March 16, 2015--Hey there again :)

My most gifted and talented great mother,

A few sections devoted solely to your loving inquiries:

Pak E is doing alright but he still didn't come to church! And he is not reading his book of mormon yet either. Hopefully soon he will try, and get the blessings he needs. We'll just see. And we saved Pak H because he picked up the phone finally and asked us not to call again but that he'll call us if he has time to meet (which usually means that we won't meet them again because they never seem to call when they say that! Go figure!). 

The topography here... quite different from Bogor. There are tons of hills, everywhere, the distinguishing feature of the Banjarsari ward. The other wards a little more city-like, with giant hotels and a few large malls and stuff. But my ward is by far the most rural one. It's pretty much just not like Idaho at all. Everything is really squished and close together and all the streets are small. But, if you ride out the city limits (which takes 15-20 minutes or so) You can start to find farmers' fields and stuff (kind of like if you just go west past Rocky Mountain High school and it just becomes sort of farmish... only these farms have tropical foliage all around them). Like we were proselyting this week just past city limits (people there usually haven't heard of the missionaries so we get a little more luck with them letting us in) and we were on this little street, maybe a couple meters wide, and all of a sudden like 20 cows start coming towards us, and we had to wait off to the side for a few minutes while this family herded all their cows off somewhere. That's something I never saw in Bogor.

A few sections of how this week went:

So, we both got sick a couple times this week, me and Elder Boenari. It was a tough week. We also got rejected a lot as we searched for people to teach. But, our motto is just "maju terus" which is like "keep moving forward" but it sounds cooler cuz it's Indonesian :) and despite the challenges we found one family who could be progressive! The dad's name is Pak H. All we've really taught him and his wife so far is about the Book of Mormon. But he was really excited about it and he said he's been reading it every night with his family. They already have a tradition of reading the bible together every night, and he thought he wanted to try the Book of Mormon too. They were already to 1 Nefi 4 when we met with him on Friday. So that's pretty cool :)

We also had this pretty funny story about this guy who's name is Brother Y--he's less active. I guess Elder Boenari and his companion before, Elder Hayes, tried a lot to meet with him but this brother goes to Surabaya often to work, so whenever they would try Bro Y would always say that he was in Surabaya or that he was about to leave to Surabaya. What's funny is that when I moved here and took Elder Hayes place, Elder Hayes moved to Surabaya! So we pulled a pinser move, with Elder Hayes in Surabaya asking Bro Yohanes to meet, and then this Brother responded that he was in Solo, so he couldn't meet with Elder Hayes. Elder Hayes let us know right away, and so then we contacted him to try to meet. He told us he was in Surabaya. So, we're not sure where he actually is, but we want to try to help his wife, because she's not active either but hopefully can come back! And hopefully so can Brother Y.

Another funny story this week--I hit two kids while I was on my bike. They were on their bikes too, and they started to turn onto the main street from a side street just as I was passing the intersection. I felt so bad! No one was hurt and no one even fell but it was just super awkward. And then later that day, Elder Arthur got hit by a motorcycle and went flying! He was totally okay just a little scratched up and sore on the arm he landed on but nothing else. And then later that day again we found a snake in our house!! We were so scared and I'm pretty sure the neighbors heard our girlish screams for miles. But, we cornered it eventually (using mops, a basketball, and a mattress) and Elder Arthur dealt the deadly blow with his "Batarang". Apparently he got the batarang in his last city, it's black, shaped like the batman symbol, and wickedly sharp. Afterwards, we threw away the snake in the river.

Anyways, that about sums it up for this week. Thank you for your thoughts on grace. I do love that particular topic, it really is amazing :) Christ has done so much for us and will do so much for us if we let Him :) Thank you :)

Aku cintaimu juga, Ibu terkasih :)

(I love you too, dear Mother)

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXXXOOOOXXXXXXXXOOOOOOXOXOXO

Elder Paskett