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!