September Scenes

We can't believe September is gone!  We've have had some successes this month and some failures  as well.  We always make "notes to self" after our mess-ups.  The latest "note to self" is:  Even if you have a translator, your message does not always get across!  We made a two hour trip to Jogja to train a High Counsel Advisor, Bishopric, Elder's Quorum Pres. & Family History Consultant.  We had only three of the six in attendance.  Today we went to meet with the same group from a ward here in Solo.  We only had the Bishop come.  Hmm....Next time we make an appointment we will have the list of attendees written down in Bahasa Indonesia to hand to the Bishop!

The training we are doing is from the manual, "To Turn the Hearts, A Leaders Guide to Temple and Family History Work".  It is a new view of family history that helps leaders understand how focusing on temple and family history can help in the salvation of not only the dead but also the living.  We basically introduce family history as a tool to help ward councils in the work of conversion, retention, teaching and activation.  Then we train family history consultants so they can support the leaders and the members in submitting names to the temple for ordinances.





We had the opportunity to attend the closing ceremony of the Ampel water project and the opening of the Magalan water project.  Wow! Do these people like to celebrate!  It's a wonderful thing for them to have clean water piped directly to their village and in some cases right to their homes!

These are the dignitaries at the Magelan opening including the Healy's, senior humaitarian aid missionaries, Pres. Budi, Area Authority Elder Subandryo and the local mayor.  Note the pyraminds of rice and whole chickens across the front of the stage for decoration.  At one point the top was cut off one of the pyramids of rice by the mayor and shared with Elder Subandryo. There were several hundred people there and all were fed lunch at the conclusion of the ceremony.

We especially enjoyed the closing of the Ampel water project because of the children who came to sing for the program.  These are the very youngest ones.  So cute!

The Greenways helped keep the children entertained until the ceremony started by having them sing. This is "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" Indonesian style.

The program also included a group playing gamelans, a traditional Indonesian musical instrument.  The musician hits the tone bar with the mallet in the right hand and then stops the sound by touching the bar with the left hand

 The Gamelan Band

Everyone wants their picture taken with the white foreigners.

 The water is brought to Ampel from a spring above a waterfall in the  mountains behind us.

 Clean water for Ampel.

We had another wedding this month! Tian and Yuliani were married at the church where they served dinner afterwards to  everyone.   A week later they had a traditional Javanese Wedding Reception to which 1,000 people were invited and again fed dinner.  They will go to Hong Kong in November to be sealed in the temple.  The reception was amazing!

As you can see, the couple was beautiful!

Part of the ceremony included the bride and groom  kneeling before their parents and asking for their blessing on their union.

The meal arrived in 5 courses!

Special quests were dressed in traditional Javanese atire.  This is our Surakarta Stake President, Budi Susanto and his lovely wife, Isti.





September in Solo

We have been preparing and giving family history training to leaders, missionaries and Young Single Adults the past 2 weeks.  We have also continued giving help directly to members who are attending the Manila temple this week and taking family names with them.  About 10 people went together from the Surakarta Stake.  They were so excited to be going.  There was a last minute flury of requests for help with Family Ordinance Requests the day before they left.  Luckily, we were able to get it all done in time!

  

We have prepared PowerPoint presentations in Indonesian for our training.  They include videos  with Indonesian subtitles.  It has taken a lot of time since we do not speak Indonesian. :)  We first prepare the presentations in English and then do an Indonesian version with translation help from Google Translate and copy/paste from the one manual we have in Indonesian.  Then we have our driver check for errors as well as having the young missionaries look them over.  Google can only do so much! Elder has learned how to make Indonesian subtitles for the videos we want to use which works great but is very time consuming. 

We went to our third wedding since we've been here.  This was  a young couple we were helping with family history, Agus and Yua, so we actually knew them, which was nice!  There was a beautiful garden reception at Bishop Cator's home after the ceremony.  He has a large, lovely home on the outskirts of town.

This was the entrance to the reception.  Those are real flowers on the signs.

Agus and Yua.  They went to the temple this week to be sealed!

Many guests had their pictures taken with the bride and groom.

Sis. Nies, center (forgot her name tag) and Sis. Manalu were bridesmaids.

The young Elder missionaries were ushers. 

Elder with the groom's niece, Yvonne.

Lot's of cute bridesmaids.

This is Bambang and Tutut.  Sis. Tutut is the Stake Family History Center Director.

