My brother's most recent E-mail from Indonesia · 7:48pm Aug 24th, 2018
My brother's in Indonesia for a proselytizing mission for our church right now, and he sends E-mails every week to update us. Here's the one he sent this week.
Subject: We got so much free food I literally couldn't eat it all
Happy Indonesian Independence Day! 73 years ago, WWII ended and Japanese and Dutch colonization ended in Indonesia, meaning Indonesia was a free country. In preparation for the 17 of August everyone paints their kampung red and white and paints other stuff all over the road. Then on the 17th everyone has contests and races and stuff. Crazy weird races, like eating a krupuk off a string (a krupuk is like a giant cracker made from dried noodles), playing soccer by hitting the ball with an eggplant tied to your waist, egg+spoon races with a marble instead of eggs, carrying a ball with plastic ropes and racing with it, putting 3 people in a sarung and racing (a sarung is a giant loop of fabric people sleep in. It's meant for one person), normal sack races, sack races where you're crouched inside the sack and wearing a motorcyle helmet and you hop to the end in a squatting position, getting a nail tied to your waist to go into a bottle under you that you can't really see, climbing greased coconut trees, etc. Way fun stuff. We helped people paint some of their kampung with the shark and crocodile of surabaya (I don't know if I've said this already, but Surabaya is named after a shark and surabaya that fought close to the city. Literally the city is named "shark crocodile" in Javanese. (sura = ikan hiu = shark, baya = buaya = crocodile) Pretty savage name if you ask me). On the 16th, our kampung had a thing where we all got together and had free food to celebrate. They basically had us lead the national anthem (Indonesia Raya), which is a good thing I already had it memorized from last year haha.
Friday the 17th we had a big thing at the church, got free food and we said good-bye to Elder and Sister Schmid who're moving from Surabaya to Jakarta. We don't know what their job will be there, but it means East Java doesn't have any Mission Couples anymore. In the past month or so the other 2 finished their missions. That night we were invited out to eat by the family of the guy we're teaching. We had some really good steak with bacon wrapped around it. All the Christians here cook pork all the time, but oddly enough never bacon. It was good bacon.
Saturday we visited brother Deta, who served a mission way back, and his family isn't members yet. We stopped by and gave them a book of mormon to read together as a family. They gave us gado-gado, which is potatoes, tofu, lontong (rice steamed in a banana leaf and ends up sticking together in a long tube that you cut up into slices), and other vegetables like that all drizzled in peanut sauce. After that we took a grab (do they have grab in america? I know there's Uber, but Uber's been bought by a company caled Grab here. The 2 big companies are Grab and Go-Jek) to this public relations deal we were helping with. We helped this group of people that had been kicked out of their homes in Madura do 17 August races and stuff. We also gave all the kids backpacks and school supplies. After that we were taken out to eat with the members who were there with us. Lots of free food makes me happy. We're working with another new member as well whose husband and children aren't baptized yet. our goal with them is to kill them with kindness, so we're planning on bringing them snacks every once in a while and helping to clean their house and other things to help soften the father's heart.
Sudnay we had 5 people at church! The other elders had a really good miracle where the wife of the new member in their area wants to get baptized now! The story is kind of funny, where she was just kind of ranting about how her husband's sick and how nobody at her old chruch would come and visit them when he was sick, but how everyone here would come visit him, and gave him a blessing, and now he's getting better, so now "I don't see why I'm NOT getting baptized here!" Kind of funny how it all just started from a rant and then she got her answer. That's how it works sometimes. Personally I kind of feel like a weirdo sometimes, but you just have to talk it over with yourself and eventually the spirit will direct your thoughts to the right place. It was kind of the same thing with our person getting baptized next month. We told her about baptism, she was already baptized, so we prayed after the lesson and asked her to focus on her feelings. We kind of prompted her at times, but she knid of just talked it over with herself, and I could see the spirit working inside her. We left that night and the next morning she asked when she could be baptized! It's interesting seeing how nothing I of myself do can help anybody make that crucial decision, but it's the Spirit and them. No matter how much I want to do the decision for them, I can't. That's just not how it works.
I need to talk about someone named Dea. We were in a mall trying to make our goal of 15 gospel discussions. We were in Gramedia and started talking to her in english to see if she could handle it. She was wayy good at english and we were able to invite her to come to english class later that night. We didn't really expect much from it, but we gave her a pass-along card anyway. That night she came to english class and brought 2 friends with her! She wears the headgear, but after class she sms-ed us and asked if it was wrong for her to question her religion and if it was wrong for her to learn about Christianity. We met her 2 days afterwards, and she was way cool, wanted to come to church and we showed her around the building and sang some hymns with her. She couldn't come, but I can see some good potential with her.
That sure does sound wonderful.
Glow