Reaching Out

Well another week of fun and excitement or weekend I should say. We flew out again on Sat. Morning. Elder Subandriyo's who is the area authority sent his 17 year old son Ezra with us to translate. It is so beautiful over there and the country is so green. He took us back to the same hotel that we had stayed in before. It is an OK hotel, but the bathroom stinks really bad. It's hard to be in the room. They gave us time to unload our suitcases and we were off again. We went to the rice broker place again. The Police truck came and they loaded up the rice. Then went to the home of the Christian Church to pick up 300 more packets of food for 3 villages. It takes and 1 1/2 hours to get there and there were 8 of us in a car. We went to the 1st village and had the same incredible experiences as last week. These people are so grateful for the help and the treat us so good. We have to shake every hand in the village about 2 or 3 times. The 2nd village we passed through was virtually destroyed. No one was there they had moved up on the mountain and were living in tents. About 5 big tents for the whole village. They said they were never going back to their homes because of their fear of a Tsaumai that they almost experienced. The 3rd village was the same except they were trying to live in their homes or what was left of them with cracks all over and tarps on parts of the roof. They all are so poor. We give the kids all candy,

One little boy was so afraid of us. I tried to give him a piece of candy and he wouldn't even come close to me. All the kids were laughing at him because he would run away from me every time I tried to give him the candy. I finally threw him a piece right at his feet. Then as we were going though the people I would look around and he was really close by, but if I tried to interact with him he would run. Finally he got brave and I got him to take a piece of candy from me and he would quickly run away. Before long he let us touch his hand. By the time we were ready to leave I could give him a high five. We had to really coax him to let us take his picture, but when he saw the picture it made him smile.





On Sunday we were still in Bengkulu but we didn't want to go to the Christian Church again like we did last week. One of those sermons is enough to last us for a year. Ralph suggested that we have our own Sacrament Meeting. They wrote down the Sacrament songs and prayers. We got bread and we each brought a glass of water from our room. I never have been in a better church meeting. There were nine of us. From the opening song to the closing song the spirit was so strong that you could feel it. We had the sacrament and then one of the men gave a talk on families and working toward the Celestrial Kingdom with especially our husband or wife. Then everyone bore their testimonies. Ezra had been sick the night before, but he started to get really sick. Someone took him to the "hospital" they came back and got all the men to go and give him a blessing. When they came back they said, "that they think he had malaria. They had some pills for us all to take. He had to fly back home. Since he has got home they are saying it wasn't malaria. We went back up to Lias to survey where and what we needed to do on Monday. We met a lot of poor people who have lost their homes and everything that they have. Some were living in their homes even though their were cracks all around and part of the roofs and even walls were missing. At one village they had just cut down a coconut tree and they opened the coconut and gave us some of the liquid to drink. It was actually pretty good. Then they gave us the coconut to eat. It was good.





On Monday we put some kits together for the little children. It had a pencil, pen, ruler, eraser, a little pencil box and a note book. We made 500 of these. They always give us a Police escort and their were 10 Police to help us today. We again went to visit 3 different villages. On the way we went passed rubber trees. It was interesting to learn about how they get the rubber from the trees. One man in the village told us he has to gather rubber from 150 trees a day to get $3.00. We again had a great experience in each village. This time we added a few things like some towels and some balls for the kids to play with. In one of the villages we run into a little red headed boy. it was so strange to see him there. We decided that he must be an albino. His parents both had the dark hair and brown eyes. He was a cute little boy.

We love you all. Wish we could send you some of this heat.