Two Busy Weeks

Party time in Magelang again.  Nothing new for the Jeffery family.  This time we went to the pasar  buying ingredients for a great curry.  A recipe from the internet provided a shopping list for a curry paste. USA methods have the paste already mixed.  We felt adventurous and bought all of the ingredients fresh.  As you can see we have cloves of garlic, cumin, clove,cardamon  seeds,ginger and turmeric roots, green onions, celery and lemon grass stalks.  We got ready to start and the recipe said, 'put ingredients into a food processor and blend'.  Well you can see the food processor we had to use.  The curry came out great chalked up to the fresh ingredients we used.

Lots of smiles, and fun times.  By the way, this is a great country.  Every one goes barefoot inside the house.  

This was the 3rd monthly Magelang Branch party at our house and thirty something people attended.  The last to arrive were Ana's family.  We'd visited them for the first time 2 days before where they live an hour outside of town up some steep and narrow roads.  It was raining on the way and our driver said he wouldn't drive up if it was wet.  The rain stopped before we approached the mountain and we drove up safely.  We'd been told the family objected to Ana learning about the Church.  After a video about Jesus Christ, "Because of Him," the feeling of love for our Savior permeated the home.  Ana told of her love for Christ and her father, began crying as he told of his conversion too.  Although invited we didn't expect them to make the journey to join with us, but they did- Ana, her mother, brother, aunt and her two children.    

While the sisters did the dishes from the party, the guys played Dominion.  

Shooting pool at Hendrik and Elen's place was more challenging than Mel's place in Oklahoma.  The 9 foot table made the game of cribbage longer too, about an hour, but the old man didn't get beat this time.  It was afternoon so we had the place to ourselves.  They say it's usually full late into the night.

This good Elder even had the foresight to bring color coordinating shorts to match the hospital provided gown.  

This particular day our driver was  unavailable so we took public transportation.  Elder Z says it's beats sitting in a hospital bed any day.

Travelling to Jogya for medical reasons had it fringe benefits.  At this restaurant Mel got a good Pad Thai and Julie a salmon steak.  Nothing like that exists in Magelang.

Notice here is the church building in Magelang.  The angel Moroni is the only
outward sign of that clues where we are.  Only members will recognize the
emblem.  Behind this door was a sign that we had to remove which did give the name of the church.
We are meeting with government officials to get clearance to publicize our presence  here. 

We spent the day with Subandriyo who several years ago went to Australia to a symposium on Joseph Smith with the man  on the left.  He is now  the #2 official in Christian section of the department of Religion in Indonesia and gratefully had time to listen to our issues.

This fellow leads the Moslem school section for Magelang and he is very interested in us teaching English in his schools.  We will be meeting again with him soon to make arrangements.

English class antics included saying goodbye to the elders leaving.  Elder Lie and Widigdo have won lots of hearts. The class is already 

Glen and his mother writing sentences for English class.  Glen has Skyped with several of our grandchildren - Melvin, Emmalyn, Sarah, Rachel, Lily, Grey and Bonnie.  Thanks.

A new friend of Mel's, a shu shu sugar glider.  Remember the Aussie song?

We attended Michele and Christian's wedding where we witnessed a marriage only  a little less formal that Javanese style.  The meeting felt a lot like a normal church meeting  with speakers sharing thoughts about marriage.  One actually told about the priorities of young men from the prophet to marry  soon after a mission.  He asked Christian how old he is, 27.  "Oh you should have married 5 years ago."  The bishop read the vows and asked the couple to kiss.  The groom blushed, stammered, looked around in embarrassment, and finally kissed his new wife with a quick peck on the forehead.   We weren't the only ones amused.   After a closing hymn and prayer we moved to the cultural hall where a government official spoke for 10 minutes and they signed the official marriage documents.  Marriage brings such happiness to peoples lives we are encouraged every time we see one.

At the pasar (native market) we saw a huge bag of casava chips, but before we could buy them Ari suggested we buy at the factory which is near our house.  So here's the factory where the chips are made.  As it was 5.5 pounds of chips which were 47,000 Rp at the pasar, only cost 48,000 Rp at the factory.  Okay, we knew they were fresh and we could eat all the samples we wanted before buying. 

Our driver is the proud owner of his own automobile now, this burgundy Suzuki.

We were invited to attend the Institute  end of semester celebration and remembrance of the restoration of the priesthood.  which was held at the Officer's Club.    Elder Jeffery told about the 1997 trip the family made to Old Harmony, Pennsylvania.  We got there before the Church decided to make it a historical site, but Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery were visited there by John the Baptist in  May 1829.

Wandering around we found a seller of various kinds of bladed devices.  Mel just doesn't look right with a sword in his hands.  Definitely my boys would have enjoyed, but I don't expect they could get through airport security with this in their carry-on luggage.