Minggu 10

Monday,   Took the day to do our laundry, clean our apartment, and catch up on some writing, also studied, and plan to go out with a threesome of Elders this evening, as Elder Marsudi is in Jakarta for a Zone meeting.  Had a FHE with the Mendrofa family, Oldest son serving a mission in Indonesia currently, rest of the family struggles making it financially, and because mom is the only income (dad's poor health) she has to work on Sundays, so we have never seen the parents at church, the younger son comes on occasions when someone can remind him and pick him up.  So we had 3 Elders, Sister Tucker & I, their home teacher & his wife, mom, dad, son, 4 neighbor kids, and a family (mom, dad and a young child) with the same last name, so we assume it was family.  I lost count but looks like about 17 people in the house.  We got there and the power was out in the neighborhood, so they had tiki torche like cans, but smaller going in the room, so everyone shared hymn books and used phones to be able to sing the songs.  The elders had planned a game but without any light the game would not have worked, so we discussed the upcoming American holiday (as they seem to love everything American here), Thanksgiving, then went around the room and each person expressed what he or she was thankful for.  Before we had the closing song and prayer the father who has lung and breathing problems, came out of the small room he was in, and asked for a blessing, so those who could participated in giving him a blessing.  We then closed and headed for home.  The visiting family participated and afterward asked for the elder's phone number, Elder Barrus (who had never met the family) provided him his number, and assuming that it was Bro. Mendrofa did not ask for his number, after the fact he now realizes that he was looking for an opportunity to have the elders come teach them.  So we will have to see if we can get his contact information from the family.  Overall it was a very uplifting experience for everyone there, and hopefully it helps the Mendrofa's and provides a teaching opportunity with the other family.  

Tuesday, Spent the early afternoon with Pres. Rico and his wife Emma looking for beds for the sisters.  It was hard finding a place that stocks or will even try to get what we are looking for, which is simply a set of bunk beds.  They all have a very modern styled one piece mattress and supporting structure they stock and wanted to sell us.  Finally we located something that might work.  We will have to try again next week.  We were also looking for a frame for one of the elders who currently have a mattress on the floor.  After thinking about it we decided not to get him one as it is unlikely that we will have 2 sets of elders after the first of the year, because of a reduction of the overall number of missionaries in Indonesia (partially due to a government restriction on the number of non native missionaries in the country).  We watched the news the other evening (in Indonesian, we have a TV, just no English speaking channels) and discovered there is a volcano (Gunung Siabung) erupting in Indonesia, in fact it's on Sumatra, about 19 miles to the southwest of us.  No we can't see a thing from here.  Usually our visibility is about 3 to 5 miles, and our apartment windows face the east.  I have only seen the mountains to the west once, from the 4th floor of a parking structure on a relatively clear day.  We plan a trip to the mountains on our way to Lake Toba on Monday the 25th.   In the evening we took a couple of elders and a member and had our appointment cancel out on us, so we tried to visit another inactive family without success.  As far as activity in the branch goes, as I understand it, in the past there are about 30 of the members who have been attending out of the 182 that show up on the records (whether they are really here or not, I have already documented the death of two of that number, when I mentioned them to the clerk, he responded, "oh yah, I remember their funeral now that you mention that").  We are getting to know the area better I have been marking on a map book where people live so we can find them again, after using Google Earth to document exactly where they live.  When comparing the map to google earth in some cases the map does not reflect reality very well.  The people here are also quite mobile, and move on a regular basis.

This map shows where the volcano is in relation to Medan(the pink arrow near the bottom

This is the group that went on splits with the Elders and Us.  Tinggi and Agus rode bikes and went to teach Toyo and Roni with Elder Barrus and Elders Murphy and Sutadiyono and Hendrik(in yellow shirt) went with us in the car.

