17 January 2008 – Thursday

We have discovered that the days tend to blend together when we are holding an Intensive English Class. I do no more than think about going to the gym. It is a combination of waking later and a shorter morning before it is time to leave our apartment. We usually manage to get in a half hour of reading from the Kitab Mormon before we leave and that gives us a spiritual boost.

 Today was our P-day.  We had morning class from 9 to 12. I split the time so Mary could get some things ready to send to couples to get them ready for their High School English classes that hopefully will start sometime late in February or early March. The local copy shop is going to be able to expand just on the work we give them. It is one of our regular stops each morning on the way to the office.

 I had a good time teaching. I led them through a review of the 80 vocabulary words that they have had and most of them did very well. It is wonderful to see their minds working and their English skills improving day by day. Best of all their confidence is increasing so that they are willing to talk to everyone and anyone in English. I am a little worried about their talks for the English branch – none of the talks I heard this morning seemed to be well prepared. But it was their first time and hopefully they will improve before they actually give them.

 After that we head over to the mission office where we met with the represenatives from BYUH and talked about teaching English. The two brothers are touring Pacific Rim and putting on firesides to introduce people to BYUH and what they offer. After that Mary taught the staff their English lesson and I had lunch. I also picked up my 120G portable drive the elders bought for me. It is amazing how small and cheap they are. I will be able to pull everything off of both computers and take it all home.

We were able to spend two hours at the apartment – that was our P-day – and then went back to the chapel for the BYUH fireside. It was very informative and I found out some important things about admittance. It is just too bad that they do not have more courses that would prepare Indonesian students for higher paying jobs with multi-nationals.

In the morning we received a call from a recently released sister missionary who heard that one of our students had left and wanted to join the class. We talked it over with the young ladies who are already 3 to a room and they said it was fine. So we invited her to come so we are back to our 6 students and Sam.

So it was a busy and uplifting day. The Lord continues to bless us and gives us many opportunities to grow.

 OK so I did not hit publish – I hit Save. Here is the missing post from yesterday.

15 January 2008 – Tuesday

 It was a tiring but good day for us. Mary did not sleep well, but I felt much better. Seswanto gave us some good/bad news. The good news is that he got a new job but the bad news is that he will have to leave our class. This is the first time we had someone actually drop out but since he has been looking for a job for almost a year, it is great that he finally has one that will allow him to use his accounting skills.

 We split up the class for the morning session and then since Mary needed to leave to teach her English class for the office staff, I took the afternoon class. She and Sam got back just as the class ended so we were able to go home for an hour and get some dinner.

 For the evening class we played a number of games.  By the time we got home we were both very tired and so after answering some e-mail, we headed off to bed.

 One event sticks in my mind. When we were walking out with the students I asked them if they were finding it easier to communicate in English. Erna said they were doing better than they thought they could and thank me. I mentioned that the class started just 8 days ago and ask them to imagine how well they will be doing in 3 more weeks. I think one of them might pass the Michigan test – at least I certainly hope so.

16 January 2008 – Wednesday

 I think this blog is trying to tell me something. Yesterday I wrote a post and was I hit ‘publish.’ However I just noticed that the post is not there. So either I have completely lost my mind – I heard that ‘not much to lose’ – or the blog is now editing my posts. I admit that the post was not very interesting but it did have a couple of events that I felt were worth mentioning.  Oh well – onward and upward.

A letter from Cindy mentions that Mike has borken one of his fingers – no mention of which one or how. Hopefully we will not be kept in suspense for ever. Kristy continues to post great pictures of Charlotte and Olivia – I just printed one of them so proud grandmother can show it to all the people she teaches today.

 Yesterday was a normal IEC day. Because one of our students got a call about a job he really needs and went home last night, we are down to 5 students and Sam. I gave them all heart attacks when I made them give their short morning talks without any notes. They did fine and once they get use to this, they will continue to do better.

Both Mary and I seem to always be tired. I do not remember this problem during other Intensive English Classes. Perhaps it is because we had to spend so much energy and time on the High School English class that we came into the class already tired.

The students are great and hardly complain about the piles of homework we give them each night. When you realize that they did not have homework in any quantity before, it is amazing that they do so well.  I have real hopes that one or more of these students will get in the high 70’s and perhaps one might make the magic 82 on the Michigan test. It would be great if someone could qualify for BYUH.

OK – lets see if this posts!

I am not going to bother to try and catch up this journal on a day to day basis. We are way too busy and I do not imagine anyone misses reading it.

