Eid al Fitr in between Volcanoes

Mounts Merapi and Merbabu

Elder Poffenbarger received cake mixes in the mail for his birthday, so Sister Jeffery baked them up, plus a few other things.  Sister Lee had her birthday the same time, so Poffenbarger bought her a cake too.  The Solo Zone all enjoyed.

These young missionaries are wonderful!  Here the Branch Mission Leader, Mahar coordinates
with Elders Nonne, Eyre , and Boenari.

Sister Jeffery has been teaching our Magelang missionaries to teach children first, then
the parents can concentrate on what is being taught.
Here a young lady was given an assignment to draw a family for the lesson.  She
drew with relish for most of our visit, then listened intently as Elder Eyre taught using her illustration.

Even in the middle of an intersection Elder Eyre was making one more contact with the family on a cycle,
right up until he went home late in June. 

English classes are always fun and educational.  I'm not sure how much English was learned during
a game of Duck Duck Goose below, but plenty of laughter.

Elder Paskett is a master teacher and here he printed up some coloring pages to take his next lesson.
He's teaching several families with young children and they are preparing for baptism.

Arin plays with her son, Alfa.  She works 6 days a week, so she treasures the time she gets with him.  Grandmother,
Sri, generally carries Alfa to church and here to a YW activity.  

Sister Sri brought little Alpha much to everyone's delight

Lili, the only Young Woman in the branch, but Sister Jeffery still had 3 meaningful YW activities
during this vacation month.

Deborah came to town so it was occasion for a party.  We had a photo scavenger hunt.  Something old, that's sister Jeffery and something new, those beautiful young women.  something cold and something hot, something colorful and something kind of crazy

Melani is Alfa's aunt.  Below Sister Jeffery teaches her a song for branch conference.
It was Thursday a week and a half before the conference that President Ariyanto asked us to organize a choir
number for the meeting.  So we recruited all the YW and Primary children to sing, then we toured their homes
teaching the songs which they'd never sung before.  It worked as Julie conducted and Mel played the piano.

We had a sweet meeting this week with a Jogya YW, Gina.  Our goal is to take a member whenever we visit the less actives in Jogya.  We rarely attend church there, so when a returning member shows up and we aren't there it doesn't really do much good.  If we've taken an active member with us, the member feels engaged in helping the person come back.  We took Revi (far right) with us on this visit.  While Sister and I talked with the mother whom we'd never met, the two girls got along great.  As we left to walk out, we started planning to visit another less active YW a week later.  The girls themselves explained that this particular girl, Vena, has been known to run away and hide when she sees missionaries coming to visit.  So together we devised a plan to take the girls to the neighborhood, then have them lead her out to us where we can look for a neutral restaurant to talk.  It was quite impressive to see these two girls working out this strategy.  

An Institute party to review the material from the past semester by using a game again.  Which of the four things doesn't
belong.  Using teams even those who hadn't attended were able to learn and participate.  The taller man in the blue shirt is Ari and Wuri's son Tian. 

Food from the party was pot luck, but we brought the most, a cake and burrito fixings.  It may not sound remarkable but
Indonesia doesn't have Mexican food available.  Thanks to new friend we found the tortillas to start with.

Here we are eating Mexican food with the Quinlan's in Jogya.  Ariyanto discovered tortillas and tacos
for the first time in his life.  The family from Baylor University in Texas told us of a wholeseller who has tortillas so we bought a gross of 10 inchers.  Yes, 144 is a lot of tortillas.  Initially Ariyanto bought 36 of them, but he's decided it's the food Indonesia needs.  He fills them with Indonesian foods and feeds them to family and  friends.  He's picked up another 2 dozen for the next round of experiments a few days ago.

Here the Quinlans pose with us, the Jogya sisters, and a couple of students from Baylor University in Texas.
The family is here in Indonesia while dad works on his doctorate in religious tolerance.  So we had a pleasant evening
talking about our experiences teaching religion in Indonesia.

