Muslims and Mormons

Muslims

We drove to Semarang on Sunday to visit the ward there and check on the young Elder missionaries. All along the road we saw thousands of Muslims gathered for prayer. This weekend they celebrated Idul Fitri. This is a holiday to mark the end of the Islamic month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast during the hours of daylight.Then they travel to their hometown and ask forgiveness for offenses to family and friends over the last year. Unfortunately, this holiday creates horrible traffic problems. There were 592 people killed in 3,000 accidents throughout the country with the mass exodus to hometowns. We made the mistake of planning our trip on that day. It took us 3 1/2 hours to go 68 miles through bumper to bumper hair raising traffic. Thank goodness we had an experienced driver at the wheel!  

Mormons

These are the fine young Elders in Semarang, just outside of their house. We brought them lunch and inspected their apartment for the mission president. We also had a chance to do some family history training with them in hopes they will use family history as a tool to interest non-members in the church and the concept of forever families.

At the Semarang chapel we were met by the Family Histoy Consultant, Bro. Hendro and a recent convert, Feni.  Bro. Hendro was so warm and friendly to us and spoke some English so we visited quite a while before the meeting and asked him if we could visit his Sunday School class after Sacrament.  He seemed fine with that.  In Sacrament we were asked to speak, not just bear testimony as usual, so we tried to take a little longer than our usual testimony.  Then Bro. Hendro took us to his class and sat us up front with the Bishop and turned the time over to us!  Surprise! The language barrier really gets us into trouble sometimes.  We will spend a Saturday in Samarang next month helping some members with New Family Search. 

This was another opportunity to train at a District activity at the Greenways apartment.  They have enough room for a small crowd and the missionaries love the taste of home they get there...sloppy joes for lunch! 

We've been surprised at how much we have been involved with the young missionaries....it's our car they like! Along with the Greenways car we can haul the entire district so we come in handy on a regular basis.  This was a Zone activity to the zoo in Jogjakarta, about 40 miles away.  We have learned that Batik shirts are the unofficial uniform for casual missionary activities.  Solo is famous for it's Batik fabric.  It's time to shop!

They grow 'em big in Indonesia!  Animals that is, not senior missionaries.

We finally got some training from our area family history leader, Bro. Tsai in Taiwan, with a couple of hours on Skype.  We now have an idea how we are to proceed with the training for the Priesthood Leaders in Indonesia.  He wants the training done in language, (Yikes!  How do we do that?) so we are trying to create a Power Point with excerpts from the only training manual we have that is in Indonesian.  With our limited skills and experience with Power Point and Bahasa Indonesian, the going has been pretty slow, but we are getting close to being done!  We have been blessed to have training and learning opportunities drop into our laps. These have been invaluable to our understanding of the needs here in Indonesia.  Our testimonies of the amazing plan of salvation that allows for all of our Heavenly Father's children to partake of the blessings of the Atonement continues to grow here in beautiful Indonesia.