We made it to Indonesia!

Here we are in beautiful Jakarta, Indonesia, after a 26 hour journey.   President Groberg met us at the airport, thank goodness, because we would have been lost without help!  Our first blunder was to overpay the porter by about four times the norm.  Oh well.  We're here to help!

Jakarta is a huge city with skyscrapers next to hovels.  We walked to the grocery store in the evening with Pres. & Sister Groberg to eat in the deli.  We passed street vendors, ramshackle shelters used as homes, beautiful embassy worker homes, stinky streets and a filthy river before we walked into a modern super market called Grand Lucky.

  This is the front of the mission home.  It is very lovely with the mission office above the home.  It is nestled amongst the huge office buildings in the financial district. 

President and Sister Groberg are amazing.  They are doing so much good here in Indonesia.  They oversee 70 young missionaries, 7 senior couples and all the humanitarian aid, educationl support, member support and public affairs going on here with the church.

This is the formal dining room of the mission home.  We have been well taken care of here.   Everything here is very organized and we have been able to meet the office staff and two other senior missionary couples, the Beamans and the Healeys.

We rode to the mall in this bagai.  It is a three wheeled verhicle with just enough room for two passengers.  It's kind of like riding behind a motor cycle but a quick, cheap way to get around if you don't mind being exposed to the heat, the noise and the exhaust of the traffic! 

These are school children in the middle of town.  Notice their uniforms.  They looked like boy scouts to me.  All public schools require uniforms for the students and all take English classes. 

All streets have many food vendors on them and many, many motor cycles and cars.  This is not a typical scene!  The city is very busy and noisy with cars and motorcylces flowing together with very little order. 

Ari, from the mission home, was our driver and helped us get our new cell phones at Blok M, the local mall as well as our Kitas (national ID).  We were so thankful for the help he gave us.

The mall was huge with 6 levels!  You could buy everything from a motorcycle to a foot treatment in a tank of water with baby piranhas that eat the dead skin cells off your feet.  No, we didn't try it!

Good bye to Jakarta on Friday, July 20, 2012