Wednesday, We visited with Jesse after we got our new internet hooked up (he was the only one on line that we could tell) he suggested using the GPS coordinates to identify the locations of the people, if I can figure out how to do it, I might just give it a try.  He also suggested we include more spiritual experiences and not just the day to day activities, which is harder to do.  A lot of what we have been doing so far is basically a lot of work, and it's much harder to know you are having a spiritual experience when you’re focused on trying to just understand what is going on in a conversation.  That having been said, we do have some good experiences where it feels like we are being guided by the spirit in the things we say or do, actually just the fact that we can figure out how to say something is evidence that the spirit is helping us communicate with the individuals we visit with.  When we meet with
investigators or members, we usually have several opportunities to be part of the conversation, and do a reasonable job speaking in a manner that they can understand us.  There are some subjects we have to use English and have the young missionaries translate for us.  So I guess at this point I would say we may be taxing the limits of the spirit just being able to communicate in a meaningful way with those we meet with.  The other faith promoting activity we have been engaged in is that one of the goals given us by the mission president is to get the branches attendance and tithing worthiness to a level that will allow them to move into a church owned facility, and out of the rundown rental building they are in, within a relatively short time (in this case a couple of years), that means we have to get from a sacrament meeting attendance that when we arrived was just above 40 up to an average of 80,  so far we have seen an small increase each week, which as far as I am concerned has been an answer to prayer.  We do have a lot of young men, three are in the process of sending papers (when a member of the mission presidency is scheduled to come on the 24 of this month to make a change in the Branch leadership) in to serve missions, so that's not bad out of the number of active members.  We took the sisters and tried to locate one family, discovered the mother had died, and the three mature children live in the house.   This evening we visited with Ajai and had a discussion about the Aaronic Priesthood, Ajai is a 13 year old who is the only member of his family, he lives with his mother, her boyfriend, and a half-sister, he joined the church because of the influence of a member of the branch, Edy who I have written about before (15 year old orphan, Edy's older brother is the boyfriend in Ajai's family).  Ajai comes to church pretty much whenever he can get transportation.   We then went to visit with the Sinaga family, the father is the Elder's Quorum President, talked about going to the temple and family history, agreed to come back in a week and help them put some information in on the computer.  Their son is one of the three getting ready to serve a mission.  The other two have everything ready to submit, Septi's only holdup is he needs a letter from the government so he can get a passport then they can complete the process, but first his parents have to go get his birth registered, which I haven't been able to figure out why is taking so long.
Thursday, Went with South Elders to teach Roni and Toyo, brothers who's mother thinks they need religion in their life.  We were supposed to pick them up for church this past Sunday, but when the elders checked they were not at home to be picked up.  The elders later learned that their mom had told them to be home at 10PM on Saturday, and they were late, so she locked them out until 10PM on Sunday, so in a way they weren't home Sunday morning to be picked up.  But meeting with them have been going very well, and tonight they both set a date of 15 December to be baptized.  At the end of the discussion, Ibu Mary (mom) asked, shouldn't they have to attend church or something first.  Response, Yes, of course, and that's why the 15 December date, so they have the time to do just that.  We are planning to pick them up this Sunday AM for church, while we still are using the rental car, only missionaries allowed after we get the car provided from the church.

Friday, Attended DDM this morning, had lunch and then I spent some time getting changes made to records with Bro. Ronald, then in the mid afternoon we went with Elder's Murphy and Marsudi to visit an inactive member Hendryk Simanjuntak who is listed as having 3 teenage children who are members, his wife is not very supportive of his membership, she likes the church that is just across the street from them.  As we visited, based on a photograph on the wall, we discovered that he has an additional son who he baptized, and 5 younger children, for a living he sets up a stand on the street and fixes flat tires.  The son he baptized was at home, as the family can't afford to pay for school for him any longer, joined us for the visit.  I felt impressed to encourage them both to come out to church this week and again when the 2nd Counselor in the Mission Presidency visits the following Sunday, they said they would (standard response).  Then we went to the northwest edge of the city, and took a 15 minute walk through the jungle to visit a couple of young men Daniel Nababan (23) and his brother Jesse (16 non-member, his parents, who live in a village 4 hours away, will not give their permission for him to be baptized), had a very enjoyable visit with them and afterwards were fed green bean porridge.   We had it once before and it's actually pretty good, made with coconut milk and what look and have the texture of split peas (some are sprouted a little).

Saturday, We are starting to get excited to have our new car delivered on Monday.  Did some shopping today, some building cleanup, in the evening we also taught English with about 10 students.  Then drove southwest to visit with Sister "Kiki" the previous Branch Presidents wife, her husband was released after being Branch President for about 15 years, he is currently living on Java, going to school to get his doctorate in Microbiology, he will be there for 4 years.  When visiting with the Mission President, it was his plan to call me as the replacement, and a couple of weeks before we got here he was able to call a native member, for which I give many thanks.  The streets were flooded a good part of the way there.  Her son was also there a recently turned 17 year old, who is not planning to serve a mission, but as soon as he finishes high school, will start college. 

Sunday we got up early and went with the Elders to pick up 2 of their investigators, the young men talked about earlier.  We ended up with about 10 investigators at church and the father and son we had visited with Elders Marsudi and Murphy actually showed up also and looked like they enjoyed themselves.  The father knew quite a few people there.  Also the baptized sister of one of the boys getting ready for a mission showed up.  The sisters had ben planning to see her and she wasn't home when we went by.  Come to find out that she had texted the sisters to let them know she couldn't make it but the sisters didn't get the message because they had had their phone lifted by a driver of a bacek they were on.  We then had the Elders and Sisters over for dinner.  We made tacos, rice and I even found some black beans.  I made some salsa and tortillas from scratch.  It was a lot of fun and then they all took off for appointments.