Happy Birthday America! I forgot it was the 4th of July. Can you believe it. i forgot about my very most favorite holiday. It was fast sunday and we were running everywhere before church trying to drag our investigators off their lazy bums and to the church building. It wasn't until Elder Christiansen's testimony he bore in sacrament meeting that I remembered. He said, "dan kepada semua orang putih selamat hari merdekaan" which means "and to all the white people happy independence day." Sorry America, I still love you. We should have done something to celebrate. There are 10 american missionaries in this city and nobody thought to do anything, oh well. I'm grateful I'm only missing one. The truth is, I think about America and how grateful I am for her on a daily basis. Everyday is America Day!
good news. Sampang is still alive and doing well just chillin in his beach chair. Thank you for your concerns :-)
Dad the names are hysterical here. There is no rhyme or reason. Petrus is Peter in Indonesian, so that is pretty normal. But there are families with the funniest names. They name their kids crazy names like tunggalim, maser, bat, and then one stuck in the middle named LarryAustin. so random.
Hey regarding our neighbors, I have been thinking about them a lot too. I hope that all goes well for you guys. It's scary being a member missionary sometimes isn't it. Just remember, don't just send the missionaries over, be apart of it all. I always get slightly frustrated when people say "hey I have a friend, here is their phone number, call them" I want to yell, "hey why don't you be a good friend, share why you care, invite them to your home where they are comfortable and then call us over".
Yesterday for P-day we went to Batu Niah. They are these caves a ways out of town, supposedly the biggest in Asia. I swear these caves are on one of the episodes of Planet Earth. Wasn't there an episode about a huge mound of bat poop? The Elders all seem to agree with me. If someone could help me out and watch Planet Earth to see if Niah caves is anywhere on it that would be great. Regardless, we climped hills of bat poop. It smelled terrible, but was pretty cool to see. I hate hiking in the rainforest, we sweat so so so so so so so much. But it was fun. Along the hike we ran into some crazy monkeys trying to kill each other, so it seemed. That is kind of scary.
This next paragraph I am going to dedicate to how much I hate dogs. In KL there were no dogs because dogs are considered unclean, like pork. Here, they are everywhere. and they are nasty. So very very nasty. They all have fleas, they all have fly infested wounds, and they ATE MY SHOE. Every home we go to we take off our shoes before entering, which is rediculous because the floors of the home are just as dirty (i guess i should think of how much worse their floors would be if we didn't remove our sandals). I always worried about leaving my shoes outside the doors because there were so many animals. My worries proved valid. A few days ago and went to leave and could only find one of my shoes. I looked around and found the other a ways off, chewed up. The back heel strap was ripped as well as one of the cross straps. I was so mad, I had to try so hard not to cry (nobody likes sister missionaries who cry) but boy did I want to. The dumb dogs ate my dumb choco.
This same day we were riding out to Petrus place again in the country, a long ride, and I got a flat tire. I'm an idiot though and didn't realize it was low. I was biking harder than I ever have in my life and was going no where. Sister Whittemore was way out in front of me and I couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to keep up. I figured over night I must have gotten really out of shape. Finally I realzed my tire was not only flat, but torn up also. So with my torn shoe, and torn tire we walked the rest of the way to Petrus. Luckily we didn't have that much farther to go, and the couple missionaries were able to come rescue us in their car. It wasn't the best day ever but Petrus is still a doll and Jaya his friend still wants to be baptized so, can't complain.
I pretty proud of myself and the way I mended my shoes. There are little cobblers sitting outside of a lot of the stores along the streets who will fix your shoes so I took my sandal to one. He wasn't not willing to help. So, I bought some orange thread and stitched it up myself. They look pretty good, you almost can't tell, except I did the weaving of the straps wrong and it totally bugs me but I don't want to do it all over again. I can't believe I wear these ugly ugly shoes every single day. i love em.
The language is coming along, thank you for your concerns. I can teach a lesson if they ask no questions and have no concerns that need to be addessed haha, which never happens. The great thing is people are usually impressed with my language ability because white people never take the time to learn their language. So even though I am terrible, the fact that I know even five words is impressive to them. Plus I have got the ability to initally get to know someone down, so when I meet new people I can fool them into thinking I am ok at the language; the difficult part is just making the daily conversation.
Can I share something very funny. At church last Sunday during sunday school it started raining really hard. No, surprise there, it always rains. But still, everyone in class started whispering "oh my gosh it's raining" "do you see? rain" "look rain" "rain" strong rain" etc. You'd think they had never seen rain before. And also, when we are riding our bikes and it is raining we pass people and they look at us like we are nuts (which, maybe we are). They say "hey, it's raining (eh! hujan)" and point at the sky. Like we don't already know! we're soaked! It's funny. Like cold water, rain also kills. People don't show up for church or lessons or whatever and we ask them, "hey what happened why didn't you come" Their response: "rain". Don't you have an umbrella???
We have been teaching family of a mom, dad, and five daughters. The father has been a little difficult but he is coming around. He really likes Mosiah, I think the book of Mosiah is what won his heart. That, and the Liahona we gave him last week. We gave him a few conference talks because he had a hard time accepting a prophet that hadn't written any scripture like the Bible or Book of Mormon. We came back and he had read all the talks by the prophets and apostles and yet his most favorite of all was one in the Liahona directed to teenagers about modesty. He couldn't stop talking about how great it was. Must be the fact that he is the father of 5 daughters :-). After reading about modesty he is now considering baptism. It's interesting what hooks some people.
Well, I love you all, I'm sad I missed out on the fourth of July. Maybe next year eh?
love
sister v
No comments:
Post a Comment