Sejarah Keluarga

This week was all about family history, or sejarah keluarga as we would say here.  Elder and Sister Schmid (pronounced SchmEEd) from Surabaya are a senior couple, the family history experts for the mission  They arrived on Friday*, visited two families on Saturday, and gave a presentation after church on Sunday.  The Schmids are both of Dutch heritage and were born in Indonesia and survived World War II here.  For lunch on Saturday, we took them to the Tip-Top restaurant, which has been around since the 1930s and features some Dutch dishes.  They ordered Bitterballen and Moorkop.

We had a great turnout of people to stay for their presentation.  One reason was that the branch president's mom arranged a meal of fried chicken, veggies and rice.  Ours was a special serving--we got a chicken claw!  There were a few spoons in the kitchen at the beginning, but had run out by the time we took a break to eat.

Note that it is served on a melamine plate.  They never use paper plates at church; it is always a plastic plate that has to be washed afterward.





Another inducement to attend the family history seminar was that Elder Porter was offering free family photos.  He spent quite a bit of time last week figuring out the optimal lighting, and bought a tripod for this purpose.  This couple has three children but he also took a photo of just the two of them.

Some less-active members came, dressed very nicely.  It was a lot of fun, but now he has all the editing to finish.

One of the joys of this family history event was having the opportunity to work with Maria, our amazing branch family history consultant, who did a great job of organizing things, teaching the members, and making appointments with families.

She had attended our English classes in the past, but seeing her like this was impressive.

At the end, everyone who attended received one of these pens, which has the Family Search symbol and the reminder of "4 Generasi" in bahasa Indonesia.

Elder Scmid presenting.

*The Schmid's flight got in around 4 p.m. on Friday and the airport is at least an hour out of town.  We had a 4 p.m. appointment with an investigator, so we sent two of the young elders to pick them up.  It just so happens that two of our elders had previously served in Surabaya, and another elder is from Surabaya.  So we knew that one way or another, it would be a familiar face welcoming them.  We barely got back from our appointment in time to set up for English class, so we didn't get to talk with them until 8:30 p.m., so we are grateful for their patience.  We will be taking them back to the airport, very early on Monday morning.

Mountains and other challenges

Last Sunday when we were in church, we heard about the church bombings in Surabaya.  When we got home that afternoon, we wondered if the news had reached the US, where people would be waking up.  I turned on NPR news, and it was the lead story.  So we contacted our close family to let them know that we were on a different island and okay.

On Monday we went about our business, but there was another bombing in Surabaya, and in the afternoon all young missionaries in Indonesia were sent home with instructions to stay in, at least until Wednesday.

Senior couples outside of Surabaya were left to make their own decision.  We had committed to go with the youth to a mountain hike on Tuesday morning, and after praying about it, we decided to proceed.  (Elder Porter quipped that we would be safer outside the city than in it.)

We left at 2 a.m., setting out on a twisty-turny drive that took over two hours.  And then we started hiking in the dark, determined to see the sunrise from the mountain top.

On the drive up to the mountain.  

We think of ourselves as good hikers, but that is when we are on our own, going at our own (apparently slow) pace.  The youth were excited to have us, but we slowed them down and they worried about us.  Whenever I stumbled, a hand reached out to help me.  I wanted to be insulted, but I remembered all those times that I told people:  When you allow others to serve, you are giving them a blessing.  So I thanked them and kept going.

Mt. Sibayak is a volcano, as are many of the mountains in this part of the "Ring of Fire."  So there were fissures with steam or smoke coming out, and a strong sulphur smell at times.  There were a few spots where the path was very narrow and slippery and the youth ahead warned us to be careful that we would be lost if we fell.  Of course the ascent was in the dark, with flashlights and headlamps and phones.

Arriving at the top gave us a great sense of accomplishment, and a bit of disappointment as we did not see a beautiful sunrise.  It became lighter, but there was so much smoke, steam, clouds and haze that we did not see any golden rays. It was also windy at the top, and I was glad that Elder Porter offered his windbreaker

Then on the trip down, the direction of the wind changed, and everything became clear.  A mountain suddenly appeared!  It must have been hidden by the smoke and haze.

