Elder Seth Barrus

Elder Seth Barrus
Jakarta Indonesia Mission May2013-2015

Monday, August 11, 2014

"The Weather Outside..."

Howdy hey everybody! Bagaimana kabarnya? (How's it going?)

This last week, the weather in Jakarta was absolutely magical. It wasn't too hot, there was a nice cool breeze, it never rained, and I didn't sweat as much. It must have been in honor of all the missionaries headed home today. A group of 15 missionaries all finished their 2 years yesterday, and we will miss them so much. But that means my MTC group will now be the next to go home. In 9 months. Crazy talk! My companion, Elder Suryono, hopped on a bus earlier today and is traveling to Bandung as we speak. I'll miss that guy. 

Last photo at church with Elder Rogers (Australia) and Elder Suryono (Bandung). Great men who will be missed in the mission field, but will greatly benefit their hometowns. 

My new companion is Elder Sutarno! Which makes for my 4th Javanese companion on the mission. We were in the same house in Tangerang about 6 months ago and so I know how hard he works and how obedient he is. I'm excited to work with him! The new group of Bule missionaries come in this Wednesday meaning almost half the mission will be in a training situation come this October. It's gonna be a huge overhaul, but an exciting one to see what kind of nature the mission will take on. 

As for updates on investigators, me met Dxxxxx last week and he's still super golden! He just didn't come to church this last week... So we'll have to postpone his baptism until the 24th at the earliest. We taught him about faith and repentance and we talk about repentance all the time, how we need to repent daily. Going over the steps with him helped me understand more the fundamental 'how-to's' of repentance. We didn't meet Brother Exxxx either because he just got back from Semarang, and he came all the way to church for sacrament meeting yesterday morning, and then got a call saying he was needed at work. But we'll be praying and meeting with him this week often enough so he hopefully can still get baptized this Saturday. We'll see what happens! 

Funny story of the week: we have this slowly progressing investigator named Txxxxx. He's Batak and so he's a little hard-headed. But he's nice and is finally taking in the lessons well. This last week, we taught about the Word of Wisdom and he just compared it all to something similar another church has. We asked him if he believes everything we've taught him so far and, get this, the one and only thing he has a problem with is the fact we say Adam and Eve couldn't have children in the Garden of Eden. That's it. Everything else, he's okay with. Ha ha! He'll come around eventually. 

I've committed myself to start studying Preach My Gospel more and really internalize everything that's in there, not just a few principles. And something that we're going to start really pushing is Member Missionary Work. This last Saturday, we brought in a young man, Marcell, sat him down in front of a computer, logged into his facebook account, and starting looking through his friends to see who we could add to our missionary account. He picked out 3, clicked on the "suggest friends" link, suggested us as friends, and then sent a quick message to them explaining our purpose as missionaries and sharing his testimony. Just now, I opened up facebook  and saw that two of those 3 friends accepted the invitation. We'll start chatting with them and introduce them to the Gospel. So, something I found is that people are more open to learn about the Gospel from their friends that they trust than complete, friendly strangers they met on the bus. It's true!


Elder Seth Barrus

The last District meeting for "District Teancum".

P.S.  Man, every time I think about Elder Dallin Broberg, it makes me want to cry. He makes me sound a lot better than I am. Out of all the people I've ever met on my mission, he is the most Christ like person I have met. I didn't get to meet him when he came back, but he stuck a big package full of my favorite snacks in my box at the mission office, full of cookies n' cream candy bars, and fruit snacks. It made me wonder.... Were you in cahoots with him before he came?? There's no way, unless he's 100% in tune with the spirit, that he could know my inner thoughts and favorite candy! I've been munching on them for the past couple days and I'm afraid will be finished pretty soon here... Great man he is. 

I didn't meet Sister Allred's family. And I would very much enjoy coming back to Indonesia some time to visit again all the places I served. But not for a while. It's kinda expensive... But I would like to come back with my future wife some day. And you and Dad if you want to come along. :) 

Hey! That's a great picture you sent of you in front of the "satay" place. If the guy selling it really was from Indonesia, he would spell it differently. It's spelled "sate" in Indonesia. But it sounds the same with that spelling. I really like tempe, and I really started to like tofu. Or "tahu" in Indonesian. Gross right? But if it's fried right, it's really delicious. My favorite food would have to be soto betawi. Not very healthy, but man, it's super delicious soup. I wonder if you could look it up on the internet and find a recipe and try it sometime. 

I don't like durian. 


1 comment:

  1. It takes a strong stomach to like durian. Keep up the great work!

    ReplyDelete