New Missionaries!

We played some mighty fun futsal with the zone earlier this morning, and after eating and showering, we walked some 1.5 hours to try and find a warnet to send this email. The usual internet cafe, "Snappy", made an unexpected move and closed its doors on us. Pretty bummed about that.

Quick story to show what kind of people you find in Indonesia. Elder Campbell and Elder Sutadi were going out for the day from Kampung Melayu and we're standing in line, when all of a sudden, this man fully dressed in the Islamic clothing, cap and all, pushes his way to the front of the line and begins to prophesy "Busway Kampung Melayu... Datanglah!!" or "The bus at Kampung Melayu, come right now!" He then waved his hands around in some pattern and waited. 10 minutes passed. So he said it again. "Busway Kampung Melayu... Datanglah!!" 5 minutes pass. And he says it again. Still nothing. A bus starts coming down the lane and he points to everyone saying "See?? I told you it would come!" Another guy looked down the lane and said "That's a minibus. Not a busway." Embarrassed, the prophesying man made his way to the exit. Ha ha!

New missionaries! A group of 9 new missionaries came in to Indonesia to being their missions, which means that they have to stay in Jakarta for that first week. I've been split with an Elder Lieske from St. George. He's a funny guy! His Bahasa Indonesian's still a work in progress, but we still were able to teach quite a few lessons together. We haven't met with Pak F yet, but we did meet a new investigator. His name is Pak F M. He's Batak. We were looking for another guy who lives in the same house, but wasn't there at the time. But Pak F M let us in and we shared our message about the Restoration. We finally met with Brother E too! He even told us, "The faster I get baptized, the better." So we're working with him to set a earlier date than the 9th of November. D hasn't answered our texts or phone calls yet. I's still doing wonders. :) That's about it from an investigator standpoint. We spent most of the week last week finding. It's quite fun! 

Mission Leader Conference was once again an inspiring meeting full of spiritual promptings and inspired guidance. President had us give a 10 minute report on our zones, and the Jawa Barat zone is doing quite well. President Donald educated us on how to help teach our Indonesian church leaders here how to handle new members because he said there's a lot of investigators getting baptized, and leaving the church way too fast. He wants us as missionaries to take some extra steps to ensure their activity. 

Something President said is something I've heard maybe a million times. But I really like the way he said it. He said "It's not about numbers of baptisms. Many baptisms will come, if people do what they're supposed to do." I support that sentence entirely. We can find a few people who want to get baptized on our own. But if we do it the Lord's way, everything will just work out. 

Because we're emailing at a shady warnet where a bunch of little kids are just playing video games, I don't trust the computers. So no pictures again this week... Sorry about that. But I hope everybody has a great week! 

Elder Seth Barrus