Everyday is different

This is a picture of a fluency line in our English class. There are four lines of five students. Two of the lines rotate forward so the students can talk with a different partner each time. Cheryl directs the dialogue from the front and blows a whistle when it's time to rotate

The one on the right is an English class student. The other two are from his university class. They were given an assignment to interview us.

These are our church brochures. They're all in Bahasa. We give away a lot of them. The English students are very interested. Bahasa is their second language. Now that so many are becoming fluent in English we are trying to get a set to read in English

The one on the right is Jeffrey. He's one of our volunteers in English class. The other three are his friends from the University. He brought them by our apartment to introduce them to us and they asked if they could attend our next English class.

We are slowly finding the restaurants in the country that serve Western food. This restaurant is great. It serves Italian food. It is owned by an Australian. It's just like home. As with most restaurants it's open air.

We are excited about a humanitarian project we just got approved for Dom Bosco trade school. We got approved to purchase a busbar machine. They will use it to teach their students metal work, but also more importantly they will use it to manufacture switch boxes. The hope is they can produce enough income from the manufacturing process to provide a greater degree of self-sufficiency for the school funding. They'll also end up employing about 20 students. Projects like this are always risky because you never know for sure about the market for the product. We are very hopeful because partnering with us on this project is a manufacturer out of the United Arab Emirates who works with nonprofit organizations such as this to set up an independent company to sell the product. They will also provide a on-site consultant for one year. This will be the fourth company they've set up with the prior three being very successful.

This is another Western restaurant that we found. It's called the Nautilus. It's about 1 half mile from our house. It's across the street from the beach. It's also owned by an Australian. There's a bar out front where you see the few people. The owner is always at the bar. They serve steaks. You can even get kangaroo steaks here. It is an open-air restaurant.

Here is the view out of the front door of the Nautilus. Prior to our mission going to the ocean always seem to be inspiring and relaxing. Now we're used to it. Now it just seems to be hot and humid.

Church isn't as relaxing and easy as it used to be when there were times that no one would show up but Cheryl and I. Today there were 14 in attendance. One of our investigators was the first speaker and I was the second speaker in sacrament meeting. After sacrament meeting we separated into Sunday school. The investigator class is taught by the missionaries via Skype from Indonesia. Unfortunately their internet was down. I ended up calling them on my phone and they taught the investigators via cell phone.

The other Sunday school class is Gospel Doctrine. I am the teacher there. Three of our Filipino members were in attendance. That's actually going pretty well. Cheryl taught primary with three children two of which do not speak English. She also had one of our investigators in the class helping.

As usually happens the telephone line or the Skype line keeps going out and so I have to bounce between the two classes to keep them both going. By the time church is over Cheryl and I are tired.

All nine of our investigators are progressing towards baptism. Somehow even with all the language barriers the spirit of the Gospel is getting through to them.