JULY

Another month has gone by and we don't know where it has gone. It was full with a lot of activity. Our Family Enrichment Program (FEP) is just beginning as there are two Ministries seeking funds in their budgets for next year to foster the family night concept. One of those is the Ministry of Education which is trying to test the concept in a small segment of their jurisdiction before going nation wide, at which time there will be millions distributed. We are meeting with Soeryo who managed the events of the Seminar, on a weekly basis. We are preparing for a seminar in Medan next week. We told Hong Kong that this project may be closed in about six months financial but otherwise this project will never be closed. Family Home Evenings will be promoted for a long time in Indonesia.

We visited a community center near Sukabumi two weeks ago to help them with some funding for equipment for the center. Mention of the FEP program manual was made and Dr. Zaenab she said that she was there at the Seminar in Jakarta and felt that it would be of great benefit for this village and wanted to present it to the parents of the nursery, however she said that the manual was too complicated for the parents to understand. She added that the parents in the villages of Indonesia don't have more the a 6th or 7th grade education. We were shocked and realized that we were going to have to simplify the manual for the villages. We came back to a meeting with Elder Subandriyo and Soeryo of GNKS and they agreed that the manual had to be simplified for the 75% of the Indonesians who live in the villages. It will be about 25 pages. It will be cheaper to print and less costly to distributed with the DVD throughout Indonesia. It is universally agreed upon that the DVD is the best teacher to teach Indonesians how to have a family home evening, the manual is necessary to help them on subject matter for lessons.

President Marchant will be distributing this manual to all the member families in Indonesia at District conferences in October and missionaries will be using the manual for a way to visit with parents and families prior to being taught. The missionaries can't proselyte in Indonesia so this is a way to meet families and afterwards teach them the gospel. We believe that this will make a big difference in the way Indonesians will perceive the church and maybe help the gospel roll forth. You all may have seen the article in the Church News on "Indonesian Program focuses on family". (Aug 2, 2008) We were blessed to have been inspired to help start this program.

Our clean water seminar with Elder and Sister Frandsen turned out fairly well. They came into Jakarta on Monday morning July 7, and left on Sunday afternoon for Thailand. We had a full program for them every day meeting with water engineers, designers, supervisors of clean water crews and water monitors. We visited three different water systems on the Island of Java. We all learned a lot about clean water systems and needed the training. Looking over these projects that have been constructed over the past four years we can see great improvement in their construction. Pipes are being buried, tanks are being covered and villagers are better prepared to maintain the systems.

Up to the time that we came to the Jakarta there was only one Engineer and contractor working in the Clean Water Systems for LDSC. Now we have expanded this three times. And these two new engineers and designers and contractors are members of the church who are hiring members of the church to do the work in supervising villagers in the construction of the systems. What a blessing this is for many members of the church who find it difficult to find jobs. But also a great blessing comes to the 160,000 who are in the process of receiving clean water for the first time in their lives. We are just completing this month a system in Central Java, near Solo where 18,500 will be receiving the clean water and that contractor will be moving to North Sumatra near Medan to work on another project there. We will be visiting that site about three times before the end of the year.

We have just submitted three more new projects to Hong Kong for approval. We just received word that they likely will be approved. One is for the village center near Sukabumi where we will be furnishing it with three computers, three sewing machines and tables, chairs and desks for the adult education, nursery, and medical clinic which is all in this village center. We will be using family members who need Eagle Scout projects to help collect children books for the English classes. The second project is for chairs-desk combination for a school in the Solo area. Nontin who is the NGO for our water project just finishing in Solo also has a school there and we will be helping her with a 100 chairs desks for her school, and the third project is money to buy material, yarn, and hooks for crocheting baby hats and blankets for babies in hospitals. This project has been very successful in teaching Indonesian sister how to crochet and sew. We have been told that we have used our entire budget for Indonesia this year and we will not be able to submit any other projects. Here we are in August and it looks like we are through for the year. Not quite so. That was for area initiatives. We have Major initiatives which cover wheelchair projects and clean water projects. We have a lot of work to do in major initiatives. So no rest for the wicked??

We have a new couple that just arrived in the mission two weeks ago; they are Elder and Sister Reber. They received their call from Lindon,Utah, but are originally from New Mexico. They are a delightful couple and will be fun to work with. We hope they will be able to help us a bit. We have had five couple missionaries go home and two more in the fall which leaves us with just three couples besides ourselves. That's 10 couples to four. We need the couples for these Branches to help them grow. Word needs to go out for more couple missionaries and they need to volunteer to come to Indonesia. We love the work. We feel great strength spiritually as we serve. We know the gospel is true.

