Selamat Natal! Christmas Celebrations

The Big Event of the week was our branch Christmas Party.  Everyone was working on it, and we were expecting 120 people, when average Sunday attendance is only around 70.  We had made flyers for the missionaries to hand out, and had delivered some ourselves.

But that wasn't the only thing going on.  All the male missionaries had the opportunity to help a church member family paint their house as a service project.

Sister Porter did not go along because she was busy with the sisters in the hospital.  The young missionary who was hospitalized recovered from dengue fever enough to have her surgery for appendicitis on Monday.  It was scheduled for 10:30 a.m., and the hospital has wifi, so Sister Porter brought them two computers so that they could email their families as usual.  While they were emailing, Sister Porter finally got her flu shot (we had tried earlier but our nearby hospital didn't have the quadrivalent vaccine).

As she was leaving the apartment, the healthy sister who was staying with her companion called and asked for breakfast.  Hmmn.  It was our P-day and the pantry was bare; no eggs and no fruit.  We packed some cereal and I made a grilled cheese sandwich.  But here is the thing:  on the elevator, the Indonesians were holding their noses from the stench of the sandwich.  Seriously?  We had brought some durian fruit home a few days earlier, and that was okay, but grilled cheese was too stinky?

Throughout the week Sister Porter brought several meals to those sisters, including lots of veggies, french fries when the recovering sister was craving them, and a round of pizza.  We also did their laundry.  One afternoon Sister Porter stayed at the hospital with the recovering sister while the companion and a member went out teaching.

Our branch party was supposed to start at 4 p.m. on Thursday, December 20.  They have an expression in Indonesian, jam karet, which means "rubber time."  The event began more than an hour later.

Sister Onting was released from the hospital on Thursday afternoon, and it made quite a stir when she entered the church.

The sashes that the MCs are wearing are Ulos, a sign of respect in the Batak tribal tradition.  These sashes are worn at funerals, weddings and other special events.  They didn't wear them all night, but it was good to see local culture incorporated into the program.

The program included a lot of music (both congregational singing and amazing ensembles and solos), some spiritual thoughts, much involvement from the children and youth, and a drama:  a condensed version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Elder Porter had the lead in the drama.  This is Pak Scrooge taking time from counting money to tell Bob Cratchit that he can't have the day off for Christmas.  Before the action started, he was smelling and caressing the money. It's hard memorizing lines at our age, and we worked a lot on the cues.

 This is Jacob Marley.  Actually our wonderful driver.  He did a great job.

 This is the ghost of Christmas past, played by one of the Young Women.  Elder Porter is wearing his sarong under the bathrobe.

 The climax of the party was the arrival of Santa Claus.  They invited all the kids under 12 to come up to the stage, and Santa handed out bags of treats.  Santa was also played by a missionary.  He was very gracious with his time and stayed in costume while a lot of people took pictures with him.

Dinner was a fancy box dinner, handed out as people left, which saved on mess in the chapel.


During the week we were also spending time looking at potential church buildings.  On Saturday afternoon, we had the chance to get into a house that might work out, so that made us late arriving to a Batak church service to which we had been invited by the mother of one of our members.

We went to the Christmas service, ate quickly, and had to leave by 9:30 p.m. because we both had assignments to prepare (Sanford was speaking in sacrament meeting, and Colleen was teaching the young women).  So we gave our prize drawing tickets to our friend.  She got a new stove!  She said it was Sister Porter's ticket, but we assured her that she should have it.

Merry Christmas to all!

Holidays and Hospitals

On Monday, we were shopping at Lotte (and so happy that they had the banana bread loaves that we love!).  But they also had a great deal on folding travel mattresses, and we bought two of those for the missionaries to have on hand  for visitors.  We knew that the zone leaders were arriving that night, to spend a few days here training our young missionaries and we thought they might like something to sleep on other than the floor.  This picture was taken at our Tuesday district meeting, because it was an epic event:  12 full-time missionaries in that room in Medan.  Unfortunately, the excellent photographer Elder Porter is not himself in the photo.


We found out that the building that we thought the congregation would be moving into in a few months had just been leased to someone else.  So we spent much of our time this week driving around looking at buildings, measuring and phoning and thinking about possibilities.  As it happened, our mission president was coming this weekend, so he had the opportunity to visit some of the buildings with us.


