January 26, 2015--Almost to PLD!

Hello there my spiritual giant of a mother :)

How goes things back in good ol' Idaho? Way over here in Indonesia, it's pretty good :) We are preparing for PLD (Pertemuan Latihan Daerah--Area Training Meeting) this coming week and interviews with President. At this point, I know I will be moving areas on the 4th of February, but don't yet know where I will be moving to. Hopefully somewhere cold ;)

This week, I had mencret (diarrhea) and was sick on Wednesday. That was no fun. But the rest of the week was pretty good. :)

So we worked with one member a lot who used to be a Jehovah's Witness. He is super cool and super Bible smart. Only he and his wife are members, and all of their family is not yet. The wife's family is all still Muslim, and his family is all still JW. So, we went and met with the younger sister of the wife and her family and also scheduled some time to meet with the some of the husband's family this upcoming week. The wife isn't active, and the husband has just returned to church after a long time of inactivity. It's hard because I think there are a lot of things they still don't totally understand, and the wife has no Christian background, so moving to JW a few years ago and then moving to the Church of Jesus Christ would be disorienting, maybe confusing. We taught the two of them a lesson in addition to working alongside them. We taught them about the plan of salvation, and it was one of the best lessons I've ever taught. The Spirit was there. We used good scriptures from the Bible and Book of Mormon. We actually taught Brother T and Sister L, and didn't just spout out information. We used object lessons and questions and they expressed that many of their doubts were resolved. That lesson helped me feel useful here. It's hard because I feel that no one is really progressing. But it felt like I could actually be a force for good in this city, and truly help people. It was a really good feeling.

Yeah we've all been here in the Bogor ward for quite a while. Elder Keller will have been here for 6 months by the time transfers come around, so we're pretty certain he'll be moving. I think the trend in Indonesia is that missionaries usually stay in their area for a long time. The shortest I've really heard of is about 4 months, and the longest is about 8 months.

I made pancakes this morning with that gingerbread pancake mix I got. That was heavenly. It was complete with maple syrup and just benar-benar seperti surga (really like heaven). No other way to describe it. Thank you so much for the maple extract, it just made everything work :) 

This week we got two new investigators, Ibu M and Ibu S. We're trying a different approach with them because they are Muslim. We're teaching them a little bit more slowly, spending more time on being their friend before we throw full lessons at them. We've just taught them a few principles about prayer and then compared how our church is really not too different from Islam. There are actually a lot of similarities. I hope their hearts will be open to us and to our message, but time will tell. And maybe time without me because I won't be here for too much longer!

Anyways, I love y'all, hope ya know I pray for you too :)

Love you forever and ever and an eternity of days,

XOXOXOXOXOX

Elder Paskett