 We are in the midst of our 3rd Intensive English Class. The High School English test classes are running in three cities and the one report we got sounds like they are at least being attended well. Solo Barat and Tengah branches had as high as 20 students come to the class. I am sure it fluctuates but hopefully the Roberts can keep the interest up so that it stays in the mid-teens.

The first weekend of the new year found us in Yogakarta where we gave the couples all the things they needed to start teaching the HS English classes and held a fireside for the HS students and parents. I got to speak and answer questions for about 25 minutes. There was also a nice program put on by the HS students from Solo Barat and Tengah. Elder Subandriyo also was there. I think it worked well and the fact that many people who were not HS students wanted to join – we are not going to let them – shows that they are truly interested in learning English. Also the fact that 20 students showed up for the first class – we did not know there were that many even available – gives a good indication that at least I did not scare anyone away.

 We stayed in Solo for church on Sunday and I got to be part of a PH choir. They have a tradition that on the first Sunday of each month, all the PH come to the front and sing the opening song. Later in a joint meeting of PH and RS, the branch president asked me to come up and talk a little about jobs. I called up the branch employment specialist and talked about how if people who needed a job and people who knew about jobs would let the brother know, he could then put the needs and openings together. If they did this as a district, they would not have as many people out of work.

The branch we attended has an average attendence of 160. It was just like being in a sacrament meeting in the US. There was a good mix of families, lots of young children – who cry and fuss just like ours did – and a good group of youth. It was a real pleasure to experience what the church will be like in Indonesia in the future.

 We had some problems getting out of Solo – the last flight out was cancelled so we got to spend an extra night but arrived home in time to get ready for the orientation meeting for the new Intensive English Class on Monday night.

Tuesday I came down with some nagging illness that lasted most of the week but by Saturday morning it ran its course. Unfortuately with me being ill, Mary had to shoulder most of the teaching for the first four days of the course. This caught up with her on Saturday and so the roles got reversed for the first half of the day. In the afternoon I taught the IEC while she did the first test of the 3 hour – High School English class.

 Sunday the 13th we went to the Tangerang branches. It was strange because for the first time since we got here the branches exchanged times so we went to T2 first and then T1. As usual Mary played for T1 sacrament and then we went to their Gospel Principles class where they had one investigator who seemed very interested.

 So went the first two weeks of the year.

1 January 2008 – journal

A new month and a new year. Hello 2008 – may you be as good to us as 2007.

Woke and after a struggle to convince myself that I needed to start the new year right by exercising I went to the gum for 45 minutes and worked up a good sweat. It is still very quiet there in the morning. I imagine that starting tomorrow a lot of folks will come in to try and work off the holiday weight gain.

We are making this our P-day as we are having president Marchant and his family over for dinner. Also Daisy is coming to clean the apartment and then help Mary with her English projects. We read from the Kitab Mormon and then I answered some e-mails from an assortment of people about projects we are in the middle of at this time. Also I caught up the last couple of days of this journal.

We had a relaxed day but it included cleaning out the freezer, doing 3 loads of laundry, and getting ready for company tonight. We managed to read again from the Kitab Mormon and study the PH and RS lesson for next year – it will be interesting to see what they use from the teachings of Joseph in these lessons. Mary and Daisy got all her activity pieces ready for laminating so by Wednesday night we should have everything we need for our first month of classes in Solo.

In the evening President and Sister Marchant and four of their children came over for dinner. Mary had prepared a great meal of chicken, greenbeans – it turned out the President loved greenbeans – baked potatoes, rolls from the Park Hotel, and I made a fruit salad. We had a nice meal and learned a lot about their children. One has just graduated from the BYU-P and is looking for a job. I gave him some ideas about what he might do to find a good one. For dessert we had brownies and ice cream cake. It was much too much food but it worked well.

While he was here, I talked to the President about the Couple’s Conference and we changed the dates of the program to make it so no one needed to fly on Sunday and we could get it done before the President and Sister Marchant had to fly back to Jakarta to meet the new, incoming missionaries. We still do not have where we are going to stay and we need to get that figured out by Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

We talked about the trip to the HK temple in January where all the Indonesian missionaries get their endowments. The Noordas are the senior couple so they will take them. The President said that he would OK us stopping off in HK for two or three days. He said that it is too bad that we would be going in June when it is hot and humid – as he said that we all laughed when we realized that is what it is always in Indonesia. Anyway we will plan to stop off there and go to the temple. If the Kanes have the same travel dates we will ask them to go also.

After the Marchants headed home Mary cleaned up and I washed all the dishes. We then read from the Kitab Mormon before gladly dropping into bed. I will not say it was a very spiritual first day of the month, but we did get a lot done on the HS English class, we continued to read in the scriptures, and we had a nice time visiting with the Marchants.

