Sunday, President Donald attended Medan Branch today and called a new counselor in the presidency. The other counselor had been serving in several positions for the last 5 years and was a little more than burned out. Following church we (all of the missionaries) took a couple of taxies to Pres Rico & Sister Emma's for their new daughter's 12th day visit. Chinese tradition, for friends and family to visit and meet the new baby on the 12th day after birth. So we visited and had dessert with the family. Then Pres. Rico dropped the young missionaries off at the Church and took us back to our apartment.
Monday, we shopped for the food we would need for Christmas meals to feed the Missionaries and we got them some candy like M&M's, snickers, Dove which is more expenxive than the knockoffs they usually can afford. We also bought the stuff for Esbuah (ice fruit), which is a drink that one of the members makes here and it is really good. Did we forget to mention that Elder Tucker got a call telling him to purchase a couple of bikes for the sisters. They have been doing a happy dance ever since and so we took them out on Monday to look for bikes. Sister Jibson, who loves anything outdoors kept looking at the really good bikes. We had a budget and we had to keep reminding her that other Sisters not so experienced would be following to use the bikes, which she knew but still wanted to dream. The bike shop even put the bikes together so Elder didn't have to.
The Sisters with their new bikes at the Church
Tuesday, Sister Tucker stayed at the apartment and got preparations underway to feed the missionaries. Elder Tucker went to church for a presidency meeting, and to do some work on the sound system. He partly took apart and reassembled the podium with a new microphone cable, and set some rat traps, so they wouldn't eat through the cables quite as often. Got back to the apartment about 5:30 PM, and helped finish a few things.
Wednesday, got fruit prepared for making Esbuah (which is actually quite a lot of work) and Breakfast & dinner for Missionaries. Time will tell if we can get all of the ingredients in the states or not (most likely not). The Sister Missionaries called home and we played a different version of monopoly, which uses a deck of monopoly cards for everything, and watched The Hobbit. We were also sent a package for each of the young missionaries from the mission home. They loved it. A white shirt, tie, socks and some toiletries for the Elders and a Skirt and toiletries for the Sisters. New clothes are always good for them here. The water is not the cleanest and everything is done with cold water so clothes get dingy and not real clean quickly.
This is one of the fruits in the drink called rambutan
The missionaries getting ready to watch the Hobbit at our apartment
Getting ready to eat Christmas Dinner. BBQ chicken plus other traditional things. Turkey is way to expensive. Elder Murphy(Texas), Sister Jibson (Michigan), Sister Hasibuan(near Jakarta), and Elder Costner (New Mexico)
Thursday the Missionaries arrived at about 8:30 AM, finished preparation of breakfast, they called parents on Skype, visited until about 1:00 & headed off for a afternoons worth of work. It is really slow here the two holiday weeks as most people go back to their Kampong (village) for the holidays. Some neighborhoods are cleared out except for the Muslims. We re-watched "The Hobbit" with Indonesian subtitles and called it language study time, I'm sure it would be better if it were in Indonesian with English subtitles, but most movies aren't available that way. Not that we have seen many, okay this was the first, the rest have been church movies. Sister Tucker and Sister Hasibuan are learning language together. She is learning English and Sister Tucker Indonesian so Sister Hasibuan speaks to her when she can in English and Sister Tucker tries to answer in Indonesian and vise versa.
Friday, DDM at the church in the morning, then ate lunch. Had to go to the store so we could feed the missionaries on Sunday. I am told that even more people go home to see family during Ramadan (moveable, but usually in August).
Saturday, we got to the church and it had already been cleaned and setup. Did some record cleanup on the Branch computer. Also worked checking out the projector, sound system and computer interfaces, and all worked well, so we should be able to use them tomorrow to show the Christmas Devotional. Lots of people have gone home to villages where their parents live, so there was no one in English this evening. Sister Tucker made a cake for Elder Costners birthday. We ate that and then we went out to eat with the missionaries, to celebrate Elder Costner's birthday, he was buying.
Sunday, we had more at Church than we expected, about 45. During Sunday School they showed the Christmas devotional that had been dubbed in Indonesian. We then had Branch Council meeting. Pres. Rico gave us a ride home since we ride to church in our drivers Angkot and we let him go home after church to take his children. We then either get a ride from Pres. or call a taxi to get home. We had the Missionaries over for tacos, with homemade tortillas and salsa. We also had mexican rice. Sister Hasibuan felt better about having rice with this meal since we hadn't earlier in the week. Indonesians need to have rice with almost every meal or it is not quite right.
No comments:
Post a Comment