PLD and Elder Funk

Elder Sxxxxxxxxxxx, Elder Funk and Elder Barrus in Tangerang
(wearing long sleeves because the air conditioning is cold in the Tangerang chapel)

Hello. Hope everyone's doing baik (good)!

Last week was a great motivational week. Like those motivational posters you always see inside high school classrooms, just in meeting form. Last Tuesday was Jawa Barat's turn for PLD (Zone Conference) and we discussed and role played how we're going to accomplish our goal of getting a baptism every 3 months per companionship. Then, since President Donald is the best mission president ever, we watched Ephraim's Rescue and something that really stuck out to me was Ephraim's preparedness. When others were saying "I'll be ready next week or by this Thursday" he said he was ready to act and help NOW. As a missionary, we don't have the time to get worthy and to get prepared because the moments we need to act will always pass us by. Now is the time to get ready and be worthy. Good film.

We met with Brother Wxxxxxxxx last week with his family and for the first time since he's met with missionaries, he showed to us he's willing to try out the Gospel for himself. He committed to start praying with his family every night, even though he himself is Muslim. And even agreed to start comparing the Al'Quran and the Kitab Mormon (The Book of Mormon) to see if it's scripture. Definitely made some great progress there. Slowly but surely, his heart is starting to soften. (Brother Wxxxxxxx's son is serving as a missionary in another area in Indonesia.)

And lastly, Elder Funk came down from Hong Kong to his native missionary land (he served in Indonesia from 1971-1973) to hold a couple meetings with the priesthood brethren and stuff like that. And he also wanted to meet exclusively with the Jawa Barat missionaries. The man is truly called of God to be a General Authority. Seeing the way he talked about how much he loved his mission made me want to work even harder to love my mission the same way. He said he totally forgot about the hardships and the sweating of his mission, and only remembered as people asked him about it. Such an incredible missionary. I hope I can be half the missionary he was.

Congratulations to Cindy, Matt, and Aubrey on the new addition of Tyson to the family! Can't wait to see him!

Terus Maju,

Elder Barrus