31 December 2007 – Monday

Up at about 5 and after studying the Indonesian version of next years PH manual I went down and had a really good workout in the gym. For most of it no one else came in so it was like it was my private preserve. We then had a normal morning with reading from the Kitab Mormon.

We went to the office where I worked on writing a number of lessons using the Career Workshop workbook – a time consuming job – and Mary worked on getting pictures ready for laminating. We had Daisy come in to help her and they spent about 5 hours cutting up and pasting pictures for activities. I hope people appreciate the effort but I imagine they have no idea of the time it takes for all of this. I have to wonder how she is going to make the other 6 or 7 sets she needs.

A sister who recently graduated from BYUH came in for some help. We gave her some leads on people to network with and had her sign up on Jobsdb. She has excellent talents, speaks perfect English without any accent, and has a great knowledge of computers programs. She should have no problem getting a job – the problem is her getting a well paying job.

After staying for longer than usual office hours, we came home and spent a very quiet New Years together. We read from the Kitab Mormon and have caught up with the last time through. We hardly ever look up a word – sometimes we really should – and are usually able to figure out what unfamiliar words means. We still have trouble with when something happens and to whom. This happens when we hurry through our translation. If we stop and really try to figure what is being said out, we can more often than not get it right.

I continue to try and read the new PH manual in Indonesian. I will be humming right along and then hit three or four words in a row I do not know. I am trying to get them all into my vocabulary book so I can review them each day.

30 December 2007 – Sunday

Read from Kitab Mormon – Alma 49 – 2000 stripling warriors join the fight for freedom. Sam drops us off at Jakarta Raya and we meet and greet with the missionaries. Mary was able to take pictures of three families.

Sacrament meeting was about Goals and how to correctly fill out a tithing form. I guess this was a major problem because the president took about 15 minutes to go through line by line. We then went to Gospel Principles – they did not have any investigators but Marie Sanders and Rudi were there so they could hold the class. It was about the Priesthood and elder Erickson taught it without reading at all from the manual. We ended up going through the ordained PH offices and we decided that branch president was not an ordained office like bishop. Since it was the fifth Sunday PH and RS met together and they had a lesson on family preparedness. It seemed well done except the teacher lectured for 90% of the time – the 20%-80% rule just does not seem to be part of the culture.

It was good to see Johann Salim and president Kencana’s son. Johann is heading back to Taipai to learn more CadCam – we talked about how it would have been better if he had learned this at BYU Hawaii and not just IT…He agreed.

After church we caught a cab to the Selatan chapel where we ran into the Walkers and the Marchants – also elder Subandriyo. President Marchant and I talked about the question of giving keys to District and Branch Presidents. He is still not convinced that he should but will ask in May when he goes to training in Hong Kong.

I talked to the three seminary students who showed up for class today about the trial class English class we are going to start on the 12th. They decided they would like to have it before Seminary and so we will hold it at 1:00 p.m. This should be a challenge because we will also have an Intensive English class going on at that time. It does not seem like we are going to have to worry much about what we will be doing for the rest of our mission. One thing I did learn is that they know a lot more English than they let on – they could understand what I was saying as long as I talked slowly. They seem like very smart young people. I invited elder Subandriyo to come to our first Intensive English class on Tuesday the 8th and the first HS English class on the 12th – he said he would be happy to.

When I got back to the office there was a member who wanted to talk to me. It turned out he wanted to join the Intensive English Class. I could not let him because first he was too old, second the class was already full, and third his English was not good enough – I had to have an interpreter help with the interview. But I told him we would be happy to work with him on a one to one basis on four days a week and he seemed happy with that. We then closed up the office and had Sam drive us back to the apartment.

We spent the rest of the day as we usually do on Sunday. Getting a good nap, working on English, reading from the Kitab Mormon, and watching some TV. I also took care of another project that elder Subandriyo asked me to handle- at least I started to work on it.

29 December 2007 – Saturday

Morning of going to the gym and reading from the Kitab Mormon.

We go to the office where I work on a couple of lessons about the Career Workshop and Mary does more on activities. We are down to less than a week before we have to have some kind of a lesson plan that will take up 16 to 20 hours – we need to have at least a month’s lessons which we can give to the Roberts and the Barnards. We arranged for Daisy to come on Monday and help Mary get some of the game pieces ready. I think we will use her for other things also.

There is a lot of activity in the building because there is a graduation program for Institute. We have a chance to talk to brother Tandiman for a while about the program and about scholarships. I later talk to president Bob and any students who might need a scholarship to go to high school or the university. He is going to look at his branch and get back to me. I see no reason why we should not use brother Limbong’s offer to help our young people find jobs and careers.

