August 3, 2015--Hey there again :) (and photos!)

The roti bakar man. He walks by the Bandung house every morning and cooks roti bakar which is sooo delicious. It is like bread with jam and chocolate inside it which is then covered in butter and grilled up to a tasty perfection.

Heya momma dearest of mine who is oh-so-beautiful,

This is a guy cooking me some martabak telur. 

It is kind of like an omelette only it's smothered in oil.

That sounds pretty great that you alls bore your testimonies at church :) I always pray that all of you can grow stronger testimonies and that all my brothers and sister can keep growing theirs and really feel like they have a true relationship with our Heavenly Father. That is super cool to know that that particular prayer is being answered as we email. :)

This week was great! Elder Green, my companion, is awesome and he is teaching me lots. I am finally getting the area down too so I can start finding my way around. This week we went on a visit to Bandung and went on splits with the Elders there. The first thing I did there was I wrestled with the DL, Elder Hansen, to try to prove my dominance but he totally crushed me ;) It was so much fun. After that I went on splits with Elder Pribawa. He is a good Elder and he is originally from the ward I'm serving in here in Tangerang so I know his family and all that. We had so much fun in Bandung and we worked hard together. And I probably spent a good 60.000 rubes on Roti Bakar for the 2 days we were there. The roti bakar in Bandung was luar biasa, so stinkin good. I haven't been able to find any in Tangerang yet so I'm struggling right now. ;)

These are a box of grasshoppers that we ate in solo.
They are not super delicious just crunchy.

This week we had some cool experiences--one was when we were trying to meet with an investigator, Pak P. He wasn't home but his little brother who lives in Jakarta was visiting and he invited us in. So we just chatted with his little brother and then totally out of the blue he just asks us if there are still prophets in this day and age--probably not, right?... So we told him how actually, there are, just the same as in the old ages of the Bible and stuff. We told him that right now there is one living and his name is Thomas S Monson. Then we explained about the restoration and all that that entails. And when we explained about Joseph Smith, this man who we had just met began to cry. The Spirit was so strong in that room with us. It was a great miracle that we just stumbled into Pak P's little brother at that time, and that he had a perfect question. It was pretty cool.

I also learned a good lesson from this week. We met with two investigators this week who are learning as a whole family. One dad's name is Pak F, and the other one is Pak R. And both of these dads are a bit hard-headed but really great guys. They both talked for a great part of the lessons we were trying to teach. They both had some parts that they didn't really accept from what we taught but it was just because of a misunderstanding. And in both cases there wasn't really any room for us to say something because they were talking terus [continually]. But when Pak R's wife came into the room, he immediately cooled down, and he listened to her. She understood what we were saying and she was able to help him to understand too. It totally softened him and he started listening again after that. And Pak F's wife did the same thing when she came into the lesson!! So what I learned is that I better make sure I have a super intelligent wife someday because when I am being hard-headed and won't listen to truth, she just might be able to calm me down and help me see the truth of things. Having a good wife is super important :) My wife is going to be so awesome yaknow :)

Another crazy thing about this week--we fasted two times in two days! We have an investigator, Pak A, who is going through a crazy amount of hardships all at the same time. His parents died about a month ago, and exactly one week after that, his wife's parents died. They had to travel all the way to Jawa Tengah to go to the funerals and get everything figured out. And over the course of those two weeks, his egg-selling business failed because he was gone in Jawa Tengah for so long and so all his customers decided to buy from other people. So his kids are in school but he hadn't paid his school fee yet so today they were going to get kicked out unless he paid it but he literally had nothing left because he already sold some motorcycles and his egg-truck and a bunch of other possessions to pay the bills. So we met with him and he was obviously distressed and confused about what to do. We encouraged him to try fasting with us. So we fasted starting Friday night at 7 until Saturday night at 7. During that day of fasting, he was able to get a bunch of jobs as a driver driving people around, so hopefully it was enough, we will meet with him later today and find out though :) It was super cool to see him literally in the depths of humility and fasting for what was maybe the first time in his life. He even got some little hair gel things so that he wouldn't look unkempt because if you show others that you are fasting, you are a hypocrite and he did not want to be a hypocrite. His true sincerity and pure intent was inspiring to see :) And we fasted again on Sunday because it was fast Sunday.

Anyways that's about it for my report this week love you tons momma :)

Elder Paskett

We had some delicious french toast this morning. 

Wow it was so nice and we used that maple flavoring!!!!

This is from when I went to Bogor and this was an inactive family who is now active :) And their son is on a mission right now his name is Elder Suparman.

This is the Wijaya family. They are from Bogor, too, and it was so cool when I got to see them two weeks ago because they are all active right now and when I was there they were only part active.