Little things

We arrived at church today and immediately started trying to ensure that things would work well for the meeting.  Sister Porter instructed some young sisters to augment the seating that had been set out (which was good because we had a record-setting attendance of 81 people!).  She was working on the sound system when someone came up and said hello.  She shook his hand but then moved on to the next task.  It turned out that he was a church auditor, visiting from Jakarta. He asked us if we were happy in Medan and we said, "Yes!"  Then he asked us, if that was true, why weren't we smiling?

A great reminder.  It's a little thing, but so very important.  This picture is of us smiling as we peel rambutan, one of our favorite fruits, that were brought by a kind sister to church.

One of the little things that has been keep us busy (and not smiling enough!) has been the sound system in our building.  There have been mice or rats in the church, and they have chewed through some cables.  Staff from Jakarta brought a new microphone, but it died during last week's closing prayer.  It was thought that we needed a new amplifier, and indeed we wasted a non-trivial amount of time last week searching for a new amplifier.

But on Saturday, we went through a checklist and realized that the microphone battery was dead after less than a week.  We replaced that and did a bunch of testing for optimal settings.

Elder Porter has been fighting a cold all week so he went home, but I stayed for a baptism.  It was frustrating because one child kept running up and turning on the microphone and yanking it.  I tried in all languages to convince her not to do it.  Easy to see why the battery was dead!  And on Sunday, the foam piece was missing :(

Another little thing:  Elder Porter did an inventory of the chairs in the church a few weeks ago.  Some are chrome, some were painted (and are now rusting).  Church staff hired some people to repaint the painted chairs.  They also replaced the off-white vinyl pads on the seats on the stand, which look so much better.  But they are still in the process of painting the chairs, so we had to pull some from other places to have enough seating during sacrament meeting.



Speaking of little things, our apartment doesn't quite fit the definition of a tiny house, but it is the smallest place we have lived since undergraduate college.  I guess it's convenient that after I eat, I can easily reach to put dishes in the small sink without having to get up.

This was one BIG thing this week.  Elder Porter finished reading the Book of Mormon in bahasa Indonesia!!

We also had some great visits to members, gave a first discussion to an investigator, and taught two well attended English classes.

Over Halfway

Just before Christmas, we passed the halfway point in our mission. As of yesterday, we have eight months left, and will try to make each day count.

There is no fitness center in this building, but the fire exit steps are available to walk on, and last week Sister Porter went up to the roof.  What a great view of the city.  And looking off to the south, I had a great view of the mountains.  On the one hand, I knew they were there because I have been out there.  On the other hand, I had never seen them from the city before.  And indeed, the rest of the week, there was only one other day that I saw a faint outline.  The other days there was too much smog/clouds.

Our wonderful Relief Society President moved last weekend, just like we did.  But she invited the entire congregation over to her new house on Monday night for a family home evening and dinner.  There was a great turnout.

The branch president gave a great talk about the new year, resolutions and goals.  He asked who had goals, and called on Sister Porter first!  (They do not cut us any slack at all for not knowing the language.)

I was able to answer that my goal is to read the Book of Mormon in Indonesian. I hope to finish by the end of July. I figured out a system a few months ago:  I listen in English via Mormon Channel while I read along in the gospel library.  Of course sometimes I get lost and there is a lot of back and forth with the sound file, but it works.  At the old building, I was doing this first thing in the morning on the treadmill.  Now I am doing it while walking around and around on the rooftop first thing in the morning:)

One of the great things about this apartment is a Western-style refrigerator.  Our old freezer had only a freezer compartment, that wasn't reliable and had to be defrosted at least once a month.  This one has a separate freezer door, into a frost-free compartment.  Yay!  And Elder Porter has filled the door with his favorite ice cream treats.

It took a couple trips to Brastagi, an expat-oriented grocery store, to refill our larder, because we gave away a lot of food on the day of the fire (to the young missionaries).

We had always suspected that Brastagi's customers included a lot of Chinese and this was confirmed by their huge display in preparation for the upcoming Chinese New Year celebration.  From our point of view here in Indonesia, the idea in Firefly about the Chinese being a universe-dominant language and culture rings true.

As the week progressed, things settled down enough that we were able to start holding our daily devotionals together and begin visiting people again.  Our English classes were well attended and fun.  It felt really good to be doing missionary work again.

