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!