Elder Seth Barrus

Elder Seth Barrus
Jakarta Indonesia Mission May2013-2015

Monday, July 14, 2014

An Attitude of Gratitude

Three random brothers came to church last week. They're from Papua.

President Uchtdorf reminded us in last General Conference that no matter our situation, we should keep an attitude of gratitude.

This last week, even though we didn't experience much success with our investigators, the Lord let me meet and teach so many wonderful Batak people. Brother Exxxxx (Batak) is doing good. He didn't come to church yesterday because he had the flu, but he hardly smokes anymore. The only setback is that his son, Cxxxx, is in Solo until after the major holiday here, Lebaran, which starts July 28. And, in spite of our concerns and gentle persuasions, we're going to have to wait until at least August 10th when he wants to be baptized. I just keep thinking the Lord's time is not our time... And also something Mom and Dad taught me: patience is a virtue. 

We met up with Mas Axxx last week too (Batak) and met his mom, who is Muslim, and had a great lesson about the family. After the lesson, his mom said "I want to share this (Family Proclamation to the World) with my neighbors. Can I make photocopies of it?" Ha ha! We're going back there this week and will give her more copies. Bang Txxxxx (Batak) is still thinking too much with his own logic, rather than getting down on his knees and asking God to help him with his search for the truth. He just thinks our church is a conglomeration (big word points!) of other churches and anytime we talk about one aspect of the Church, he always says it's like this other church he's attended. He's a bit stubborn, but he'll come around. We also met many Batak people on the busway who are interested in meeting with us. I'm thinking about learning Bahasa Batak, just to make learning the Gospel that much more enticing.

We finished up an exchange in Bogor this last week. I went with a relatively new missionary who's had a rough start to his mission, but he has such great desires to turn it around and become a great missionary. He's had kidney stones like every month since he's gotten here. We had a good chat about the mission itself and did some nice proselyting work during the day. We caught the train back to Jakarta and got to experience the atmosphere of a Presidential Election! Everybody had the day off so they could go to their local voting booth and 'coblos' to vote. It's the big talk on the street and we won't know the final results until the 22nd of July. Thank goodness there were no riots or explosions!

Oh yeah! And we met this Swedish guy working on his thesis here in Indonesia until August. His name is Fredrik. We gave him a Book of Mormon, and he came and played futsal with us on Saturday. He's cool! We play futsal in the back church lot every Saturday night and we get lots of people that come and play. But man, I am so bad at playing with my feet! It's a great opportunity for investigators and random contacts we've invited from the street to mingle with the members and missionaries here.

That's about it from my side of the world. I end with some advice from the late Brother John Wooden: "Make each day a masterpiece." Don't let a day go by where you don't try to be a little bit better than the day before. Horas! (Live long!)

Elder Seth Barrus

Me pushing the Monas (Indonesian: Monumen Nasional, abbreviated Monastower over.



Brother Marcell (member here) and I after playing futsal. Notice the 
drenched shirt and glistening arms of mine. Gotta love that humidity!

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