We were either in an airport or on a plane pretty much all day. The one from Jakarta to Medan, was only delayed a half hour or so. We got home about 10pm.
On Tuesday we had very enjoyable visits with Seth's & Erin's families. It sounds like they had a good visit to the Phoenix Temple open house. First thing this morning we pulled together the information we needed for the car registration, and made arrangements to get it sent by courier to Senopati. We stopped by the church building for a short time. We then met the Elders for lunch at Nias. We took Elders Pujianto and Zollinger and tried to go see Mei at the hospital (she has been there for a week), but they would not allow us in because it wasn't visiting hours. So we went to do our shopping so we would have something to eat this coming week and then went back at about 4:30 and spent an hour or so there. She still would like to serve a mission, but her mother is giving her more grief about it now than before, especially about her health not being so good. Lots of traffic so it took us quite a while to get to Ajai's house. It was really a good visit, this was the first time both his mother and her husband (boy friend) were home when we have been there.
On Wednesday we spent the day catching up on things since we were gone for the past week. We did the laundry and things like that today. We were going to go out with Elders Barlow and Hansen but they were never able to get hold of the person they wanted to visit.
On Thursday Elder got a phone call from Pres. Donald in the morning, asking if he could help the new mission couple who just arrived get their phones to work here. He shared what information he had, will have to wait and see if it works for them like it did us. Sister Tucker exchanged emails with an organization to get several keyboards shipped to Medan, so she can start a class teaching individuals how to play the keyboard, if they successfully complete the course they can apply to keep the keyboard, which requires teaching others or accepting music assignments in the local branch. We will see how long it takes to get them here, first they will ship to Senopati, then here to Medan. We took Elders Zollinger and Pujianto to the north part of town. They had appointments with all three of the Harefa families, and we were able to spend about an hour with each family teaching a gospel principle. We have seen progress among these families but there is still a ways to go. We finally learned how much the Surumaha family doesn't know about the church, based on what we have been able to piece together they were baptized 10 years ago but never really participated at church after that. We found out that Elder Pujianto is getting transferred to Surabaya and Elder Hansen is going to Solo to be companions with our Elder S. Sinaga. We will be getting an Elder Hobbs (New Zealand) and Elder Hendro (Indonesia) and we are getting Sisters back. Sister Edwards and a new Sister fresh from the Manilla MTC from Solo. Transfers will be next Thursday the 6th.
On Friday we had district Meeting, and ate lunch with the Elders. We cleaned the building some and got games set up for this evenings Malam Keluarga and Halloween party. The Erwin Harefa family came to the Halloween activity tonight, along with about 50 other people, now if we could just get those same people to come to church each Sunday it would be great. Lots of friends and investigators came this evening. We finished up at about 8:30pm.
The younger aged kids during one of the games
Instead of eating a donut off the string they eat these things that taste like a rice cake but are flavored like these ones are ikan(fish). Not my favorite kind.
Members and visitors visiting just before they serve dinner.
On Saturday Elder went to an early morning service project at Sister Ezra's with the young missionaries, as best he can figure out, when the government cleans out the drainage ditches in more well off neighborhoods, they take the dirt and whatever else they dig up and truck it into less well off neighborhoods and dump piles of it along the road sides in front of the homes there, and it is the residents job to find a place for the piles, the one in front of Sister Ezra's home was about 4 feet high and 8 feet around. This wasn't a nice dry dirt like we moved at the Harefa's this was a wet mud, with large rocks, a couple slabs of concrete, one was 2' x 4' x 8"thick, they dug a hole in the road shoulder to try and bury it flush with the surrounding shoulder and road, maybe after some good rain and a lot of traffic over it it will settle in a little more. They said it was pretty nasty stuff.
We had 22 people show up for English today. Elder had a sore throat all day. He thinks it was probably from one of the neighbors burning trash while they were out working this morning. Everyone burns trash in little piles by their houses. The smoke is bad and they burn everything they can. The young Elders were all also fighting with allergy type stuff all evening also. After English the Elders go with who ever wants to go and they play fotsal (soccer). The attendance varies but they usually get a good number of nonmembers to play also. They try and do this every week.
At Sister Ezra's house. She is the one with the hat on. If you look down the street it has piles of dirt all up and down it.
Elder Hansen, Elder Zollinger, Elder Pujianto, Bro. Manalu and Elder Barlow. It just looks icky.
Elder didn't feel well Sunday morning so I went to Church by myself in our taxi and took care of the things I needed to. I bring the bread for sacrament every week and also the bulletin. After Sacrament meeting I got someone to take over primary and I went home. I usually order a taxi with the app I have on my phone but it wouldn't work so I had Pres. Rico call. They said their system was down so they couldn't send anyone so Pres. went in and got Elder Zollinger and Elder Pujianto and we walked up to the bigger street where taxi's go by alot and we flagged one down to take me home. It was a couple of blocks. Pres. didn't want me walking by myself. The neighborhood is not the best. People steal things. So we spent the rest of the day reading our scriptures and such.
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