Week 48 - The Work Continues On, Member Missionary Work, and Plane Trip to Jakarta

Another week of hard work has come and gone! I'm pretty sure the time just seems to be speeding up and nothing is slowing down! For good news, we were able to add 2 more baptismal commitments to have 8 right now and as of right now 1 of them is looking highly possible! It is one of the coolest things to experience when people go from doing nothing to just keeping one commitment in the Gospel how much that influences their conversion whether they be a non-member or a member! 

As for other service opportunities we always ask but is culture of Indonesia that they do it themselves. If they want help we are more than happy to offer it. A lot of the service here is more humanitarian whereas the other cities I have served was like cleaning or in Surabaya harder to find service opportunities because it was a city that was a little better off. 

As for miracles this week. We had an appointment with an investigator at the church. Well, he came as he always does but this time he brought a friend who was 14- years old who after listening to the lesson of the Gospel of Jesus Christ would like to learn with his friend! Well, the same day the other companionship had a meeting with one of the members that lives in our area and after we got home they were happy to tell us that the family they visited had friends over and these friends are now wanting to here the gospel! The work here is a little different as I have mentioned before, the members bring a lot of people, but also a lot more people reject because they are happy in their own church! The work is still moving forward rapidly! 

It sounds like things are winding down there as things are picking up here! Early this morning I had to catch a plane to fly to Jakarta for MLC (Mission Leadership Conference) as that is one of the responsibilities that I have! I will say it was pretty amazing flying over the ocean and having the opportunity to catch a small glimpse of other islands in Indonesia! 

I can't wait to hear where people are called to as there have already been a couple calls! I remember when I opened my call and thinking "what have I gotten myself into" and now I can maybe say that my Indonesian is better than my English at some times! 

To answer some of the questions that I received, we do have a church building.... kind of. It is a rented out, 3-story, building on the Marina which has a sacrament room and other rooms but is very squishy! As for mutual, they do not have that here but occasionally the missionaries will hold like sports nights or other activities and we invite the youth. Every once and a while there will be a youth activity and I know that this summer all of Indonesia has a youth conference so all of the youth in Indonesia can gather and meet each other!

It is sad to hear that Elder L. Tom Perry has passed on but his work service was up. As for the other apostles I think there will be a few that follow here shortly. 

Well, things are progressing very fast!!!!!! The work continues on!! 

Elder Hayes