Because of Him

I hope everybody's had the chance to view the new Easter video the Church has produced. It's super good. They even got it translated into Indonesian and we've been asked to post it to all our facebook pages as well as start handing out these special pass along cards to help others get in the mood for the true reason for Easter. Even though most of Indonesia is not Christian, our friendly Muslim friends are usually really tolerant and are open to at least learning about what we believe. Needless to say, I've had some fun conversations with people from differing religions about the purpose of Easter.

Manado's beautiful coastline

 My companion just got his patriarchal blessing earlier this morning so he's on a spiritual high and I've been feeling really good after coming back from our last exchange last night. President decided at the last minute to take us to the famed and beautiful land of Manado. The rumors are true: it's really beautiful and green and almost everybody and their dog is Christian. We flew up there on Friday morning, split that day with Elder Heiner (which coincidentally happened to be his birthday) and then split the following day with Elder Campbell. I was a bit of a tourist, taking so many pictures. But we had some great experiences! The angkots here are nuts with their loud music and all, the members live way out in the boonies up in the mountains, and there are so many prepared people up there just ready to soak up the Gospel. There's a strong branch that's growing every week. One of the few difficulties there is association with other, strong branches or wards. It's so far away that the leaders can't get a lot of training or gain valuable experience working with other wards because of the distance. So every month or so, President Donald sends a counselor or two to give that training. We trekked up there with Brother Subandriyo who taught a great lesson 5th Sunday lesson on the fruits of the church that can't be found anywhere else. Elder Wintolo and I also got to spend valuable time working and talking with President and hearing his experiences serving as a Bishop and Stake President. All around, it was a fantastic weekend that motivated me to keep pushing along. 

As for our investigators here in Jakarta, Axxx is doing well. Couldn't go to church yesterday because his family had an activity he was obligated to go to. Nxxxxxxxxx didn't go either because his old church asked him to go fellowship a new member or something. Aleks is great! We sat down and read Elder Klebingat's talk and made goals associated with what he talked about. It rained sooo hard this last week! We had to cancel a few appointments because the busway took forever and a day. It took us 3 hours to get from our place to Harmoni and back last Wednesday. But we're doing OK; it's just made us focus more on planning and trying to follow the spirit while trying to anticipate how long it will take to get places. 

Sometimes I don't think we quite realize what we have as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. We have everything necessary to lead to a peaceful and happy life here and to enjoy immortality and eternal life in the world to come. We are all witnesses to what Jesus Christ is doing in the last days in preparation for His second coming. Soooo that means we need to be brave and share it with everyone we know. :) 

Selamat Paskah Semuanya! (Happy Easter Everyone!)

Elder Seth Barrus

Elder Heiner's birthday! We made him a cake by throwing egg and flour on him. Yay!