In Kesa's email she mentioned that she really wants to feel an earthquake....She should visit here, I've felt so many that sometimes I don't know if it is an earthquake any more hahaha! These little islands have little earthquakes weekly all over the place, mostly tremors that just happen constantly but every once and a while it gets a little bigger! WOO The spice islands!!
This past Tuesday was our District Leader's birthday and with the oh so famous Indonesian tradition we did break eggs on his head. This is a tradition that is fun to do however, not so fun to clean up :) A lot of Tuesday was spent in the office in preparation of ALL of the things coming up. We will be very busy in December. Tomorrow we have our MLC meeting, next week we have a mission tour with Elder Wong of the 70, the following week there are missionaries heading home (including the sisters from my MTC group), the next week is Christmas, and then the following week there will be about 13 new missionaries coming into the mission so there will have to be transfers. Boy, are we busy!! With that being excited, I am super excited for it all!!
Thursday was Thanksgiving! Obviously that is not a holiday that is celebrated by anybody except Americans but there just happens to be three mission couples serving here in the office from America!! They cooked a Thanksgiving lunch for everybody that works here in the church offices!! It was absolutely delicious! Living here at the office has perks too, all the leftovers are given to the two Elders to do a service and finish....needless to say, we have been eating pie for the past little while :) The turkey was switched out for some good ol' chicken. Plus, I learned that American food does not sit the same as Indonesian food. I am so grateful for the blessings in my life. Most of the time I am terrible at giving thanks and showing that I am thankful but deep down I really am! "there is so much to be thankful for." We had a lesson later that night. If you want to get a feel of Jakarta, it took us about 3 hours to get to this appointment and about 30 minutes to get home.....traffic!!
Friday was such a blessing!! The day started off normal just as any other day would. We had started our office work when we get a call from President, he told us that Elder Gong from the 70 and his wife had arrived and that he would like a video translated for stake conference. We got straight to work! We worked on translating this video ALL day. Everything was working really well except the very last step which was to convert it so that the Indonesian subtitles were converted into the video. Seriously, we were trying to do this for probably 2 hours! President Donald came upstairs and invited us to dinner with them and Elder and Sister Gong. It was awesome! What other missionary gets to eat dinner and get to know a member of the 70 and his wife?! They are such spiritual people and awesome! I didn't get a picture and now regret it :/ anyways back to the video, needless to say we got one to work it just wasn't how we wanted it to be. We said our prayers and tried again in the morning and we did the exact same step and it just worked! We caught Elder Gong heading out the door so that he could use it! I learned a lot from them the short time they were here!
On Saturday we had a former investigator text us and tell us that he wanted to apologize for what he had said to us earlier and that he had been put under peer pressure but now that he has had time to think about it he feels like this church is where he needs to be and has asked to learn again and basically asked us to baptize him... MIRACLE!!! Later on in the day we had an appointment with a former investigator from a different city but has now moved to Jakarta. We testified about the Book of Mormon, knelt down in prayer with him and right away he felt the spirit and told us that it is probably true. He received a baptismal date right then and there... MIRACLE!! The last miracle of the day was that video working out! the Lord truly just does this work through us that are here.
Sunday was a great stake conference! The spirit was there and lots of great things were said!! My companion is taking an english exam today. I know he will do great, his english is already pretty good and he has prepared hard for it!
Sounds like things are going well! I have actually never met Levi and Wyatt, I have only seen pictures. I bet Puggers was having a blast.
Well, I'm grateful for this Gospel and the hand of the Lord in this marvelous work.
Elder Hayes
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| riding in a bemo to an appointment |
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| selfie just for the record |
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| good Indonesia tradition of breaking eggs on the head :) |
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