Indonesia, Jakarta Mission 3/13 - 3/15

Monday, January 6, 2014

2014 Already!

Holy Cow, I can't believe it is already 2014.  I remember when I went to the MTC that seemed like ages away!  And it came so fast!  Time is flying!  This week I hit 8 months!

This week has been a pretty good one.  We got some good work done and had some fun times. So I have to laugh, that little woven frisbee pocket disk thing that you got me for Christmas... one of the best Christmas presents ever!  Everyone in the whole district loves that thing and we play with it all the time now!  We played with it last week for P-Day--we played some Ultimate Frisbee in the parking lot at the church. Then another day we played it for a few minutes with the Bishop's family, and they thought it was awesome and were like "we are totally telling Elder Putra to buy one of those to bring back!"  And then we played with it again for P-Day today.  We went over to the church and played Ultimate Frisbee on the grass behind the church, which was super fun because you can dive and stuff!  And it is good exercise!  So that was an awesome idea!  Thank you!

Oh, and for new years.  The 31st was just a normal day.  And then that night there was a stake new years party that went from 8 til like 1 in the church parking lot.  But we all got a text from the APs saying we still had to be home on time, even though it was new years.  So we left and went to bed like a normal day.  And the 1st was just a normal day, too.  So, nothing too special.

So for lessons this week.  We had a hard time getting any appointments set up with any of our investigators, which was kind of a bummer.  But we still got a few in.  One of them was pretty fun, too, because it was with the young kid who wants to be baptized.  We were reviewing the Plan of Salvation with him and made a huge poster with stickers of each part of the plan, and he had to do a relay race thing with them, where he would go get the sticker and an explanation of that part of the plan from Elder Wintolo, then he would run over to me, explain it and answer a few questions, then he got to stick it on the poster.  It was pretty fun, and turned out pretty cool!

The rest of our lessons were with new or inactive members.  With covering the two biggest wards in Indonesia, we have a lot of inactive members to visit.  But it is good, because it keeps us busy.  But, inactives are so frustrating sometimes, because there were a good number that we had awesome lessons with, and were guided in what to say and share with them, and they totally felt it and stuff, and committed to come to church.  And then they didn't come...So FRUSTRATING!  Haha but there's not much more we can do than that.  Then its up to them.  But we did have one cool experience.  There is an inactive member that we had been trying to find for a little while, but were not being able to find him.  Then just before Christmas, we met him while he was working at the mall.  We got his number and he asked us to come visit him.  So, we got out there to visit him this week.  He is about 21 or 22 years old, and it is truly kind of a miracle the way we found him and when we found him. He used to be really strong, and then just all of a sudden went inactive.  But, in our lesson the other day, he told us how he has been wanting to get active again lately, but didn't know how, or if he was worthy, and he was too shy to do it alone.  We basically were able to find him at the perfect time, and he actually asked us how he could go about starting preparing to serve a mission, if it isn't too late!  It was super cool to be able to be there at the right time and be guided by the Lord to help make that happen!  This work is true!  

So, the other big events this week.  On Friday we had Zone Conference.  That was good, and we talked a lot about finding faith to find people to teach, because for the New Year, President has really upped the goals for finding, teaching, and baptizing people.  A LOT!!!  It will be difficult to do all the parts of it, but I guess its inspired, its doable, and we will do our best!  Then on Friday night it was Sister Sheffield's and Elder Haws' birthdays, so we went to Pizza Hut to celebrate, which was fun!

On Saturday, I was on Splits with Elder Loudon, while Elder Giolas (DL) was on splits with my comp. So I went over to their area, which was kinda fun.  We ended up spending most of the day just proselyting, which we are trying to start doing more of, because before we didn't really do much at all. It is kinda weird to proselyte here.  We go ride through little "neighborhood" things, and look for people who look like nice, people sitting on the side of the street, ride up to them, explain who we are and what our purpose is, and ask if there are any Christians that live nearby.  It is pretty awkward and funny sometimes, but it actually worked OK.  By the end of a few hours we had talked to a lot of people and had 4 people who said we could come back another time and teach a lesson.  So that was fun.  And we helped a guy clean up some trees in front of his house for some random service, and he turned out to be Christian and said we could come back whenever, and was super appreciative of our service.  So that was good.  So ya, Saturday was fun!

Sunday we had an inactive member come to church for the first time in a few months or years that Elder Wintolo and Giolas visited on Saturday, so that was awesome!  And ya, that's mostly it for this week.  Sorry, I'm out of time.  But I love you, I am glad everything is going well at home!  That's pretty funny about Duke being all freaked out!  Give everyone Hi from me, and Happy New Years!  

I love you all so much!  Thanks for your emails!  Talk to you later!


Love, Elder Wood