Happy Indonesian Independence Day!

69 years ago today, Indonesia declared their freedom from Holland and in commemoration of such, we sang Indonesia's national anthem during church yesterday. A song I did not know, but has a catchy tune. You should go look it up sometime. There were crazy parades in the streets, angkots stopped, and little kids lighting fireworks off in the middle of housing complexes. Fun day.

This last week was kinda crazygonuts busy. The new missionary group from the MTC flew into Jakarta last Wednesday, and because they have to stay around Jakarta for a week to get their KITAS, Elder Sutarno and I were on splits with two of them the entire week. I got to go with Elder Eyre from Salt Lake. His Bahasa Indonesia is a million times better than mine when I first arrived. Not even kidding. While teaching, he followed the lessons and could give solid testimony and even while contacting on buses and in the street, he gave away three Kitab Mormons during the week. He's moving to Manado next week to be companions with the one and only Elder Murphy. Remember him? (MTC companion, lived in the same house with him in Surabaya and Medan.) He's gonna have a blast with him! Because we have all 10 new missionaries in the Jakarta area, we're going to go play futsal later today behind the church. 

New companion, Elder Sutarno and I

Elder Eyre, Ixxxx, and I

Investigators! We were crazy blessed this last week in that we finally got to meet with Ixxx! I don't think I've ever explained about him because I've never had the chance to sit down and teach him. He was a contact on the bus by the former AP's and has been learning ever since. Because his college schedule is skeewompus, he can only come to church every so often, but yesterday he came after we taught him about the Plan of Salvation the day before. I attached a picture at the bottom, but his parents are from Aceh and Jakarta, but not too religious. He speaks perfect English and after explaining about the baptismal covenant, he wants to get baptized on the 6th of September! He was so funny at church that members invited us to their house for Family Home Evening and said to bring Ixxx with us. Let me tell you, I gain sooo much respect for a member when they invite investigators to their house for FHE or just to come and eat. We're going to the Prasodjo's house later tonight to do just that with Ixxx. 

Dxxxx also came to church! I asked about how he felt after and he said "peaceful". Elder Sutarno and Elder Hayes taught him after about the Word of Wisdom and even though he really likes tea, he's going to stop drinking it. Elder Sutarno told me that they knelt in prayer after the lesson and Dxxxx said he felt something really warm and powerful inside him. Psst... That's called the Spirit...  He's great and hopefully will be baptized on the 7th of September.

We didn't have a chance to meet Brother Exxxxx last week because he came home from work every day at 10 pm. But he came to church and we'll be going over there this week to follow up on things. 

We had MLC and ZTM last week as well, and for ZTM (so not everybody was translating for the new missionaries) Elder Wood translated in a microphone and all the new missionaries had headphones. We set some pretty high goals I know we'll be able to accomplish with the current group of missionaries in the Jawa Barat Zone. We're brainstorming to find ways to use facebook more effectively. We're going to start visiting members in their homes and go through their friend list and suggest that that friend become friends with our fb page. We're still in the beginning steps, President called us 'pioneers of facebook', but I can see this whole thing taking off once we fully understand how to use it. 

I've been thinking a lot about how much Heavenly Father wants us to come back to Him and Jesus Christ. A speaker in church last week mentioned how really this earth is not our natural habitat. Our Heavenly Father is much like our own earthly parents - encouraging us to sacrifice an evening of happiness and pleasure for the longer termed welfare and salvation of our souls. He's not quite a "Grandfather in Heaven", who would just spoil us and give us candy. And I'm grateful for that. I know that He loves us and wants to talk to us every day through prayer. 

I attached some pictures below just to help you know I'm still alive and well. :) Hope everybody has a great week!

Elder Seth Michael Barrus

Some of my old MTC group after MLC. Nice suits, eh? President
always gets a kick out of us wearing them. He thinks we're nuts.