past. And other than taking time out to eat some breakfast I was doing useful things. Including trying to learn more vocabulary, studying phrases, writing and posting my journal – it did take much too long for me to get the pictures into the blog – and writing some e-mail.

Our Kitab Mormon reading went well – as always mainly thanks to Mary who remembers so many words. I manage to contribute now and then but not to the extent that Mary does. We have decided to look up words instead of guessing at them. Most of the time our guess is close but other times it misses completely and in that way we miss the real meaning of the verse.

An annoying day at the office. The internet kept coming and going – even when it was on it was terribly slow. Talk about learning patience. Egha – not Edgar as I wrote last week – came in to help but we did not have much for him to do so he became our English lesson guinea pig. We had him take some tests. When we tried to explain the mistakes he made, we quickly learned that we do not know how to teach English because we do not know the rules well enough. It is going to be a real challenge to teach a month long course. As I have been saying – the Lord is going to have to step in here at sometime. We have 5 applications for our class – 3 young men and 2 young women. We will probably go with that combination. I think Elder Subandriyo just wants to see something happen.

I tried to send out e-mails to all the couples with some report templates as attachments. I did not think they were sent but when we got home there was an e-mail from one of the couples saying that they did not know how to open the attachment. I wrote back giving instructions but I am still not sure they are even there. I should have us on the list so we can be sure what we sent is correct.

Mary is still not feeling well. We read early and she then went to bed. I stayed up mindlessly watching something on TV. Not what I would call a productive evening.