We made it down safely, and went into the market town of Berastagi. We all had lunch at a local restaurant:  rice and a wedge of quiche and some greens.  Since everyone at our table was eating with their fingers, we did as well.  The restaurant did provide bowls of water for cleaning hands before and after.

We went home, took a nap and made preparation for the next day.  We had given our driver the day off on Wednesday because he had driven for the hiking trip the day before.  When we got in a Grab car, we had to take a detour and there were lots of police out.  The driver told us about a machete attack that morning on a police station on our island. He happened to be Muslim, and his friends had told him not to go near a Christian church, but not only did he drive us safely to our church building but he and Elder Porter chatted for a few minutes. He was frustrated at what was being done in the name of Islam and insisted that the terrorists didn't have a religion because they were serving the devil.

We were going to church because a 13-year-old had been killed by a train, and the local custom is burial the same day.  We went to the funeral in the family's home, but while the other missionaries went to dedicate the grave, we left to teach English class.  The young missionaries stayed in again on Thursday, and we curtailed our travels far from home.  The English class we teach on Thursday is an hour away, so we decided to cancel.  We invited the missionaries over to our apartment, and went to collect them in our car.

Between the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem, the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan and the elections here, it is a sensitive time.  We try to balance common-sense safety procedures with our determination to be about the Lord's work.  We updated our information with the US State Department so that they know exactly where we live in case of an evacuation, and we are already getting the alerts.  However, in reality, we are probably as safe in Medan as we would be in a big city in the U.S.

Today Colleen gave a 10-minute talk in sacrament meeting, in bahasa Indonesia.  It was about prayer, and some parallels were drawn to the hiking trip.  We were never alone; a young person was always there to help us.  Which is like our Heavenly Father.  And when the haze cleared and everything was clear, that is like how we can suddenly know what to do, as an answer to prayer.

Technology

Moving to Indonesia has provided an opportunity to consider the electronic tools upon which we rely, and to unplug a bit from our pre-mission state.

Over the years we have been satisfied and perhaps a bit smug about the way that our T-Mobile phone service has supported us in every country we visited.  We get a welcome text at the airport or border when crossing by train.  Texts and 3G were free, with voice calls at 20 cents a minute.  It was great.  But U.S. customers cannot keep using their phones overseas; they will be cut off after 30 days.  A phone number can be put on hold, but only for 6 months.

So a few weeks before we left town, I switched my phone to Google Voice. For a one-time $20 USD fee, I could keep my phone number.  Texts and calls to that number go through automatically, and their voice-to-text transcripts are pretty good, saving a lot of time.  I can make free voice calls from that number through the computer, which has been helpful for a lot of customer service issues.

I had intended to buy a local sim card for my iphone, but didn't appreciate that my iphone phone had not yet been unlocked, which was a major hassle and at one point they said I would have to make up a backup and restore.  No big deal.  Except that I apparently accidentally hit the encryption button, didn't remember entering a password, and could not re-install.  So I lost all my contacts, notes, etc. (Sanford learned from my experience and had no problems.)

It was actually good to clean up the apps, which I had intended to pare down anyway.  But it was like losing part of my brain to lose the rest. We are so dependent on these electronic aids!  But I now have adequate voice, text and data for $12 per month. And a smartphone is helpful because on the days our driver does not work, we get around by using a ride service called "Grab" (think Uber).

I am the acting medical coordinator for the entire mission until our new mission president comes in July,  No problem talking to the missionaries across all the islands, but if I have to consult an MD, he is in Hong Kong.  I am not sure I could figure out buying an international phone plan, so I am using Google Voice on  the computer and paying 2 cents a minute for the international call.


That brings us to the matter of computers.  I was an early adopter of a 2-in-1 "transformer" book that can be used as a tablet.  I bought my Asus at the beginning of 2015, and it came with a full version of Office, which I needed for my work at the time.  It is a very lightweight machine, and another plus is that the charging cable comes apart so that it can be charged from an external battery pack.



I imagined using this as a tablet when we were teaching people, to show videos, etc.  But the volume on that machine is not really loud enough to show a video to more than one person, and the battery is not lasting as long as it used to.  So right before leaving, I bought a newer one with an all-day (11-hour) battery life and good volume, as well as lots of other bells and whistles like the fingerprint sign-in.  And we are using our tablets for teaching a group of kids up in a kampung (neighborhood) an hour away.