Speaking of religious tolerance the month of fasting celebrating Ramadan has just ended.  Here our neighbors gather to greet each other and ask forgiveness for any misdeeds this past year.  The puffs in the sky are actually from fireworks which have been ever-present during Ramadan and even more so during the past day, Eid al Fitri.
It's rather like Christmas time actually as everyone gets new clothes and presents, plus children are let loose to ask for money from respected elders.  

Here's a moslem mother in her home with her daughter and granddaughter.  Her father, Pak Asto, was a member of our church but died last Christmas day.  She was more than happy to sign a document giving us permission to do ordinance work for her father and mother in the temple when we go in November.  

We only made it to Jogya once this month for meetings and it will likely be the last time that we take our friend Ari in the wheelchair.  His son, Rian, recently returned from BYU Hawaii, bought a car, and now can take his father to church every Sunday.  He even brought Ari to our home to visit us in Magelang for an afternoon and evening.
One other insight we had into Jogya though is that Priesthood Meetings are quite crowded in a room that doesn't comfortable hold more than 28 men.  That's perhaps one reason for the meeting below in the garden taking place at the same time.  Since the ward needs over 30 men attending regularly to divide the ward (a clear goal), it appears that we need to split this class into two before the ward can get enough attendance to split.  Something to work on.

Just in case you are wondering, Mel isn't Superman.  He had some medical issues this month.  Not using sunscreen as a youth means that periodically a dermatologist gets to use liquid nitrogen to cryogenically burn off potentially cancerous areas of facial skin.  We checked at four dermatologists and skin treatment facilities in Jogya and Magelang and none could provide this treatment or knew of anyone in those cities that could.  However, one recommended a facility in Solo.  We traveled the 2.5 hours to meet the dermatologist that had liquid nitrogen available.  At first he wasn't sure if any was in stock, but ultimately located some elsewhere in the hospital.  Then he personally took 20 minutes to go get it and returned to put it into the bottle shown above.  Yes, he put on two layers of gloves plus the rag and he needed all that protection as the bottle was leaking badly and frosting over cold.  When he put the "gun" up to Mel's face and pulled the trigger, none of the nitrogen came out of the right orifice.  Ultimately we decided to wait for another day to get this treatment.
It was a Saturday night when Mel's only dental crown came off during a flossing.  He had to wait until Monday afternoon to find a dentist who wasn't off on vacation during Lebaran week.  Fortunately she was quick to glue the crown back on, but wouldn't allow us to pay for her services.  We suggested that perhaps he could have a routine cleaning at the same time so we'd have something to spend enough time to generate a billable service.  But she said his teeth look great and don't need it.  Okay, dental services are different here too.

The Joko Suhendro Family invited us over to enjoy FHE with them as they have visitors from out of town.  Joko invited us to give a lesson off the cuff, so Elder taught them about Sabbath Day observance.  But as you will note from the pictures it was more about eating, laughing, smiling, singing, and taking selfies.  Fun times.
Rosen and Sari, the two on the left above, rode 20 hours from Bogor to Magelang on a motorcycle to come home for Lebaran.  We had them talk to our temple bound Magelang singles at an event at our home on Sunday evening.  Good examples of righteous living.

Sister Sugesti has recently been diagnosed with diabetes.  We thought we'd almost lost her, but she was much improved with our visit here on Eid al Fitri.  She is surrounded by sweet snacks that she served to us as her guests, but which she knows that she can't eat.  She told us that the night before she ate some fried food and this morning the reaction was terrible, she couldn't even talk for a while.  As we talked with her, we decided that it's time for her to get her family history documented.  We've already asked the consultant, Mahar, to get working with her.  She knows it all in her head, but we don't know how much longer she'll have it there.  We all are getting older and forgetful, so let's put it in writing now!

Paskett, Debi, Oliva, Kalista, Doni out for a ride.  Below we see Sister Julie Jeffery dressed up and riding herself.

It's a holiday, so we took a long walk through the smaller byways of Magelang.  It's beautiful as you can see.  The volcano is Mt Sumbing, a 3300 meter mountain we intend to hike next Monday.