Asnibar, mother-in-law of the Bishop, is a lovely woman I hope to get to know better. 

On our way home from the church one night we stopped for food at a street vendor.  The eggs you see in the window are green duck eggs.  They are used for the savory Martabak Telur that we ate for dinner.  It is a deep fat fried crust folded into a pocket filled with a tasty meat, onions and some green vegetable and the duck egg.  It really was good. 

Martabak Manis, is made from a thick crepe filled with margarine, chocolate pieces, peanuts, cheese and sweetened condensed milk!  Pres. Groberg says every bite of Martabak will take a day off of your life, but it is worth it!

We took several of these to the District Activity for the missionaries.  They love them!

While we have never felt in danger here, you can see by the gate in front of the church that things are different here.  There is a wall with sharp iron spikes on top all around the building and the gate is kept locked if no one is in the building.  We do not hesitate, however, to walk to the church through quiet little back streets.  People are often sitting out in front of their homes and always greet us with a smile.  The crazy traffic is our only fear when we are out and about!

Another Exciting Week in Indonesia

Who but family history folks love to visit cemetaries?  It seems that in Indonesia goats also get a kick out of it.  We went to a local graveyard to discover what kind of information could be gathered from tombstones.  As it turns out, names and at least one date appeared on most stones!

Java has about 1,000 people per square kilometer...very crowded.  It seems the cemetaries are just as crowded! 

Our driver's mother was buried here.  When Franky finally found the grave some ladies come over and quickly poored water over the tombstone to wash it.  We were then expected to pay them for the service.  Just last week there would have been many fresh flowers here for Idul Fetri, the Muslim holiday which includes honoring departed family members. 



This is Yuli the YW Pres. in Bangarsari Ward I have been working with.  She will attend the Manila Temple in 2 weeks.  She has identified many family names to do temple ordinances for.  She is one of the unusual Indonesians who has relatives who have kept journals with lots of family information in them.

Manila Temple

We did some FH training at a single young adult fireside last Sunday.  There were actually about ten more people who arrived later than this photo was taken.  Indonesian rubber time, we call it, can mean an event can start as late as 1 hour.  We finally started 20 minutes late.  We were able to garner 4 more people to get started with their family history and a promise from our new Springville, Utah Elder, that he would begin his family history as soon as he returned home!  We also met with the Surakarta Stake President this week and arranged to do leadership training with him and the high council in two weeks!

 We spent our P-day with our driver and his family on a trip to the falls.  I missed the name of the falls but it was beautiful and cool.  Cool we needed after walking down over 1,000 steps to get there!  We saw lots of monkeys and some beautiful countryside.

This mama monkey let us come right up to her.  Others tried to steal food right out of our hands!



Our lunch was sauted chicken and rabbit served on lontong, which is rice cooked in a banana leaf so that the rice took on a solid shape and was then sliced onto our plates.  The meat was served on top of the lontong with peanut sauce, very spicy but enak (delicious).  We sat on the floor, of course.

 The Hong Kong Temple is the other temple Indonesians attend.  They save for many years to go.  While the price of a plane ticket is only about $200 it is a huge amount for them to save.  It has been exciting to help the families that are going prepare their ancestors names for temple ordinances. 

Yesterday afternoon we got a text from the Stake FH Center Director asking us if we could come to her home, about an hour's drive away to bless her father who could not walk due to osteoporosis.  We stopped and bought Franky, our driver, a white shirt so he could participate.  It was very dark by the time we arrived at the small home in the country.  By Indonesian standards it was really quite nice as we had chairs to sit on and I could see they had a washing machine.  She is a high school teacher of science and physics.  Elder and the son-in-law helped the father into the living room from his bed.  He has been down for about 3 weeks and not improving much.  He was given an encouraging blessing of which he could not understand a word, but he was very appreciative.  Then Sis. Tutut told us about her 15 yr. old daughter, her only child who was killed 3 years ago on her motorcycle.  She asked many questions about the spirit world and wept openly for her daughter.  We were so thankful we had studied Doctrine & Covenants 138 that morning as we were able to offer her words of comfort about where her child was.  Elder felt strongly that her daughter was doing missionary work in the spirit world and that she was associating with her departed grandmother and was very happy there.  What a special experience for us and hopefully for Sis. Tutut.  She seemed very appreciative of our visit.  It is a joy to associate with the good people here in Surakarta.