I had not realized that our other classes would be taught using a television to display, and I would need a cable that connects my micro-HDMI output to a HDMI input.  We spent part of a Monday going from store to store looking for a cable but could only find an adapter.  It didn't work, and I wasn't sure if it was the adapter or a setting.  I tried various things that were recommended from the web, and uninstalled a driver from the newer computer that pretty much killed it.  I wasted a couple of hours and stayed up too late fretting, and then decided that the older compute would have to do, and I was not going to obsess.  I put it away for two weeks, partly because we were so busy and partly to prove that I could live without it.  Most of my work was saved to a storage card.  I popped it out of the new computer, put it in the older computer, and kept going.

Of course if we were at home we would have ordered the HDMI cable from Amazon.  That got me to thinking and it turns out that there is a company here called Tokopedia.  We had the cables two days after ordering, just as we were getting ready to leave to teach our Friday night class.

A few weeks later we did take the damaged computer in for repair.  Although there are maybe 100 stores in town with an ASUS sign, I looked up an authorized repair facility on their website.  There were only three.  The one near us ultimately agreed to fix it under warranty, although I lost everything. But I was nervous while we were waiting, seeing this sign.  The current slogan for Asus is, "In Search of Incredible."  So the slogan they have up is a bit dated, and there is a mis-spelling that did not inspire confidence. But in the end it was fixed for free, so I am glad we went there.

This picture is also typical of how various religions are integrated in Indonesia.  The worker on the right is wearing a black jilbab head covering, sign of a devout Muslim.  The woman on the left is not.  They seemed to get along well.

English Classes

banner photo from our Facebook page

Teaching English will be a certain chunk of our time here and is currently taking up a lot of effort as we decide on which curriculum to use, etc.  It should be easier once we get things rolling, which is starting to happen.

We are teaching twice a week at church, on Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. and also Friday night at 7 p.m.  The Friday night class has about 16-18 people and the Wednesday afternoon brings in 8-10 people.  I was driving myself crazy figuring out how to have continuity for folks who skipped Wednesday, and then it dawned on me:  Just teach two different streams.  So the Wednesday people are talking about things they like, and the Friday people are talking about family words.  (I know all the family words in Indonesian because right before Christmas when we were expecting lots of company, I turned our family tree into an Indonesian lesson. )

photo from our Facebook Page

To facilitate the lessons at church, we set up a Facebook page for Medan Branch English Lessons.  We post the handouts so that if  someone misses and wants to get a taste of what we did, or if they lost their handout and want to practice for next week.  We are so grateful to the humanitarian missionaries in Timor Leste who did the hard work of making up the handouts.  (Yes, Timor Leste is a real country, not just a plot line on Madam Secretary.)  Elder Porter plays a huge role in greeting people, helping to read male parts--one week he had to leave for a youth activity and we missed him. When I was in Gainesville, I spent a lot of effort learning upper-level skills in Word and Powerpoint, which has helped me a lot here.  Who knew that a missionary could use those tech skills?


In addition to the lessons at church, once a week we go up to a kampung,or neighborhood, and teach all the kids that want to learn.  Most are between the ages of 8 and 12, with a few younger ones and a few older ones, as well as adults who sit outside and listen.  There were 27 of them the first week, and they sorted themselves into girls and boys--perhaps they do that at school?  Some are so serious, carefully taking notes.  We use our tablets, flashing up pictures as we explain.  This is Colleen with some of the girls.

The next day it just so happened that we visited the same host family on a different matter, and some of the neighborhood kids saw us, thought we would be giving another lesson, and enthusiastically streamed into the house!

Our lessons at church are open to the public, and many of the participants are not members of our faith.  A few weeks ago a pair of middle-school teachers came.  One of them is an English teacher and invited us to speak to her class.  I wish we had a photo of them doing the Gator Chomp, but this is a quick selfie we did snap at the end.  I think that is a rosary on the board, and the name is St. Ignatius so maybe a Catholic school?  They started the class with prayer. We hope to do more of that community outreach.