On Friday, after a week of tripping over boxes and trying to decide about What Goes Where, we finally put all the pieces together.  We came home Friday night, turned on the lights, and it looked like a real apartment!

New Buildings

A lot of this week was about looking at buildings, both for a new church building and also for our new home.  Indeed last Saturday we spent looking at church buildings for six hours straight because the realtor was available and an expert from Jakarta was in town.  This rather mewah house was one of the five finalists.  Today Elder Porter gave a great powerpoint presentation to the ward council, showing them the map of the five finalists, many pictures, and a summary spreadsheet. They each listed their top three.

The previous Thursday, we started looking at apartments.  A local place, the Beatrix Apartment didn't quite have what we needed (no washing machine or parking garage), but it struck us as a very comfy place with a kitchenette and much more room than the cramped hotel room we had been living in.  It was also quite close to the church building; we walked to one of our appointments.  So we moved into there on Monday, and stayed until Friday.  Hot water in the shower, fast internet--perhaps we will stay there again when we come back to visit Medan.

At the Beatrix, every room is different.  I loved the rock wall in the bathroom and on our porch.  Unfortunately, the door to the porch was not quite mosquito-proof, but Elder Porter stuffed it with plastic bags to fill the gap, and after the first night it was much better.

We also visited a very well respected tower apartment, but the only units available were either an efficiency, or larger than our house at home.

Our driver had been away for a few days, so we asked him to come in on Monday, which is typically his day off.  We drove all over checking various leads, an at one point Elder Porter had him stop at a new building not far from the church.  We had driven past there often, so we had been watching the building go up, and it looked like there were people on the ground floor.

I confess that I was skeptical, but I was so glad we looked.  The marketing agent quoted us a price that was surprisingly reasonable.  Also, they were willing to rent for only the 9 months we have left.  Usually in Indonesia, one must pay for an entire year in advance, so this is a good financial deal for the church.

(Often, Indonesians try to charge bules more for things, but in this case they may have offered us a lower price because it brings prestige to their building to have foreigners living there.)

The apartment is very compact, with only a counter and stools rather than a table, a comfortable couch, and a television that only offers five Indonesian channels (we miss CNN!).

The kitchen has a great refrigerator with a separate freezer door.  There are two electric burners to cook with.  We fit our small microwave oven on top of the refrigerator.  The washing machine is on the balcony. 

The door to the apartment is gorgeous tall and thick wood, with an electronic lock.

No fitness center, but I have my hand weights and stretch bands, and the fire escape steps have an excellent rise and run and are outside, perfect for morning exercise.
There is only one bathroom, but a door between the sink and the toilet improves functionality and there is hot water in the shower.  We also appreciate the counter around the sink.

Of course our first question was about fire safety, and the fire alarm here DOES go straight to security.  We ran into the architect the other day, and he explained that the swimming pool acts as a reservoir for fighting a fire if the fire hydrant tank should run out of water.  There are smoke alarms in every room.

The building is called the Wahid Private Residences.

So we are trying to get over the grief of losing our old home and neighborhood, and get used to living here instead.  I try to bite my tongue when complaining about what we miss.

This is the part of the view from our balcony.  From our old apartment, those high-rise buildings at upper right seemed to blend together into one massive metroplex.  Indeed, we used to call it "Trantor" (a reference to the Foundation books from Isaac Asimov).   But from this new angle, they are clearly separate.  Most will be mixed-use with commercial below and apartments above, so there will be a glut of fancy apartments in a few years when they are completed. 

In between worrying about a new home and moving and measuring buildings for a possible church, we also resumed our schedule of teaching English classes and made a few visits to members.

First Miracle of 2019

New Year's Eve was such a delight.  Our branch had a laid-back activity.  We started at 3:30 p.m. watching the First Presidency Christmas Devotional, translated into bahasa Indonesia.  Then the guys grilled meat, a lot of meat.

We knew that three of the young missionaries would be leaving later that week, and some were asked to say a prayer or give a spiritual thought as we gathered in a circle on the floor to sing a few songs, bless the food, and begin eating.

We were told to each bring enough rice for our family.  We did.  Of course it wasn't as much as an Indonesian would eat. Learning to eat food that has been left out for hours has taken an adjustment.  But it is not like it has mayonnaise in it. 

It is common here to eat rice with one's hands, as is demonstrated in the video. 

We brought grapes to share with the branch.  Indonesians love them and so do we.

