21 November 2007 – Wednesday

I woke up not feeling well, but as the day went on things got better. Instead of going to the gym, I spent the time reading PMG. After breakfast we read from the Kitab Mormon.

As I was writing in my diary for yesterday, I had the feeling that elder and sister Walker should invite the Tobings to come to the English branch Thanksgiving get together on Saturday afternoon. So I called them and I think they will at least give it a try.

Sam picked us up and we went over to see our friend Rudi. He is the 74 year old Chinese fellow that we made friends with when the elders taught him a couple of times. We have not seen him in a number of months so it was nice to find out what has been going on in his life. One thing is that he seems to have lost quite a lot of money in the U.S. mortgage funds. He was confused as to why they had fallen so badly and I tried to explain it to him. He said that the losses were really bothering him until he started thinking about what it really meant as far as what is of greatest values. He is quite religious and once he started thinking in those terms he decided that he still had plenty to live as well as he wants so why let it cause him so much distress. I told him that was the right idea and that it fit in right with what Jacob 2 says in the Book of Mormon. So we had a good visit for about an hour and then headed back to the apartment.

The rest of the day has just flown by. Most of my time has been spent working on some lesson helps for Mary’s English class for the service center staff. We are creating special business vocabulary lessons for them. I think we can use some of them for other classes. Also I sent out a number of e-mails to let the couples know how we are planning to reach elder Subandriyo’s English goal.

Mary has been busy getting some things ready for the dinner at the mission home tomorrow. She made a carrot cake for one of the elders who had never heard of a carrot cake before. She is also make candied sweet potatoes – we think they are sweet potatoes.

For some reason I crashed at about 8:00 – just fell asleep on the bed while studying Indonesian. Of course I woke up at around 2 in the morning and stayed up trying to read a conference talk until after 3:30 when I managed to fall back asleep.

This is a test to see if I can upload an image in this post. Hopefully, it is below.

 

It worked!! Dad, we’ve got to talk so I can show you how to do this. –Jim

*Note: Cindy forwarded the email, so here is Mom and Dad’s account of the first travel day. –Jim*

After you left us last night, we got our boarding passes and went  to our gate and then started the adventure! The board stated the  flight would leave at 9:11 and then once I looked over and it said  1:00. We knew we would have a three hour layover in Las Vegas, but  that was four hours! They didn’t have any pilots who could fly the  plane. The only ones were coming in from Cincinnati and would  arrive at midnight.

They said international passengers would have to go down to  ticketing to make arrangements and they were putting everyone going  to the East Coast up in hotels because they would miss their connections. So the other three headed down to ticketing and I  stayed with the luggage.

Then an agent came to the gate and made an announcement and as he  left the podium I asked him about our connections. He got our names  and went to work on it. In a few minutes he came back with tickets  for us on an American West flight leaving in about a half hour.  Needless to say the others weren’t back yet and I couldn’t carry  all of our carry on stuff all by myself. Just then an empty cart  came by and the agent flagged him
down and loaded all our luggage  onto his cart and we took off from our D gate to the A gate. Half  way there we met dad and the Kane’s and they jumped on also.

Then we got over to the new gate and wouldn’t you know it, it was  late too! But it did manage to take off and got us to Las Vegas  with a half hour to spare. We made the connection to the Korean Air  Flight which was also a little late. It was a great flight with  lots of stewardesses who really worked hard and took great care of us.

We are now in the middle of our ten hour lay over in Seoul. We  didn’t get ourselves organized enough to take a tour of Incheon. It  would have cost us $50 each, so we weren’t sure we really wanted to  go on it. In Las Vegas we met a mother and son who are on their way  to Jakarta to spend three weeks with her other son. We are spending  the time with them. We played Category Five for a while.

Now here comes the real reason for this e-mail. Dad has figured out  that he somehow managed to leave our camera home. Please call Brian  and have him look for it. It could be anywhere, but most likely is  upstairs in the bedroom. We will send you our address tomorrow and  would like you to mail it to us. Oops, I hit a wrong key and this  computer started typing in Korean, but the lady who works here  fixed it for me! The camera is about the size of a pack of  cigarettes and is in a black leather cover. I sure hope you can  find it and Dad did not lose it out of his pocket on one of the  planes.

We don’t know yet if our luggage made the changes. The gate agent  had me describe them to him and he went to look for them, so we  will find out when we get in Jakarta if we have luggage. We leave  here in about five more hours and the flight is a seven hour  flight. It is very cold here in Seoul, but luckily the airport is  warm. That is another reason we were reluctant to take the tour,  none of us have coats!

Well, you can forward this on the everyone else. I don’t have all  of their e-mail addresses in my aol address book yet. The Mongolian missionaries we traveled from the MTC with made their connection to  Ulan Bator and are now on their way. Their flight from here is only  a four hour flight.

We love you all!   Mom and Dad