After office hours we caught a taxi back to the apartment so we could grab a little rest before going to the party at the Limbongs. We were the first ones there – as usual we could only guess how long it would take to get there. Soon the rest of the missionaries arrived including the Kanes and the Walkers. The Marchants and their children also came but much later. We had a nice meal – the sate was a little more spicy this time – and a good talk with the Kanes. Brother Limbong asked each missionary to tell a little about themselves and share a special experience that they had in Indonesia. Also he asked them to sing a song. The Kanes and I sang a quartet and this led to the young missionaries to sing as a group – making things a lot shorter than if each companionship had done one. The one interesting thing I learned was that Elder Morano only joined the church about 18 months ago after being introduced to it by a friend.

The party broke up at about 8:00 and we gave the sisters a ride home. We had a good time talking to the sisters – they are a great pair of missionaries. They are always up, full of energy, and have a positive attitude.

As an aside, we received copies of the new lesson manual for PH and RS – The teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith. It is a two year manual and that means it is rather thick and heavy – especially in Indonesian because it is about 100 pages longer. It is going to be a challenge to take both languages to church. I started to read it in Indonesian and found that I had to look up about 10% of the words. The missionaries say that the manuals are written in medium difficult Indonesian…I hate to even consider what really difficult might be like. What is encouraging is that I can figure out some words because I know the root and also because of context. My guess is that I know more of the language than I think I do but I am afraid to use it. Mary remembers much more than I do…but she always has.

A mission is a great growing experience. It has not been anything like what I expected and in talking to Elder Kane tonight he said the same thing. That each day is an adventure and a learning experience that goes beyond that which we considered when we put in our papers.

28 December 2007 – Friday

Normal morning with a good workout. There has been almost no one in the gym during the holidays. It is almost like it is my private gym and I get to control all the TVs. When I got back to the apartment there was an e-mail from the Barnards saying that the flooding in Central Java had affected a number of members including their driver. The Roberts are out delivering mail and the elders are mucking out houses. One of the families affected is sister Endang who is our ERS specialists in the district.

When packing up for the day I could not find my scriptures and finally decided I must have left them last night at the Tangerang chapel. I called around to the missionaries and found that I had left them there but no one had brought them home so they were still sitting in the room. I asked that someone pick them up so they did not get lost.

We went to district meeting at the mission office. As usual it was late starting but when it was over Elder Rowberry said that next week he would start it on time even if all the missionaries are not there. I told him that was a great idea.

The meeting was good except that they went back to doing it in Indonesian. We had a good discussions about a number of missionary themes and one gave me the opportunity to give my Widow Mites talk. Later elder Suyono picked up on it.

27 December 2007 – Thursday

Both Mary and I slept in – that is we made it past 5:30. I went to the gym for a good workout. I managed to not gain any weight over the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday. I did not lose any either. I realized that I just do not do much in the way of exercise. I am either sitting in our office, our car or our apartment.

We went to the office and worked on English lessons. I also wrote and answered some e-mail. Elder Barnard wrote to say that the floods were a problem in their area. I wrote back to ask about damage to member’s homes. Floods and landslides have killed 60-80 people in Central Java. I hope none of our members are hurt. I have not heard back from the Hashes who live on a hill in Malang. We of course have little action on the job front at this time of the year. Everyone seems to be too busy to even worry about looking for a job. I also caught up our blog for the last few days.

In the afternoon we went to Tangerang for district meeting. We stopped at the mall so Mary could get some things from the store. She and Sam did the shopping while I bought donuts for the elders. Mary told me she liked not having me with her while she shopped because she did not have to hurry. Sam told us that he and Annie changed their plans and will get married on May 4th. It is hard to believe that it will happen so soon – just two months ago they had not even had a date.

The Tangerang district is doing better on getting progressive investigators. They are having problems getting 15 lesson taught. Elder Vatcher taught the lesson and seems to be quickly improving his language skills. It is amazing how quickly they pick it up. Of course they had two months intensive training before they come so they have the basics down before they get here. Still it is great how quickly most of them progress.

An investigator came for English class and elder Cheney was prepared and wanted to teach the class so once the class got started we left. Where it often takes 1 to 2 hours to get home, tonight we made it in just over 45 minutes. You just never know with Jakarta traffic.

Today we read twice from the Kitab Mormon – we are in the part of Alma where the Title of Liberty is raised by Moroni. It is not easy to understand how the Nephites or at least part of the Nephites so quickly went from being strong, faithful members of the Church to being apostates. As it says in the Book of Mormon – how quick we are at times to turn to iniquity and how slow we are to honor God.