February 23, 2015--Hey :)

Hello there my exquisitely luar biasa Ibu dearest, :)

(luar biasa ibu= incredible mother)

Oh that's sad to hear about Grandma Ora. She was such a great lady. And yeah, Sister Ingersoll moved out when I moved in. And to answer that question about how the language is going: it's great. Way better than at the start. I'm starting to get to this point where I understand when we read from the Book of Mormon even when I have not reviewed the particular verse in English first. And I'm starting to be able to talk fast, which feels nice. I can't always say what I want and still don't know words, but it's easy enough to communicate :) And I am learning some Javanese which is pretty cool! We brought the sacrament to a member yesterday and they taught me a bunch of Javanese words which I am totally going to use because people think it's so cool when a white guy starts spouting off Javanese. It's like they gain a respect for you in some way :) Embrace the culture!!

Mas D and his family returned their Book of Mormon and are "not sure" when or if they can meet again. So that is a little bit of a downer but maybe they just aren't ready yet. We have one new investigator, Pak P. He is 70 years old on the dot and has two kids and several grandkids, one of the kids lives in Canada actually and the other kid I am not sure. He is very humble, Christian, and when we teach him the Spirit is soo strong. I have high hopes for him. We met with him two times last week and he had already read from the Book of Mormon when we assigned a passage which was really cool! He's a neat man. We didn't have a chance to meet with Bu S because she was busy. 

Genealogy here is hard because most people don't have family names that they pass down, and really the only information known is that of what living people still remember. (Unless you're Batak. They have royal lines and stuff and usually record their family histories back centuries or so). But over here in Java there isn't a lot of information usually. We are trying to excite an interest in family history with the members because one of the key indicators the church looks at before building a temple is the amount of family history work going on in the area. There needs to be enough to help support a temple there. So the more we can encourage everyone here to do their family history work, the sooner Indonesia can have a temple. And you can see from almost all the members how much they long to have the blessings of the temple be accessible to them. It's one thing that I think can really motivate them. It reminds me of the early saints and how they gave up so much to build temples that were ultimately desecrated and destroyed. But their work was worth it because of the blessings they experienced. Many of the Indonesians here are pioneers too, willing to put it all on the line to just go to the temple in the Philippines one time. I admire their faith, and I think it will help me have a greater appreciation for the temple when I go home someday.

Anyways, I'm out of time but I love you so much momma and hope everyone else knows that too. Stay strong and remember the most important things through these next few busy weeks :) Love you!

Elder Paskett 

Here are a couple of bonus paragraphs from his letter to his Dad:

Our investigators are tough. A lot of it stems from Indonesia's interesting culture. I can try to explain. Almost all of Java is muslim (90% of the population!). And the thing is, muslims and christians aren't always the most agreeable groups. They have very different beliefs. So, because of that, in order to survive and coexist together, Indonesia has this strong culture of how we all need to respect one another's religions. We don't have to agree, but we were all created by one God and we need to respect what others believe. This is a great thing to have as part of a culture, for the most part. The problem it makes is that a lot of people don't trust us because they think we don't respect others's choice of religion. And also, amongst the Christians it creates this culture of "all churches are good". Almost every Christian I've talked to thinks that all churches are the same--they may be different but they all point to one direction--Christ--so they are all just the same. Most people are confused when we talk about there only being one true church. Sometimes they even think we are disrespectful of other churches because we are trying to "take away" their membership. So that's one challenge I feel we face. Convincing others that there is eternal truth, that God wouldn't support two churches whose doctrines contradict.

The other missionaries are good. There are a lot of struggles with obedience and it's hard for me because I am a perfectionist and just want to do everything 100% right. But I know that unity in my companionship is paramount, and one thing I'm really learning is that you have to pick and choose what battles you want to fight. If you fight them all, you're spread too thin and your companion feels like you are always just nagging him. So it has to be a patient game, a loving game. One thing that President explained to me is how in America and Australia, we see our future laid out for us. We see when we'll turn 16, we'll get that car, we'll go to college, we'll land a dream job, we'll land a dream girl, we'll get a nice house, and so on.... We dream about our future and it really is achievable. We really can get that nice car and that nice job. But here, most people just see a week ahead. Or maybe a day ahead. Most of them are surviving from week to week, that's it. Having that broad vision motivates you to work hard, to do all you can to obtain what your dream is. When you don't have that, it's harder to sense the urgency, the need to go hard and fast for the short time you have. (Two years really isn't that long at all). So there's kindof this ongoing conflict here about obedience and level of obedience (which I'm sure is the same in every mission) but there's also this cultural divide playing into it.