October 13, 2014--Gettin' more used to it out here!

Dearest lovely mom whom I wish I could give a really big hug (and will in approximately 20 bulan ;))

This is a pen. I haven't heard anyone say that yet ;) It's always Bule Bule Bule or Hello Mister. Our english class is fun to teach because there's a lot of little kids who don't know very much, but also a few teenagers/ adults who are quite knowledgeable :) I'm feeling a little better language-wise--I can get more of the gist of what people are saying and I'm getting the hang of a few more idioms that they use out here (like, Di mana kabar anda? (lit. "where is your news?") which means how are you doing :)). 

I'm so excited for Tyler!! That's great news for him :) I think Nick Goff is in Detroit right now too :) My companion Elder Sinaga is goofy and loves to sing really off-key. He's different. It's hard to explain how... but he just reacts to some things differently and responds to things differently. It's cultural, but I can't quite put my finger on it. President Donald is a Lord of the Rings fan and very down-to-earth and straight-up. I really like him. We occasionally travel to Jakarta for meetings with the zone. It's about a two hour train ride to Senopati (the mission office). Taking a taxi is much more expensive than the train (it's upwards of 20 bucks to take the taxi, which is super expensive for here--20 bucks is like 15 good meals in Bogor) and not much faster. It is nitty-gritty city here, and the malls are bigger than Boise's malls. There's a couple super nice malls. There's also one really close to our house but it's pretty shady, it just always feels dirty.

Our district is just us four Elders, but there's news that we may be receiving two more Elders who will come serve with us in Bogor too! That's pretty exciting :)

So, with Pak Bernard, his baptism is actually on Thursday, but if you could just pray for him that he will have courage and that all will go well, that would be greatly appreciated. He asked me to baptize him so I'm working on memorizing how to say it in Indonesian ;) We still are lacking in investigators, but we constantly visit less-active members and encourage them to pray and invite their friends to learn about the gospel. There are a couple members here that always want to hang out with us and just drive us around and eat food, so we have to kindly shrug off their requests to hang out because we're missionaries and we need to be working on missionary work. That's one challenge here. There are a few members that have finally seemed excited to help us when we've asked for help, so I think we're going to go on splits with them in this coming week and there's one member who just received the aaronic priesthood (he's maybe 30) and he's super excited about sharing the gospel and I just love how much he helps us :) We're just gonna keep pushing forward, talking to everyone, because we need more people to teach!!! 

I love you!!!

XOXOXOXOXXOXOXOXOXXXOOO

Elder Paskett

bulan = months

bule = white person