Saddest News of the Week

Wow! What a week. We finished up Zone Conferences with the final conference taking place in Jawa Barat last Wednesday. Elder Simanungkalit and I felt that this role play presentation went the best comparison with the previous 2 (even though our role play was about as exciting as watching grass grow. President asked us to role play a daily planning session. It needed to be role played because not enough missionaries are doing it.) Following the meeting, our focus immediately shifted to the transfers happening Tuesday. And that's why I'm emailing a bit late today because we've been busy taking care of all of that and the logistics today in preparation for Tuesday's big move. 

My new companion will be...... Elder Wintolo! Yep. As in Brother Wintolo's son. The Lord blessed me with the opportunity to teach that man and to see him get baptized too, and now his son is going to be my companion! Pretty cool eh? He arrives from Semarang tomorrow night. I'm super sad that Elder Simanungkalit is leaving though. He leaves for Yogyakarta tomorrow. We've had a great time together. He took the Michigan test (English as a foreign language exam) last Friday and he said he's never seen some of those words in the dictionary before. Ha ha! And his English is probably the best I've ever seen from an Indonesian! He's hoping to go to BYU next year and study accounting. I say he should just become a seminary teacher with how well he teaches, but then I realized that Indonesia doesn't have any paid full time seminary teachers. Ha ha! Although his dad is the Seminary and Institute Coordinator for all of Indonesia. So I could see it happening. 

Brother Budi came to church!! Yes! He brought his son Julian as well and Sister Lely was just so happy. (Sister Lely was just baptized a few months ago.) It was great to see them all sitting together as a family throughout church. He even made a few comments in the Gospel Principles class. I see potential! Also a kid we've been teaching, his name is Nxxxxxx, also came to church. He considers himself Adventist, but never really goes to church. He lives sooo close to the church in Harmoni, we're just trying to find what sparks his interest to try the word in the Book of Mormon and eventually to be baptized. He's a super great guy though.

Aaaand for the saddest news of the day: Aleks' baptism has been postponed due to certain reasons in relation to his parents. Aleks is still going to be baptized, it just didn't happen yesterday. He's awesome. Seriously. When he becomes a General Authority or something someday, he's gonna look back on this experience with a smile on his face in recognition that the Lord put him through some of the toughest challenges in preparation for who he is going to become. 

Getting the font ready for the baptism that didn't happen.

It's been quite the last 36 hours. It's been weighing heavily on my mind. President took Elder Simanungkalit and I and Elder Lucherini "go carting" and out to Burger King today. So that was awful nice of him to help get our minds off the situation. 

I sent Aleks a verse from 2 Nephi 30:6 that I hadn't really realized or understood before I came on my mission. In the dedicatory prayer that Elder Benson offered when dedicating the land of Indonesia, he prayed that "the scales of darkness would begin to fall from their eyes when the Gospel is presented to them." I told Aleks that there will be one day where his parents will rejoice and consider it a blessing from God that the Gospel has been restored. Just right now, the scales of darkness seem pretty deeply ingrained into them, but there will come a day when the scales of darkness will fall from their eyes too. So that's what I'm praying for these next couple of days and weeks. 

That's about it. :) Hope everybody has a great week and is grateful for the knowledge and testimony that they have of the restored gospel. And also hopefully are grateful for their parents if their parents raised them with that knowledge. Thanks Mom and Dad! 

Elder Seth Barrus