Eclipse, Easter and Early Mornings

In March we experienced an almost total eclipse of the sun here in Indonesia.  There were some parts that got the total block out, but as you can see we only had a portion, 90% or so.  The way to "look" at it was to put a pinhole in a paper then project the sunlight onto a surface a few feet away.  The shadow isn't round anymore as you can see, just a crescent.  We tried just looking at the sun, but it didn't look any different straight on. Obviously we didn't want to stare and lose our eyesight permanently.  The kids in the neighborhood had a piece of x-ray film that gave a pretty good image looking straight on though.

One morning as I stared off our balcony I saw a man climbing the huge coconut palm across from me.  Brave guy. 

Harvesting coconuts and trimming the leaves. Lookout below when these leaves fall.  They are about 15 feet long.  Not to mention the coconuts falling on your head.  Life in the tropics.

Our church in Magelang meets in a small commercial space and we have been approved to look for a new place to meet.  This larger commercial space is light and airy, but as we talked it through with Bro Tatok of LDS Facilities management it became apparent that to meet safety requirements the windows and lighting would need to be blocked anyway.  So we are now hoping the old Dutch style home below is approved for rent and remodeled to make a larger church meetinghouse.  Our older members are looking forward to a one story building.  Pulling themselves up the steep stairs to the chapel on the second floor is difficult for them as it is difficult to watch too.

Our children have had difficulty meeting in a 10 x 10 foot space for 2 hours each Sunday.   The latest attempt to help keep things amicable (and to keep little ones from escaping the building to chase the ice cream man down the street) is to put them in the larger upstairs room.  Meanwhile the adult classes are meeting in two small classrooms downstairs. We are hoping and praying for the new building soon.

Onik, Glen, Vincewati, David, and Petrus are looking forward to being
sealed in the temple in November.  Families can be together forever.
Thank you again Jeannine for the beautiful artwork

Sister Jeffery visiting a friend who was very pregnant.  We offered to have a baby shower, but were told the tradition here is to do such things after the baby is born, not before.  Well as you see below it happened.  Sister Jeffery is so yearning to be with our daughter Elisa who has been preparing for the arrival of number four herself.  Gratefully Evan was with her right up through the day of baby Simmon's birth.

Tri and Kris's baby

Yeah, this little girl is our 12th grandchild, born 4/13/2016 in Pennsylvania.  

English class with Dian reading her assignment.  Elders Eyre and Vandyarto at the church in a dignified pose.  Dian has been investigating the church and decided to get baptized, but she requires the permission of her parents.  When asked they not only refused to allow her to join a Christian church, but also forbade her from studying with us either.  However, she's allowed to attend English classes.  In addition, she offered to teach Sister Jeffery how to make gado-gado, a traditional Indonesian dish based on peanut sauce on vegetables.  We made our version of it and served it to guests when we were in the U.S.A., but this version is more authentic and quite honestly tastier.  See the steps by photos below, but unfortunately the virtual internet experience can't duplicate the taste.  Sorry.

Yes to set this spice, burn it.

Sister Jeffery is getting quite local as she bought batik fabric and had the outfit here sewn up.  She debuted the new ensemble at church in Jogyakarta, but we had to leave the house pretty early that morning.  As we walked into the church, she  found herself wearing one brown shoe and one black one.  How embarrassing.  Friends here were kind and agreed it was a trending new style.

The Jogyakarta Ward held their annual Relief Society birthday celebration with a cooking contest.  Sister Jeffery's banana bread on decorative banana palm leaves looked good, but the yellow rice with the gelatin birthday cake looked even fancier.

In Magelang on Good Friday we held a party to celebrate Easter.  We all enjoyed ourselves including the investigator in the center above.  It was but 2 weeks later that she caught a sudden illness and passed away.  A real reminder of why we need the Savior of the world.  

Easter eggs hidden in the garden/parking lot behind the church were found by enthusiastic children, young and older.

The mission set a goal for each unit to have a cottage meeting.  Now that brings back memories of Elder Jeffery's youth when the term cottage meeting was normal.  The object is to invite friends to your "cottage" to meet with the missionaries.  The count was 8 Magelang branch members, 13 investigators, and 4 of us missionaries.  We played a game of reflection and sharing to start.  Each person told his most treasured 30 seconds of life; quite an icebreaker.  Then below we split into 3 groups to act out scripture stories.  Everyone was a good sport, but no academy award performances.

Our farmer friend, Sugeng Pribadi an enterprising man grows plants with these small blossoms and then sews the blooms into necklaces worn by participants in traditional Javanese weddings.

Our agenda includes gatherings and meetings with other, younger full time missionaries.  Here Elder Jeffery talks with Elder R Anderson.  We have 2 Andersons in the zone, so when they get together this one adds his R on his special name tag.  Below Sister Jeffery teaches E Paskett how to see the world through different colored glasses.

Two weeks ago the delightful Sister Xiao arrived here from Hamilton, New Zealand.  When we visited Bandung, Indonesia, in 1993 we actual met her dad who was the branch president there at the time.  She claims to not have spoken Bahasa for 17 years, but she's doing very well with it now.  Sister Stringham is a relative newby herself, and they are doing good missionary work. 

President Donald asked us to go visit a person at an immigration holding facility in the city of Semarang.  Our first experience at a true refugee "camp".  We were able to report to a concerned parent that her son was being cared for as well as could be expected.  But it was strange to be around 100 people who aren't dangerous, but just need to be accounted for, and pretty much hanging out waiting for legal processes to move them on.  Some have been in this limbo state for years.  

While leaving Semarang we stopped into visit Ariyanto's brother and his family.
  The son is a chess guy, but his older sister is an award winning singer.
 We asked for and received an impromptu performance
of a Javanese love song.  Beautiful and unusual to our ears at the same time.
  They definitely don't use the same 8 tone musical scale on our pianos.  

Two brothers.

For the past month we have been preparing for a Single Adult conference to be held in Jogyakarta May 5-7th.  Our role was to bring an activity that is new and fun, so we remembered the Game About Life that we played with the Tulsa Stake in Oklahoma.  The developer of the Game, came from the Dallas regional LDS Employment office to run things.  When we tracked her down, she was willing to let us try putting it on here in Indonesia, but still skeptical that we can pull it off.  The Game is rather complex as it weaves the principles of self reliance, gospel living, and strong family values into a fun life sized board game experience.  Here we are rehearsing the game as a tabletop experience with Elders Vandyarto, Wijaya, Paskett, and Eyre.  We have run more rehearsals with the photo below being taken after one at the wrap up committee meeting.  When we discuss the Game folks are generally confused as nothing from their experience except Monopoly comes even close to describing it.  And any American will tell you that Monopoly is not like the Game of Life.  So we have concluded the best way to teach it is to play it.  The 21 who played Sunday afternoon had a fun time and will be our experts next month, when we expand the Game to over 150 players.  Fortunately the hotel facility has a room which looks big enough to handle the over 200 people in the Game at the same time.  Yes, 150 players and over 50 people administering it.  The Katy stake girls camp director is ready to take over.

This blog ends with a visit to an Indonesian hospital.  Our friend of one year, Timotius has been a week in the hospital with dengue fever, which is called Demam Berdarah translated "bloody fever."  He's the closest church member to the location for the Singles Conference, so we are praying for him to recover quickly enough to join us there.