September 6, 2015--Howdy do, marvelous mom?

Hey momma, whom I love so very much,

To answer your questions: it is weird having four english-speaking elders in our house. It's nice in some respects because we all come from the same culture but it means we have to be more diligent in practicing the language and stuff. Me and Elder Green like to use campur, we just mix up indonesian and english freely. It's really nice :) We always pray in Indonesian though.

This past week was a less-productive one in our area, as we went to Bogor and Elder Green got pretty sick. So we didn't get to visit as many people as we would have liked to. But, it was also a good one because we got some stuff prepared for this upcoming week. Like later tonight we are going to family home evening at a member's house and we hope that our investigator, Pak R, will come too. He said he wants to so we are excited for that :) We didn't have anyone come to church yesterday but that's okay.

You asked about the major obstacle in becoming converted here... I think the Word of Wisdom can sometimes be difficult, because every single man here smokes and literally everyone drinks tea. Tea is often cheaper than clean water. But, the biggest obstacle I think has to do with "culturization". Here, a lot of religions become more of a cultural, familial thing as opposed to a focus on the teachings of that religion. Like many Christians are just Christian because their family has been for generations. But they might not really know who Christ is or why he is important or why they should even go to church. They just go to a church every week because their family always went and that's the assigned "group" in society that they've been given. Same with many muslims, many just go through the motions because their family has been that way for centuries. So the difficulty is in helping them understand the true importance of Jesus Christ, to really sit down and ask some deep questions. To look outside the boundaries that they've arbitrarily laid down for themselves and really take a hard look at things, and ask "Why?". I think I see it some in the wards I've been assigned in too, sometimes the Church is more like a club that you get to be a part of because you were born in it. But we know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ transcends all cultures and should unite us all under one culture, the culture of Christ. And it's for all people from all places, since we're all children of God who all so desperately need Jesus Christ. So I think the main difficulty is with trying to make the gospel more than just an outward, cultural, group influence and rather an inner, individual, and very personal influence. I don't know if that makes any sense but that's the best way I can try to explain it :) That same culturization thing goes on back home sometimes too, so I think you know :)

Some of the things I enjoyed from this week were:

Splits to Bogor! I got to see a couple families from the ward again and I worked with a newer Elder. He is a great guy and we worked hard and had fun too. We got to see the W family again and they are just the best. They have like 9 kids and they are just so fun to be with. It was neat to meet with their dad again and see how his testimony is grown. He's active right now which just makes me so happy :)

The Ice Rink! We have been trying to find new, more creative ways to find people. We tried going to this mall  on Friday night and just talk to people there. We found that the most effective spot was just to stand outside the ice rink (yes, there is an ice rink inside a mall!! So cool!!). Lots of people just came up to us and would talk to us. We made some friends by waving at people who were skating (it's pretty easy to make friends when you're a white guy here) and some of them are really interested in english class, so we hope there can be some hasil with that. We have been trying to seek revelation in how to find those people that God has prepared, and the ice rink was one example.

Anyways, that's about it, maybe I'd better sign off! I love you bunches mother dearest and will talk to you next week :) Keep me updated!

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

With Love,

Elder Paskett