Start Fasting

On the way to visit a branch member, Mel took this shot of Mt Merapi and Mt Merbabu. 

Christine, Pres Ariyanto's wife, is related
 to the royal lines through the Solo Kraten.
She showed us how to write in
 Javanese script which she had to read
 from the Kingdom Chart provided to us by the Lewis's.
  Christine has been able to tie her family
 to the chart and she is excited.

Here is the Javanese alphabet.
  It is phonetic with the vowels being
added above and below the line.
In the lower left hand corner
is Julie Jeffery's name

If you see this picture in full size you can tell the blue sign says, "Menolak ISIS, ISIS bukan Islam"  Which means, "Reject ISIS, ISIS isn't Islam".  This is the first week of Ramadan, the month of fasting for Moslems.  They don't eat or drink from sunrise until sunset and spend more time in prayer and family togetherness.  These people are self sacrificing to get spiritual blessings.  We are trying to get used to things being different for this month too.  Stores and vendors are closed at strange times and at our pool the volume of use has dropped dramatically.  The evenings have extra prayer meetings and our street is partially blocked as our local mosque has added a tented space protruding out to into the roadway.  We read that overall food consumption does go up during this month of fasting as families get together during those dark hours.  We hear activities early in the morning as families awakened to eat before the sun rises.  Firecrackers are exploding at random times throughout the day and night. We do enjoy our Moslem neighbors and it's not bad to have the pool to ourselves in the middle of the day either.

,

This is the small neighborhood mosque about 100 feet from our house.
It is the one we hear loudly.
The red tile roof in the background is the roof to our home.

Here is a mosque that is

about a quarter mile

from our home.  We 

often hear prayers from

our balcony

Here is a sign advertising Ramadan events.  Speakers are a big part of the season's events.
There are also signs advertising sales events with discounts offered at stores.

Sports night this week was volleyball
and that drew a bigger crowd than footsall.
  Elder Jeffery actually rode a bike to the event
, but Sister Jeffery stayed home
 to sleep off a bug that somehow got her down.

We started teaching piano lessons this week, using a program designed by the Church specifically to help individuals prepare to accompany hymns for congregational singing.  Of course that about sums up Mel's talents when it comes to music, he loves to sing and so he's learned to accompany hymns.

A foundation donates keyboards and teaching materials to those willing to learn and accompany singing in church meetings.  Mel couldn't wait though so he talked Sister Peni from Jogya into lending us her book.  We made 5 copies of  the 200 page book for $2 a piece and started.  We found an old keyboard which we sent home with Petrus on his motorcycle for his wife, Vincewati and son Glen to play on.  This is David trying to ride home with dad.  Reason prevailed, however, so Petrus transported the keyboard home without a child on the back.  We've seen some interesting arrangements on motorcycles, but we are saving up those pictures for a really slow week's blog.  Anyway there are 5 excited students in Magelang who found learning from the book that after a mere hour of introduction they could play a singable tune.

As we described before the church building in Magelang is quite small and Sunday School for youth has been held in the branch president's office for the past weeks.  Sister Jeffery was tired of the constant interruptions, so we maneuvered to move the class outside.  As we taught about the Plan of Salvation, we moved from tree to tree each representing a stage of our life's development.  Pre-mortal existence to Earth life to the Spirit World and finally to our final Kingdoms of Glory.  This spot was welcoming enough for Anita Lo's mother to join us.  These two are Indra's family and we are glad they come to make the young persons' class work.

Ibu Jum was baptized yesterday.  A few months ago the missionaries were frustrated because she was constantly being distracted during lessons by family members and didn't seem to be grasping the concepts presented.  She's loved the Church though and somehow over the past month she's been able to learn from Elder Sutadi's style of teaching and prepared herself for this wonderful day.  She always seems to come to church with a new friend too, so we will probably be seeing more baptisms in the future from her family and  neighborhood.  Henny below is one of her neighbors.

This is the Dadang family and this week Dede received his mission call.  He came over to our place for a day of basketball and swimming with us and shared his letter of calling.  He will be entering the Phillipines  MTC in Septemeber then returning to serve in our mission for two years.  

This is our youngest piano student, Glen.  He's skyped with our grandchildren too.  After the baptism the family just couldn't keep he and David out of the pool.

Sister Jeffery made up a special treat for Father's Day, cinnamon rolls.  Our normal Sunday evening young single adults playing the Happy Game (Rook) when this yummy interruption caught their attention.