World Heritage Sites in Indonesia

March 17th was an opportunity to treat the missionaries to lunch.  We called them the night before and told them to come to District Development Meeting (DDM) hungry and wear something green.  The American Elders chuckled and said, sure, they'd be ready! At first we planned to just make peanut butter sandwiches on green bread.  The store always has green bread, don't ask me why...  Well, here's how it ended up after Elder Seiter and I got carried away at the grocery store. We ate green corned beef sandwiches, green soda pop, green chip packages, 3 kinds of green snacks down the center of the table, green jello with green grapes and green apples and green pudding. Elder Kepler sang a couple of Irish songs and told them about Ireland and St. Patrick's Day.

Elders Garnett, Widodo, Kevin Johnson, Yarkasi, Earls, and
Radianto. Keplers and Elders Smith and Rondonuwu also came.

Just before the meeting, as Ofni was driving us, he told us that his father, age 88, had passed away the night before and he wanted to go to the funeral, to be held the next day on the island of Sulawesi.  His family lives 2-3 hours from Manado.  Because they don't embalm bodies here, funerals have to be held very quickly. We arranged for the Rasband's driver to pick Ofni up at the airport and drive him to his village so he could arrive in time for the funeral.  We called Ofni to make sure he made the connection and he said excitedly, "Freddie is a member of the Church!  And his wife is from my village!" He's been talking about moving back to Manado, but we sure hope it's not until after we leave!  We received a call from the humanitarian couple, Elder and Sister Melvin Meredith, asking if we'd like to meet them in Jogja sometime in the next 3 weeks.  They had to go there to check one last time on their clean water project there and we had missed the couples' trip there to get back for a zone conference.  President Groberg had told us and Keplers that we should plan to go there sometime.  Well, this seemed like the ideal time!  The Merediths know the ropes for getting rental cars, hotels, and how to get to the things we wanted to see. Since we were without a driver and interpreter for 2 weeks, what better time??  We spent the first day after flying into Jogja visiting the wheelchair manufacturers that LDS Charities partners with to provide wheelchairs. It was great to see their facilities and meet the handicapped people who work there.  We got to learn all about how the humanitarian funds are used for providing wheelchairs in Indonesia.

This is a cute little cart that is peddled by hand.  It was
donated by a Methodist group in Missouri, but is not real
practical here for people with permanent need for
wheelchairs.  We were impressed that the wheelchair organization
follows children all the way through their childhood, refitting every
6 months and making adjustments in the chairs.

After the wheelchair factory, we visited a water project near Jogja where the Church has paid for some MCKs (toilets) for a Muslim boarding school.  We had a nice visit with the head of the school and asked him questions about what they teach, how many students they have, etc.  We took a tour of the facility and then headed to the town of Parangtritis and the beach.  Wow!  Was that beautiful with the pristine beach and cliffs.

Sister Kepler and I got caught by a wave while getting our feet wet, so we were pretty wet for the return trip to our hotel. Dinner was a delicious meal at a restaurant where the most expensive meals were only around $8.

Wednesday, March 21st, we headed out of town to Borobudur.  This is a World Heritage Site that was constructed from 750-850 A.D. It was a huge Buddhist community that was abandoned soon after its construction when the people moved their population further east. The location was covered by jungle until it was discovered in 1815.  Through the years the area was cleared and some restoration was done.  From 1973-1983, UNESCO sponsored a 25 million dollar restoration that took the whole hill apart and put in substructure and drainage pipes and put the whole hill back together. It was significantly damaged when Merapi Volcano erupted in November 2010 and was closed for several months while the ash was cleaned off the stone structure and out of the drainage pipes.  What a wonderful sight!  We were just thrilled to see such a historic and beautiful part of Indonesia.

A group of schoolgirls asked to have their picture taken with us whiteys,
which happens very often.  They were from Jakarta and we enjoyed a fun
visit with them.  Elder Meredith is always starting conversations with anyone,
especially young people.  They more often speak English, but Elder Meredith will
try to talk to anyone.  He always tells them to be proud of their beautiful country.
Everyone who visits Borobudur gets to wear the cute wrap-around batik.

Thursday we left for Mount Merapi to see the volcano destruction and to check out the clean water project that the Merediths are overseeing for LDS Charities.  It was a day of great beauty. We stopped in a small hillside village and were the center of attention.  They don't get many tourists in the small villages!

Mount Merapi

Notice how clean swept the yard is?

Typical farming scene with cloud-covered Merapi in the background

Prambanan, a mostly Hindu site from 850 AD

There are beautiful stone carvings everywhere, many of them
tell a story as you walk around the building.  Amazing!

We couldn't get a taxi back to the hotel, but we
were offered a ride on a motorcycle taxi :)

Later in the day we took a becak to go to the
Sultan's Palace.

We Work Hard Too

With all the beautiful pictures of places in Indonesia, please don't get the wrong idea.  We really do work hard each day to fulfill our mission here.  I'd like to share with you what we actually have been doing with our calling of "member and leader support."
First of all we visited the 111 households listed on our branch roster.  Many of the members have moved, some 20 years ago, and left no forwarding address.  There were several who have died. I reported on some of this on a previous blog page.  Here is Joned, our branch clerk. He's a college student in art and also teaches a Sunday School class every week.

The pages are all limp and worn out!

Here are the first, second and third lists of changes for the roster--8 pages worth!
Then we gave up on typing the changes and just started sitting with the clerk
and showing/telling him of the changes needed.  Joned actually got pretty good!

We are now into the 2nd edition of the branch roster:

And then comes the 3rd Edition!  It's looking better all the time and we're down to the REAL families who are actually in our branch!  From 111, we're now at 72, with 2 more that need some 

research and then we'll be able to send them off. 

The numbers on the left side correspond to the dots on the map of Surabaya, the Letters correspond to the dots in Sidoarjo, an hour south of the meeting house.

Sunday, March 18th was a red-letter day!  They handed out Home Teaching lists to the brethren!  We had encouraged them to organize the home teaching using the new list of members and the map so the routes could be done by walking if necessary.  My Visiting Teaching list takes 3 days minimum because I go to the homes furthest from the branch, but we have a car and driver and plenty of time to do it!  My partners are our driver and Elder Seiter.  First time I've ever given a VT message with the whole family there and 2 extra men as my VT companion.  But it all works!