December 29, 2014--Happy New Year Mother!!

Tall, tall, tall!

Dear gorgeous Mother of mine,

Wow, thank you for that update :) It's great to hear about everyone and, wow actually for me, skyping with you guys made me really miss you guys a lot. I was just thinking about it that whole day, but it was really good we had the Bogor Ward Christmas party because it helped me not think about how much I missed you guys. Man I think that was the most rough it's been so far as far as missing all of you.

The Christmas party was really fun though! We had two investigators that came with their families. One really liked the party we're pretty sure, but the other one got bored and left (said they had a promise somewhere else but we talked with them the day after and it came out that really they were just bored). It was tough because the family that was bored is used to what is called a "karismatik" (charismatic) church-- a church where they clap their hands the whole time and there's a church band and stuff like that. So they thought our church was really boring because we listen to people talk and sing boring songs. That was the first time I've had investigators with that kind of challenge. Hopefully we can help them have a desire to come to church for better reasons than to just be entertained. We'll see :)

Sweaty Santa

Also, at the Christmas party, we sang once there was a snowman and put out a little plug for our English class and also just briefly explained our role as missionaries. It was a really good way to do missionary work, because a lot of less-actives and investigators could come. And Santa was there too! Did you know that Santa can speak Indonesian? He's not totally fluent but he's pretty good. He had a really hard time understanding exactly what his role was supposed to be and felt a little awkward at times but he gave presents to all the Primary kids and sang a song and he was very fat. Kudos to him for coming all the way to Indonesia from the North Pole. Not that I know for sure, but boy was he really, really sweaty with his beard and hat and thick red velvety coat on over his white shirt and tie. ;)

On Sunday, a large number of the members were in the Philippines at the Manila temple, so we had a very small ward on Sunday. I was so excited and happy for them to be able to go and do that. Some youth got to go too so they could do baptisms. I can't wait for when the church here is big enough to sustain a temple in Indonesia. That will provide so many opportunities for members here to do more family history work, and so many will finally be able to go to the temple for the first time :) It takes a lot of active members to keep a temple running, and at least for now, there aren't enough. But hopefully that will change soon.

Ibu Y is still struggling with the Word of Wisdom and we're not sure how to help her. But I know she can overcome her challenges, she just needs to exercise her faith. You know, faith is really powerful. I've been studying about faith for the last month or so and really, when we show our faith in God, He doesn't hesitate to pour out blessings and miracles. All we have to do is trust in Him and follow Him, and He gives us more than we deserve in return. I think it's so cool.

I hope that this next week is good, and I think it will be. The word is that New Year's is a way bigger holiday than Christmas here in Indonesia, we we'll see how that goes. Hopefully it will not overly impede the work!!

I love you guys so much :)

Elder Paskett

This is us today at the mall in Jakarta! There is an ice-skating rink there that we enjoyed today. :) It was so nice to be almost cold!!!