Spencer - Called to Serve: Week 65 - A Whole New World in Jakarta

WOW!!! Boy is the city a fast-paced, crowded, busy place! It is literally a whole new world! I have had to do a lot of adjusting this past week with lots of new things. My new companion's name is Elder P. He too is from Medan on the island of Sumatera. So far to this point in my mission, I have been companions from Medan twice! Here is Elder P's story which is a pretty cool one. When he was 8-years old, he lived on the same street as the church in Medan. One day as an 8-year old, by himself wondered into church and attended. He made friends, as any 8-year old would and the missionaries ended up going home with him and asking his parents if they could teach him. His parents gave them permission and that was that, he was baptized along with his mom. Unfortunately, his mom passed away right before he left on his mission. He is for sure a unique person with a big sense of humor. He was actually trained by Elder James if you remember him from Virginia! Good stuff!

With the new assignment, we get up and start normal studies. At about 10 we go up to the office and start working, meetings, and all sorts of stuff.....we get VERY busy!! That's what a normal day but sometimes President Donald comes in to the house or sends a texts and says that we need to start meetings earlier and we just head up and get to work. In the afternoon we leave and just talk to everybody that we can see. A lot of our lessons our a lot different to lessons I have taught in the past. A lot of them come over phone, Facebook, email, and just riding the public busway we just start teaching there. It is very hard to get to people's houses here.

Here in Jakarta there is 3 wards, 1 english branch and two Indonesian wards. We are serving in one of the Indonesian wards. It has been almost a year since serving in a ward so that number of names that I have to learn just shot up! :)

One of the crazy things that I see here is white people!! 100% honest, they scare me!! It's almost like I forgot how to talk to people hahaha but the Indonesian people are just so much easier to talk to! All the white people I've seen in the mission up to this point were tourists but the ones here are truly here for work or school. It is just a whole different atmosphere!!

The traffic is absolutely terrible, we ride the public busway to get places, the streets show the poorest of the poorest and then you take one step into the mall across the street and we have the richest of the richest. For the record, I have seen a Porsche 9/11 turbo racing down the road as well as a slick black Lamborghini. It is just mind blowing to experience what this city has!!

I have lost my voice but I'll just blame that one on all the teaching that goes on here. Lots of great things and good things to come! I am oh so excited to continue on!!

The pictures look great and OUCH BYU hopefully will learn from that one. Well, I think that is enough for this week. I love you all!!

Elder Hayes