July - One Year in Indonesia

Here we are having spent one full year in Indonesia and we continue to be amazed at the faithful Saints  who carry on despite lives of trials and hardships.  As we sat in Fast and Testimony Meeting on the first Sunday in July a 61 year old sister bore testimony of the truthfulness of the Gospel and how it gave her strength to arise every morning at 4 AM to ride out on her old bicycle looking for some kind of work that day that would earn her some money.  Another Sister told how her father raised a large family in the church.  The family had just one motorcycle and it took him three trips to the church every Sunday just to get everyone there.  Many leaders of the church in Indonesia have come from that family. Many members live in the humblest of circumstances, sharing small cement homes with many extended family members.  Yet they are happy and thankful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ that has blessed their lives.  We have learned so much about what brings true happiness in life. 
We traveled to East Java this month to the city of Surabaya.  It is a huge city of several million people.  There are two branches of the church there in town.  The young missionaries had organized a Family History Activity for some of their investigators and asked us to participate.  They had 3 non-members who came to learn about why Mormons do family history.  We showed them a short PowerPoint we had prepared with a video we had downloaded and added Indonesian subtitles to from  mormonchannel.org.  Then we helped them create accounts on familysearch.org.  They seemed to have a good time and hopefully it will have been another positive touch with the church that will help them recognize the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

 You can see that the missionaries were having a fun time. We love these boys and their enthusiasm for the work.

The next day we rode to Batu, about 3 hours away, to participate in the Surabaya District Youth Conference with another senior couple, the Andersons.  We met the Williams up in the mountains where they had arranged for the three couples to rent a lovely villa. We only wished we could have stayed longer!  The weather was cool and misty and the mountains were beautiful.

The swimming pool, which we had no time to enjoy, was beautiful to look at.

Elder and Sister Anderson from Rexburg and Elder and Sister Williams from the Fresno, California  area.

The Villa!  The vegetation was gorgeous.

There were about 36 youth at the conference.  We divided them into pioneer companies to learn about how they could be pioneers in the work of family history here in Indonesia.

They were so much fun.  We rotated them through 3 different activities where they learned about the doctrine of FH, the importance of family stories and how to use Family Tree.  Musical Story Chairs was a hit.  I wish I had a picture of them fighting for the chairs! 

When we returned to Solo, the Solo 2 ward had planned an Elder's Quorum FH evening.  I'm not sure how happy they were to be there, but we did get everyone registered and started with their family trees.

President Didit has been so supportive of our work.  He has a personal testimony of family history and has been able to connect into a royal Javanese line.  He and Elder have spent a lot of time working together on that.

We are always glad to have the youth there to help with translation. 

 

Sonia is the ward consultant.  Cute as a bug and a delight to work with!

We met our new mission president this month at Zone Training, but, rats, I did not get his picture.  President Donald and his wife come from Australia.  They are wonderful people with experience living in Indonesia where President worked in security for the Australian Embassy for 5 years.

The young missionaries love getting together. Elder Costner, Watson and Lee enjoying the ever popular rice and chicken box lunches.

Elder Norris giving us all a laugh!  Also from Australia.

 

I did get a photo of Sis. Donald, on the right.  The other couple is from Jogja, the Barnards from Tasmania. Great people.  This is their second mission to Indonesia. 

Again, we had the opportunity to work with the young Elders, Lopis and Kester, and one of their investigators, Pandu.  Widap, on the right, is the Stake FH Center Director.

This is Piaga starting his family history with Elders Johnson and Lopis.  He will be baptized in August!

All the missionaries were invited to a birthday party for Uskup (Bishop) Catur's 10 year old son.  Wow!  What a party!  The yard was all decorated and there must have been 50 people there.

 

The birthday boy, Eden (Aden), doesn't look too happy here, but everyone was having a good time with lots of music and treats for the kids.

 

There was a catered meal for the youth and adults. Yos, Gilang and friend woofing it down!

  This is how they serve soup.  You take a bowl of vegetables and then they ladle in the hot broth.  It was delicious, enak.

We finally got to see an Indonesian beach.  It took us about 3 hours to get there and it was beautiful.  We had such a fun time with the Greenways and enjoyed getting caught by the waves.

 

  

We made our monthly trip to Semarang where we helped the consultants, Agus Wibowo and Hendro Prayogi work with the Jimmy Bazuki family to prepare names for the temple.  They are going to the temple in September for the first time and have several ancestral names ready to take with them.  As you can see, they commissioned their teenage son to do the computer entry.

The end of July and the first week of August was full of parties for the Greenways who leave for home on August 11.  They have been here for two years as a member and missionary support couple.  They are dearly loved by the members and each ward had a farewell party for them.

 Banjarsari ward had quite the talent show for the farewell party.  We taught the youth the Cowboy Boogie line dance and the Virginia Reel to perform.  They had a lot of fun doing that.

You can't help but love these kids and their leaders.

This video clip is of a traditional Javanese dance.  Very precise and beautiful.

I couldn't quite get the hang of it.  Elder Watson and Gill were much better!

This is a baby cicuk that was running around our bedroom.  Billy doesn't mind them but I do so I had him catch the little critter and take him out in the hall.  Billy thought he was so cute!

 

Sister Aster, our Jebres Ward FH Consultant has just received a mission call to the Philippines.  Her English is so good we were hoping she would go English speaking, but I guess the Lord knows she is smart enough to learn a third language!  The best part is she doesn't leave until December!  Yeah, we get her for a few more months. This girl is destined for great things in the church in Indonesia.  She is a strong and faithful leader already.  The strength of the church rests in the hands of the youth!

 Aster with her brother, Ezra, who will also be leaving for a mission this fall to Australia and their amazing mother, Ratmini.

Jebres Ward working on their family history.

“For their salvation is necessary and essential to our salvation, [for] they without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect.”

D o c t r i n e a n d C o v e n a n t s 1 2 8 : 1 5 

That's what it's all about!