We got home about 8:45 p.m.  I remember because that is when the excellent Hong Kong-produced English news show NewsStream turns into WorldSport.  We did some studying and I went to bed about 11.

I was awakened around midnight by the sound of fireworks.  They were all over town, even our building over the swimming pool.  I think there were more displays in different places than during Lebaran (end of the Muslim fasting month).

But we had stuff to do the next day, so I told myself to go back to sleep.  And I did.  Sanford stayed up and enjoyed the fireworks.

It was 6:03 a.m. when I awoke again.  A loud sound had awakened me, popping like fireworks again.

I went out to the porch to see....but the porch was on fire!  The three air conditioning compressor are out there, and all were ablaze.  Not sure if the noise I heard was the freon tanks exploding or the glass cracking.

Because the glass in the window had already cracked, we were minutes away from the flames jumping onto the curtains and into the apartment itself.

Did I mention that we live on Floor 12, which is the 10th story after one accounts for unlucky numbers.

I woke up Sanford and grabbed my nightgown. I always keep it in the same place in the nightstand in case of emergency.  We ran out into the hall and he grabbed the fire extinguisher while I pressed the fire alarm.

A satisfying siren and flashing light went off, but we found out later that it doesn't go anywhere; we had to call building security ourselves.  I went back into the bedroom to find my phone.  Electricity was off, so I found it by touch.  It was charged 100% so power could not have been off for very long.

We kept emergency numbers taped to the inside of a kitchen cupboard.  I took it out into the hall to see enough to dial.  Unfortunately, in my haste I misdialed security.  I just knew they didn't answer.  So I tried the 24-hour Mechanical and Engineering number next.

While I was dialing, Sanford ran past me a few times looking for another fire extinguisher.  He used three fire extinguishers.  We had brought those grapes to church in a large pink bowl, which was still sitting out and got filled with water several times to finish off the fire. 

 Someone finally answered in Mechanical & Engineering, but didn't seem to understand my Indonesian.  I was saying "api" instead of "kebakaran," but it should have gotten the idea across.  I kept repeating the apartment number over again, and here they sometimes use "kosong" instead of "nol" but again, it should have gotten the idea--and ultimately did, because finally somebody did arrive after the fire was pretty much out.

One asked me for a broom and I knew that word and got it for him.  He was worried about cinders above the ceiling and used the broomstick to knock away the charred ceiling chunks.

They called the manager, who came and told us that we would have to pay for the repairs since our contract requires us to return it in the same shape we got it.  Yes, we are in a different country.

We called our mission president, who had reservations made at a hotel near the church.

I was in shock.  We were so grateful that it wasn't worse than it was, and when people left we knelt to say a prayer of thanksgiving.  Then we packed some bags for the hotel, and went out to see Mary Poppins Returns, which I thought might calm me down.

New Years Day evening with a member's mom

That night we had various commitments, one of which we missed and one that we attended, but did not tell people what we were going through.  Sometime in the afternoon we realized our electricity was off, which meant that everything in the refrigerator would go bad.  We worked in the dark, salvaging what we could and taking it to the young sister missionaries to enjoy.

The mission president instructed us to move everything out of our apartment, including our car.   This was complicated because we had given our driver permission to go home to his home village to visit his mom.  He would be gone a few days.

We took a few loads of stuff over to the young missionaries houses by filling the elevator and getting it down to the basement through much hitting the door-open button, hiring a large (6-seater) rideshare, having them go to the basement and load up, and relying on the young missionaries to help us unload.

I recalled that when a friend had been on vacation, her dad had rented a car and drove them up into the mountains.  I asked if he would drive our car across town, and he was more than willing and insisted on doing it without any payment.  (We realized later that we had provided him with two framed family photos, so maybe he wanted to pay us back for that).  For that last load in the car, we included both stand fans, a floor lamp, drying rack, etc.

The building management was upset at the appearance of our apartment (the black hole to the right on this picture) and immediately began replacing the balcony ceiling, darkened and broken glass, and repainting the apartment above that had been covered by soot.

But days later, they had not replaced the three fire extinguishers that we had used up.

The mission sent an engineering expert from Jakarta to investigate.  He checked over the wiring and couldn't find an obvious reason for the fire.

He is also fixing things at the existing chapel, including our sound system, which was down again last Sunday. He also came with us for six hours to look at potential new buildings.

In the midst of all the packing and cleaning, we somehow lost the remote to the TV at our apartment.  We need to relocate that if we are going to be moving out.