New Friends, Old Friends

For months, we had been planning a trip to Lake Toba and the island of Samosir.  There are not flights every day, but we had figured out a very effective plan of flying to the little airport there, then directly on to Jakarta.  However, all those plans were cancelled when church public affairs contacted us about setting up a break-the-the fast dinner for a group of Muslims and Christians.  This is the fasting month of Ramadan, and it was a great opportunity for community outreach.

Last week we found a restaurant and paid the deposit.  Folks in Jakarta handled all the invitations, and we ended up with 40.  We didn't really have room for that many, but some of them came a bit later.

We tried to smile and engage, and I connected with a woman down the table, who turned out to be the president of the women's auxiliary.

Our presence seemed to have made a difference, so we were glad that we had stayed.

This week we also received delivery of the baskets that we had ordered from a sister in the branch who does a great job at making such things.  She also made an extra smaller one.  These are very lightweight, so we will definitely be able to bring them home with us.

We flew to Jakarta on Wednesday, in preparation for the Zone Conference on Thursday.  Wednesday night, we had the opportunity to visit Pak Suharto, who was Elder Porter's first mission companion in Indonesia, almost 44 years ago.

Our kids grew up hearing the story about how Elder Porter was so frustrated that he couldn't understand a thing at one of their first visits.  Then he realized that Elder Suharto had been speaking Javanese to the family, and not the bahasa Indonesia in which Elder Porter had been trained.

There are many regional languages throughout the islands of Indonesia, and back then young children did not learn Indonesian until entering school.  Now, however, they are learning Indonesian in the home, partly as a result of cross-tribal marriages and also because television is in Indonesian.

Suharto was so mentally acute; he helped Elder Porter to recognize some of the folks in that epic photo with President Gout and President Rowley.  He had other photos and told stories.  He takes pride in being the first member of the church from the city of  Malang.

As one can see from this photo, his wife and children are Muslim, but Suharto attends church and has been to the temple.

We traveled to that appointment by a car ride, that ultimately took two hours, so we decided to try the train on the way back.  We were successful in changing regional trains once, and the second train that continued on to Bogor was full by the time we got off at the Tebet station in Jakarta.

Google was great about guiding us and we made it safely to the train station near our hotel.

Since it was already 10 p.m. by then, we had planned to call a car to take us the last 1.3 km to the hotel.  But then we saw this bemo, a vintage three-wheeled motorized cab that we have only seen in Jakarta. We were able to hire him to take us to the hotel.  The driver wisely dropped us off at the back entrance to our hotel so we did not need to go the extra 4 kilometers on one-way roads that would have been required to reach the front entrance.

Great zone conference.  Lots of things to consider.  For the young missionaries, the highlight was getting smart phones.  They can now use What'sApp to communicate with members, and order their own Grab cars.

Missionaries often make matching garb for their district for zone conference, but we've never been included before.  But this time they made a tie for Elder Porter.  The elder on far right actually made the ties!  Very impressive.

We spent the first night in a hotel so that we could take advantage of the excellent gym for Sister Porter to recover from the negative effects of flying/driving.  But we spent Thursday and Friday night at the mission home with the Mackays, our amazing mission president and companion.  It is also in easy walking distance from the chiropractor.  It takes one visit to loosen things up and then a second appointment a few days later to put it back into place.

This picture was taken after returning back on Saturday.  It shows what a prime piece of real estate is occupied by the 2-story mission home.  It must be very valuable, with major high-rise office and residence complexes on all sides.

The youth in our branch are getting ready for their For the Strength of Youth conference in a few weeks.   It has been fun watching them practice!  Here they are learning a line dance: