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.