Last Sunday, Sister Porter had to handle the Young Women meeting, because our wonderful YW president went home after sacrament meeting to check on her daughter.  The daughter ended up being hospitalized, and we went to visit on Wednesday. Thankfully, she is much better now.

On Wednesday, that sister missionary with whom Sister Porter had spent time last weekend got sick again.  They went to the hospital, and she was admitted.  Her stomach pain was diagnosed as appendicitis after a CT scan (yes, a high quality hospital for our missionaries!), but she also had dengue fever that had to be resolved first.  The mission president and his wife went straight to her bedside from the airport when they arrived, and allowed the missionary to call her mom in another country using their phone that has an international plan.

She will be having that surgery on Monday.  We have been trying to support them in whatever is needed, doing her laundry, transporting the companion, bringing food for the companion.  I asked the mission president to bring an extra mission phone from Jakarta, so that when they are apart they can stay in contact.  Usually it is one phone per companionship, but the healthy missionary is allowed to leave occasionally.

Our city has a high percentage of Christians, and the school semester ended on December 15.  So we weren't sure what attendance at our English classes would be like.  Ultimately, we decided to take a 3-week break, with the last lesson on December 14.  I also wrote a series of lessons about USAmerican holidays, first holidays in general (Halloween, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Mardi Gras, etc.) and then the final lesson about Winter Holidays.  It was a balance because I wanted to be neutral and yet say CHRISTmas, so we compromised by singing Rudolph and inviting people to our branch holiday party three times during the lesson:)

Over the last six weeks, we had been teaching a great group of kids at an after-school program.  They invited us to their end-of-year holiday program.  It was scheduled to start at 4 p.m. on Friday so we thought it would surely be over by 6 and we could make it to teach our last English class at church by 7 p.m.

Well, it was a bit late starting, and there were so many activities involved...in this picture, the ministers on the left are lighting a candelabra, and then we all had little candles to light and wave as we sang a song of praise and rejoicing.

Elder Porter was invited to give the main sermon and he worked very hard all week on it.  Because we had taught the children for six weeks, we kind of knew their level and aimed the khotbah to them.  He prepared slides, with pictures of the Christmas story, and talked about the various witnesses of the divine mission of Jesus Christ.  The theme was about growing in Christ, and he brought a plant that was wilted to use as an object lesson.  It was very powerful, but only lasted for about 15 minutes, and they had asked him to speak for 30 minutes.

Sister Porter was sitting with the teachers, who were trying to hush the fidgeting kids, so the brevity seemed a great blessing to them.  But there were also adults in the room by then, and it may have seemed inappropriate to them to cut it short.  We are not sure.

But it was well after 6 p.m. when we left.  They gave us Christmas presents:  Wonderful holiday batik outfits that fit!  They also gave us boxed dinners, and brought a third one out when they saw our driver.  They were a great group, wonderful to work with.

And we were so glad to be there, and to capture a bit of the children's performances on video.  Because the reason we started our involvement with that group was three children from our church in the program, whose mom works in Hong Kong.  And unfortunately, her flight home for the holidays did not arrive until the next day!

Miraculously, we walked into church for our English lesson there a few minutes early.  The traffic that time of night can be bad, but we are grateful for the blessing that allowed us to do all that was needed that evening.

On Saturday we picked up the Mission President and his wife from the hospital, where they had the chance to talk with a doctor about that sister missionary's treatment plan.  We looked at a half-dozen possible buildings, and the four of us enjoyed a quiet lunch together at the Fountain restaurant near our apartment.

During lunch, Sister Mackay mentioned that she needed to find some gift bags for their presents to the missionaries.  Sister Porter remembered that we had some red/green printed bags left over from our anniversary party.  It turned out that the red/green in the print was flowers, but they were enough for the purpose, and she was grateful not to have to worry about shopping.

That night we were delighted to attend the baptism of a sweet sister who also attends our English classes.  At the last minute, the branch mission leader asked Sister Porter if she could bear her testimony toward the end of the program.  It wasn't very polished, but I was able to share some thoughts.  I focused on her, and didn't worry about the audience and it was okay.  Cukup, we would say.

After the baptismal service, all of the missionaries walked down the street to the Holy Cow restaurant.  This was a gift from the mission president to all of us.  We enjoyed the steaks, but it was more meat than we eat in a sitting here, and sadly Elder Porter woke up with galloping diarrhea, but probably not from the meat which he thought was "very yummy".  Oh well, another day in Indonesia.