Minggu 58

Monday was a nice relaxing day. We did some reading, laundry, and some family history research.

Tuesday we spent the day at the church cleaning up a little.  In the late afternoon we finally called it a day and headed home.

Early on Wednesday morning we went to the school where Sister Imelda works so I could act as one of the judges for a cake decorating activity, involving a number of the students and their parents decorating cakes.  After finishing we went to the church to meet with Tatok and Martoyo who are here from Senopati to see about what things need to be done to improve the building.  This was work that was originally scheduled to start in Feb. of this year, now they have 2 months in which the work needs to be completed because of the availability of the funds.  We reviewed the list of things that Elder Tucker had put together that need to be repaired and improved.  While they were there the electricians came to the church to check out the electrical for the air conditioners.  It turns out it was what Elder suspected. It looks like there was a power surge of some type, and the circuit breaker was blown.  So we had them replace that and we were able to get the ACs to work again, but they kept blowing the breaker, they also want to put each unit on a separate breaker, so we will see about getting that done.  We then went to Ace and Carrefour to buy some needed cleaning supplies for the church.  Then we went to the Tip Top Club for dinner.  We all ordered what they called American Steak, while it was a steak, it was about a 1/4 inch thick, and to say the least it was well done, wasn't bad but not what was expected.  Dropped off Tatok and Martoyo at their hotel, then headed home.  

 

 I am with the other two judges.  We had 4 areas to judge and then we tallied all the points

 Some of the children and adults making their cakes.  One of the area to judge was how much the child was able to help.

They cakes for a final look before going into another room to tally points and decide on the winners.

On Thursday we picked up Tatok and Martoyo for an 11:00 meeting, but because a customer came President Rico was delayed. So we thought we would go to lunch, and they both wanted to have pork for lunch, so we suggested a place a short distance from the church.  But they said we needed to go to a restaurant that is well known throughout Indonesia for its grilled pork (we were told that if we hadn't eaten there we really have never been to Medan) another reason for this selection is that they process and sell large quantities of pork, that many people take back home to Java, because they can't get pork there.  So between them they got 3 boxes, each about 10 inches square.  We didn't notice any difference between the Pork (or rest of the meal)  there or at the place which is less than a kilometer from the church, but I am sure you can't buy the large quantity to take with you at the one near the church.  But now we can say we have truly been to Medan. The electricians were at the church much of the day working on rewiring the AC units and installing a new circuit breaker box and adding additional breakers.  They finished up work at the church and then we dropped Tatok and Martoyo off at their Hotel and we headed home for the night. 

On Friday we had district meeting in the morning.  We got pizza from Pizza Hut for Lunch since none of the missionaries could agree on what they wanted so pizza was Elders idea and treat.  In the evening we went with Elder Pujianto and Zollinger to visit Samuel Hutabarat, it has only been two months since he last had Elders come by his home to visit, but fortunately he is always good about participating at church. While there his mother and sister joined in the conversation, which they haven't usually done in the past when we have visited.

Seth called this morning, to tell us that Elder needed to call his father, so when he got off the phone with Seth he called his dad. He is going in for surgery on Monday to improve the seal on the stint they put in a few years ago, this will be the 3rd time.  Our thoughts are obviously with him a little extra at this time.  We went to church today and did some building cleanup. Pres. Buyung came and helped for a while, and of course Bro. Manalu our driver helped for a short time. We are going to start pushing a little to see if we can get some additional member support on cleaning the building over the next few months.  We then had our meeting with Bro. Pardede the Branch Mission Leader.  After that we set up for English class.  We were not sure how many we would have there because of skipping last week due to our General Conference broadcast.  But we had 19 attend.  It was a good class.

Today I had no primary children so I went to sunday school and Relief Society. We have spent to afternoon reading (Book of Mormon) in Indonesian and packing for our trip to Jakarta and Manado tomorrow morning.