Monday, Took Sister Tucker and the sister missionaries up to the Manullang's home for a Relief Society activity, which was planned to go for hours and hours. It is a tradition to do lots of cooking for the New Year for family and friends. Elder Tucker and Elder Murphy left us there and headed back to the church, they stopped at a nursery, so Elder Tucker could see about buying a couple of potted plants to put out on our terrace patio, as you look out our window there are only a couple of green areas, mostly you just see fairly ugly buildings, so now the greenery on the porch softens the view a little. We have Elder Murphy here for couple of days, while his companion is attending meetings in Jakarta.
Sister Sinaga (in Relief Society Presidency) making a batter for a fried cookie with Sister Hasibuan watching
This is what they look like when they are done. Very crunchy the way they cook them. I like them not fried quite as long and a little softer.
They also made lunch at the same time. This is what we had. Tempe and a fish stew with all of the bones, also rice of course.
One of Elders plants
On Tuesday, since we wouldn't have a driver tomorrow, we had him take us to the store so we could do some grocery shopping, and buy some things to fix a door at Elders house. In the afternoon we went looking for Samuel Hutagalung, never found him, but did locate the area where he now lives, because while we were driving around looking for the address, we got a call from Nefi Zebua, who happens to know the area where he lives. We (Elders & Sisters) taught the neighbor's to the Mendrofas, and delivered a letter to the Mendrofa's from their missionary son (he emails Elder and he prints it and gets it delivered to them somehow. Then we followed one of the girls that we had been teaching to a restaurant where several of them are cooks, so we could have dinner, our driver was very nervous about where we went to eat, he did not want to leave the car, it was in a gated & guarded community, with lots of Chinese, which is what made him nervous I believe. Which is unfortunate, because the food was very good, he may be nervous on more occasions in the future. That night there were lots of fireworks at midnight visible from apartment, there was just a large arch about 180 degrees with fireworks continuosly for about 40 minutes or so.
Wednesday, We gave our Driver the day off, and Sister planned to stay in the apartment to pay bills, send a note to President Donald and update her blog. Well we stayed in the apartment all day, and as the day was about over Elder was about ready to climb the walls. He told Sister that it was unlikely that she would be able to convince him to stay in all day again.
Thursday, We spent the morning at the church, found the tools and took the gate wheels off to see what the problem was with it. The bearing were missing from the wheels and the bolt holding the wheel in place was almost cut in half because of the wheel turning on the bolt. So asked our driver if he knew where we would be able to find the wheels for the gate, he responded "yes" and away we went, well "yes" doesn't really mean he knows where to go look, he regularly says he knows the way somewhere and in reality he has a general idea, like he knows its north of where we are, and then he will stop and ask people along the road if they can help him find the place. Such was the case again, we drove around a "pasar" (an open-air market) with mostly fruit and vegitable stands, then located a shop on one of the main roads, and sure enough they had exactly what we needed, what we would have paid $30 for in the states cost us $5.50 here (3" metal wheels with bearings, bolts, washers and nuts). Elder had brought clothes that he could do dirty work in, which was good, he was dripping wet when they finished. Since he was wet and dirty, and because no one had been in the building for a few days, and the water line out of the tank leaks there was no water for the building, he thought he would go up and work on the water tank, before he started on the tank, he got the dirt off the part of the roof where it collects over time, enough to fill a couple of gunny sacks, using a trash can from the building, which he would hand down to Sister Tucker so she could take it down stairs to empty. After getting all the dirt and debris off the roof, he looked into what he could do the fix the leak, not having any of the correct tools to do the work with he finally decided to use some electrical tape and just wrap it around the water line between the nut and the tank exterior, the nut had been locked in place with a cement of some kind. Surprisingly it stopped the leak, now we will see how long it will last, Elder said he would take it, he didn't expect it to work in the first place, he just hoped it would slow the leak down. In the afternoon we went out and visited with Bro. Simanjuntak with the Elders, and encouraged him to try and attend church this coming month. Elder was able to get the email address for the missionary who baptized him years ago, and got a response from him, so he can get the two of them connected again. Elder is spending time trying to reconnect members with those who baptised them, especially the struggling ones. Then went out trying to locate Angelia Simbiring Milala, talked to a lot of people along the street she may have lived on a while back, we even found a family near buy that had daughters about her age and they had the same family names of "Simbiring Milala" but in the end we were unable to get any good leads on her. Once at home Elder used what information he had for her and located what he thinks is her in facebook, according to it she now lives in the Central African Repulic (CAR), now we know that seems a little unlikely, but thats what it said. But the photo is of what looks like a 19 year old, and she attended High School near where the old address we had for her. Her employeer is an Indonesian company in Riau, which is just south of Singapore, that has additional offices in CAR, so we think it is her.
Friday, we attended DDM this morning, then joined the Elders and Sisters for lunch, which the Elders prepared, "Sate" which is chicken strips (or could be beef) on a stick grilled with a teriyaki like sauce and rice, of course, then you put a peanut sauce over it. While they were cooking Elder worked on a concrete door jamb so we could re-hang a door for their bathroom. That evening we went out and visited with Brother & Sister Kiki, Bro. Kiki was the previous Branch Pres. for 13 years. Elder brought a snake fruit home from the Kiki's, as He have not tried it yet, when he did it was a little like a soft apple, Sister Tucker tried it also but she is not as adventurous as Elder. This week we discovered that we will be spending our anniversary in Jakarta for Zone meeting, There is also some training that we know President Donald would like to have President Rico attend, but he may not be able to go, so Elder may see about staying a couple of extra days so that he can attend and bring the information back to Pres Rico. Also discovered that Feb 4 - 7 we will be attending a Senior Missionary Conference in Bali, so Sister Tucker is excited about that, it is one of the places she wanted to make sure and visit. Since it is not in Jakarta we will have to pay for part of the airfare, and our own hotel expenses, the original arrangements were $250 a night at the Hyatt, but that got changed to the Novatel for $150 a night. We were going to go see Toyo and Roni but they are still in Jakarta, visiting their ill grandmother. It seems like there a lots of obsticles being placed in their way to keep pushing off their baptism. We think they will be really strong, great additions to the branch and Satan knows that.
Saturday at noon went to the church for building clean up. As our driver started to wash the van it started to pour, and it rained good for some time. Got the cleanup finished, and did some studying. Elder then went over to see if the barber shop was open, as they had been closed the past few time he checked over the past week. They were open, the guy who cut his hair cut it more like a flat top than he would have liked, but he said he could live with it. Everyone is still out of town so we had about as many people at English as we expected "0". Once the Elder's showed up Elder had them load a surplus desk into the back of the van, so we could use it at the apartment. They also stopped by later that evening to bring it up from the apartment basement. While we got a number of things accomplished this week, not the most productive weeks as far as getting out and working with people, but we did find two good leads for a couple of branch members.
Sunday we took the angkot to church again and Pres. Rico took us home. Toyo and Roni's baptism was pushed back another week as they weren't home yet from being with their Grandmother. Elder had a Branch Presidency meeting that was supposed to be short but lasted 2 hours. Sister Tucker was given a Visiting Teaching route with Sis. Teng as her companion. She speaks a little english so we can communicate some. We will visit a Sister that moved back here from Malaysia, where she joined the church. She speaks English quite well. She is Young Adult age and we have met her once, at the christmas party. The other, Sister Desni, is older, was active until she was offended and she has been sick. We will see how it goes.
The picture that was taken at the last Zone meeting with Elder Gong
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