General Conference in Indonesian

Conference was great! The Tangerang District watched it with the local Tangerang members here in Indonesian and as much as I'd like to say my Indonesian has improved, the General Authorities of the church use pretty formal words which makes for some pretty funny and hard to understand Indonesian phrases. I feel kinda bad for the translators. Luckily, the stake president was reading the talks in English during the sessions, so I just looked over his shoulder and read them in English... There were two talks that really stuck out to me--the one from President Uchtdorf about how we need to be a more grateful people and Elder Michael Teh's talk about how the Lord has a way of refocusing our priorities in times of calamity or tragedy. He then asked a great question "Why do we devote our time to things that are so fleeting and inconsequential?" Good question. After devoting these 2 years to the Lord, I hope this is something I can apply in "normal life". 

Elder Sutadiyono and I were praying that Brother Wintolo would be able to come to at least one of the sessions, but he didn't come. So after our 6 o'clock appointment on Sunday we swung by his house and just chatted with him about how much he missed out on... Ha ha! He's good though. We taught him last week again about how Jesus Christ fulfilled the law of Moses and a little bit about the Kitab Mormon. For whatever reason, I feel like my work here in Tangerang isn't quite yet done. We're starting a new 16 week English course we got from the area headquarters in Hong Kong and from the looks of it, it's gonna be an awesome tool to help members invite their friends to come and do missionary work. 

We rode a train to Zone Training Meeting last week and took this fun picture of us waiting for the train.This Muslim lady is wondering where these weird Bules came from. Elder Sutadiyono and I have started to contact more and more Muslim people, not with the intent to convert them to Christianity, but so that we can understand them and their culture better.

I promised to send a picture of our new bikes and here they are! Parked right next to a "Womens' Parking" sign. Oops... No crashes yet worthy enough to report. Elder Sutadiyono and I have taken great fun in shifting all the way down (or up?) where we have to pump our legs super super fast just to go 5 feet, and then we race home the last stretch to our house. Ha ha! Fun stuff on the mish.

This is an Alfamart. You will find these EVERYWHERE, sometimes placed right next to an Indomart. It's just your basic local convenience store. We do most of our shopping here. You just can't find milk here though... at least not quality Smith's or BYU Creamery milk. We've taught one of our investigators, Mbak Rxxxx, in front of one of these Alfamarts. 

Real quick before I finish, we've met with a new investigator, his name is Bxxxxx, he's 13 years old and he's ready and wants to be baptized in May. The Lord is definitely preparing the hearts of men to receive His message. I dunno what we're doing, but He's blessing us. Hope everyone has a great week! 

Elder Barrus