JUNE

The month of June was spent mainly in preparation for the Family Enrichment Seminar which was held on July 4 & 5. It took a lot of time and kept us very busy, yet we still had to keep up with the water projects and cleft palate surgeries.

The seminar was incredible. This is what we have been working on for the last nine months and it turned out very good. We anticipated having 300 in attendance and there were 377 who attended. The following day was to train the participants to train other people how to have a Family Home Evening. We were expecting 100 to come and there were 150. We have received very good reviews especially from the Minister of Social Affairs who would be equivalent to Mike Leavitt in the USA. He was very pleased with the seminar. Now we can say it is like dropping a big boulder in a lake and watching the ripples go out from there. We are now feeling the ripples and many people are asking to have a seminar in their Regions. The first will be in Solo in Central Java where the Minister of Education wants to include this family evening program in packets that will be sent out to millions of Indonesians. We can hardly believe this ripple. Another ripple came from Medan where our friend Palin Purba (a legislator and President of the Lions Club) is setting up a seminar for the Medan Region. He had four ladies here to learn the program so that they could present it in Medan. A ripple is coming from Bengkulu where we helped in the earthquake emergency relief last September right after we arrived in the mission field, and there are others.

This evening as we were evaluating the seminar and the success and areas that could be improved with the Professors and Author who were visiting from BYU, Soeryo who is the chairperson of the Seminar an advocate of the Family Enrichment Program told us about his experience in holding family home evening. He said that in order for him to recommend this to the Minister of Social Affairs he needed to try it out for himself. He said that it was hard at first, but as time went on each week it got easier. By the 3rd week his boys were asking when they were going to have FHE. He has three boys who are 11, 7, and 3 years. His family was enjoying the experience and have felt some very positive effects, but the real effect was when the teacher of one of the boys called to say that their son had changed completely. He had been shy and reserved and now he will stand up in class will sing and answer questions. She wanted to know what had changed in their home to cause such a change in this boy. Their experience in home evening has given their son confidence and self esteem. This family just happens to be Muslim. What a testimony that becomes in such a short time from some one who is leading out in this program.


We could not believe the excitement after the seminar was over with the maneuvering with different groups wanting pictures take with different ones wanting to stand next to us. Many we didn't even know. We think that they have seen us in their offices as we went from one Minister's office to other to promote the program. We have made a lot of friends in high places within the government through this program. We have visited with Ministers of Education, Christian Affairs, Islamic Affairs, and Director of Family Planning, Woman Empowerment and on and on. We also visited with several NGO's who have great interest in the program. Out of this, Latter-day Saint Charities and the Church has gained great respect from many places. Alwi Schihab who is one of our friends made two different references to the Church in his presentation before the audience. President Marchant spoke in Bahasa Indonesian and made reference to Brigham Young University being own and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all before television cameras and news media. We have seen the Lord's hand in all of this with one stumbling block after another overcome which is testimony in of itself that the Lord wanted this program for Indonesia.

Then on Friday we left here at 7:00 am. Registration was to begin at 8:00 am, but there were a lot of people there already to go in. It was just amazing they just kept coming. The program was good and everyone seemed to really enjoy it. The next morning we left early again they were taking the participants by bus to the other location. When we got to the hotel they had to call for another bus, plus they were all the mission cars and many people drove there themselves. I talked to one man there and he had got up at 3:30 to get there in time to ride the bus. We had over 150 there. We thought maybe we would get 100 to come. They all enjoyed the less formal situation and also the group was divided into 3 groups so they were able to have more participation from the groups. It went from 10 to 3:30 and it was hard to get people to leave they wanted more. I would have to say it was a huge success and worth all of the work we have put into it. We had an evaluation meeting after with Subandriyo, Soreyo, the Palmers and the people from BYU. Everyone felt it was great. Sister Sheffield who wrote the book was so helpful and is going to aid us in getting the story about Indonesia into the booklet. She is an incredible lady and her story about how the book came to be is also incredible. This is truly the work of Heavenly Father. We told her about some of the hurdles we have had to go over and she made the statement that you know it is the Lord's work then, because if you don't have any stumbling blocks (which is Satan) in your path you know that he was in there working to stop the program. We saw so many stumbling block especially in the last weeks. The President would not let any of us wear our missionary badges either day. I wished so many times I had it on because people wonder who we were.