Update

Time for an update and to catch up a little.


Week of April 17-24

Huge grains of sand in Lombok

Almost like quicksand

- Had a good time taking a couple of days and the weekend to go to Lombok and also celebrate my daughter's birthday. It was Easter weekend and we had a good time at the beach, eating at new places together, having an Easter egg hunt and watching some DVD's we had just purchased. I loved the sand at this beach, it was in large round grains instead of small squarish ones and it was white. Even in the heat of the day it felt fine on bare feet and was pretty soft. We watched some DVD's about the history of the United States of America and felt very proud to be Americans.

Week of April 24-May 1

Madura Education Outreach at Public School

The first 3 days of this week I had to go out of town for Education Outreach to Madura. Madura is an island that is right off of the island of Java, where I live, that has it's own history and culture and language separate from Java. For a couple of years now there has been a bridge that connects it to Surabaya, so it only takes a little while to get there and took me a couple of hours to get to the city where I was starting the three days of outreach. Every morning and afternoon I went to public schools or pesantrens, Islamic boarding schools, to talk to them about education in the United States. Every time I have done one of these I have been treated like I'm some kind of rock star; all the kids want to say hi, shake my hand, get their pictures with me, etc. It's pretty fun. It can also be a lot of work and sometimes I get asked by people questions that I have to use all my skill to answer. Some of them are a little easier to answer like one I got from one of the leaders of the Islamic community in Madura about something he read that said that the U.S. needed a new enemy after the fall of communism and so it chose Islam and he wondered if that is true. This one was easy to answer not true, but the idea behind it that even leads them to consider something so absurd also needed to be addressed. This is one of the reasons we do outreach.

Good times doing outreach in Madura

May 1st was my wedding anniversary and my wife and I just spent some time together but didn't go anywhere special. I am happy to be with her and think she is the most awesome person. We spent the day at a district conference for our church, which was kind of a treat because it was different from our normal Sundays.

Week of May 1-8
The great thing about this week was that near the end of the week my parents came for a visit and over the weekend my daughter was baptized! We were all very excited to have them come and felt very honored to have them here for our daughter's baptism. We didn't think they would be able to make it and had reconciled ourselves to that so when they did actually come we were so grateful and excited.
My daughter's baptism was great. There was another young boy of the other counselor in our branch presidency who was also baptized at the same time. So we did the baptism and confirmation in English and they did it in Indonesian. It was a great experience and even better since my parents were there.
Oh yeah, and the 8th was also Mother's day and I had my mom with me! Happy Mother's Day to her and my awesome wife, who is a great, hardworking, smart mother.

We hope the tiger's sedated

Week of May 8-15

Throw me a banana!

This week was really busy at work but I don't remember much else besides having fun with my parents in the evenings. They couldn't stay awake very easily after the sun went down, and it goes down at 5:30 pm! On Saturday we went to Taman Safari together and had a good time seeing the animals and spending time with each other. We also got to see the mud flow on the way down; it's a huge area that was covered in tons and tons of hot mud from inside the earth, whole villages destroyed, after a company drilled in the area and something went wrong. Too bad it rained at Taman Safari the day we were there and some things were cancelled. But we were able to stay for the new night show based on Indiana Jones. They conned us in to sitting in the front row and were kind enough to ask if the children were afraid of explosions and that if they were that we should move. All of the kids said that they were not afraid of explosions, or eruptions, would be a better translation. Anyway, about halfway through the show I understood why they were smiling when they asked about it after water erupted from a "water well" on the set and came down right on us. It kept coming and coming and coming. It must have gone on for a full minute. We were completely soaked and did not, of course, dry off at all. Made for something interesting to laugh about later.

Week of May 15-22

Golfing

I had a day off this week for an Indonesian holiday so we celebrated my birthday and did some things with my parents. Thank you family for making my birthday celebration a good one. My dad and I got professional massages, a first for both of us, we hit some golf balls with two of my children, and then we all went out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants and had the missionaries come along. It was a very memorable time. I had no idea that it would take an hour to massage my neck and shoulders, which is what I ordered. They also massaged my back, head, a little on my arms and legs, hands and feet. They popped all my fingers and toes! When I was getting my back/shoulders massaged it was all I could do not to scream out in pain since they press so hard and keep going on the same spot. Even though it seemed to help my muscles it makes me think twice about going again. Owww!
It was hard to see my parents go since the time seemed to go so fast, but it helped knowing that it wouldn't be a really long time before we saw them again. I think it is helpful for them to have spent some time with us to see where and how we are living so they can understand us, especially my children, better. I'm so glad they came.

Love in Jakarta

At the end of this week we took a special trip and went to Jakarta as a family. We had some fun together on Saturday and it seemed like everyone liked Jakarta. It's a huge city and you can find anything there. We did have to stay at a budget hotel since it is nearly impossible to find a hotel that will let 6 people stay in one room. We had to book 3 rooms! They almost gave us 2 on one floor and one on another until I pressed them to change it since there are only 2 adults in the family. We were supposed to have connecting rooms, but they gave those away somehow before we checked in. At least we were on the same floor! We had a good time seeing some friends who just arrived in Jakarta and going to Kidzania on Saturday. Then on Sunday we had a special treat being a part of an historic day for the Church in Indonesia. Elder Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came and organized the first stake in Indonesia! We felt how significant and special it was to be in that meeting, even though it didn't affect the branch or city where we live since it only includes West Java and Jakarta. But it was a good meeting and a good experience for our children. We are very happy for those who now have the blessings of wards and a stake in Indonesia.

May 22-29
My family went home Sunday night and I transferred myself to another hotel closer to the Embassy and then stayed the whole week to work in the consular section at the Embassy. I wanted to forge a closer connection to the officers and section there in Jakarta since we need to work with them frequently and don't want to be forgotten. I hoped to pick some things up that would help our section now and in the future and perhaps give them some help also, which I think was accomplished. It also was a fun experience staying at the hotel where I stayed. That was an amazing hotel, the Mandarin Oriental. I could go on and on about how nice it was, but I really enjoyed the room, the view, the bed and pillows, the desk space to work on, the friendly service, the cool gym equipment and workouts I had there, and the cool "rainshower" shower. I definitely want to go back. But I was happy to get back home after being there for a week and see my family again.
On Sunday I had to teach a lesson about temples for our combined Priesthood/Relief Society 5th Sunday meeting. I think I was tagged for it, even though it may have been a struggle for everyone to listen to my imperfect Indonesian, because I have been to the temple way more than anyone in the entire branch since the closest one to here is in either Philippines, Hong Kong or Australia, which are all very far and expensive to get to. I was happy to do it and there were some good questions, and a lot of hope that someday there will be a temple in Indonesia since there is a stake here now.

May 29-June 5 (today)
The greatest part of this week is that there were 2 holidays, one U.S. and one Indonesian. So I worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. It felt like I had a lot of Saturdays: Saturday the 28th, Monday, Thursday, and Saturday the 4th. All of them felt like a Saturday and it was nice. But the days I had work, work was extremely busy and will be for the next little while. There certainly is not even a second of sitting around; it's a challenge even to keep on top of things. Even though it is really challenging and there are some extremely frustrating and not-fun things, I still think I have one of the greatest jobs ever. I really like it. Anyway time has really been flying.

To me it's pretty easy to see why I have missed so many weeks writing in the blog. Hopefully it won't go this long in the future since there is already so much I leave out. Good times.