January 11, 2016--Hey mother dearest o'mine

Mother yang sangat kukasihi,

How are you doing? It is very cold here, I stay warm for part of the day but then it starts raining and I get cold. It's so weird because compared to Idaho standards this is summer every day but it's a lot colder than Tangerang. I am legitimately worried that my internal thermostat is shot. I'm just grateful I go home in the summertime.

I have no doubts that the branch president's family will get baptized eventually. We pray for them literally every day. Later tonight we'll meet his wife and son for the first time. I am really excited!

I don't speak very much Javanese. Only a few words and phrases. Javanese is pretty tough though because there are lots of different words for everything. Every word in English has like three words in Javanese, a super high form (for talking to a king), a polite form (for your parents/other adults), and a regular form (for people your same age). So the only things I know are some regular ones and I usually don't feel good about using those with adults because it's not very polite. But I can impress lots of little kids! In Magelang everyone grows up using Indonesian and Javanese combined. Some of the really old people who were born in zaman jepang can't speak Indonesian, just Javanese, but that's pretty rare. For the most part they start out with two first languages.

We are working so hard and just trying to give it all to the Lord. This week we visited everyone we could, studied the area book, visited former investigators, found new investigators, visited active members and less-active ones, and just tried to serve people. We are trying to use all the tools in our toolkit and find in all the ways possible. One cool thing that we talked about this week with the mission couple serving here was about finding through family history. I have never really tried that with too much enthusiasm, but I really want to try because I felt the Spirit saying that that is an important thing for me to do right now. So, I want to ask for your help. I am filling out a book about my family history that just goes back three generations. But for each person, I have to fill out some stories about them. Mom, I was wondering if you could get in contact with Grandma Mary and ask her if she has some memories about her parents and if she would be willing to share them with me. Also, if she knows much about Grandpa Al's parents and has some stories I would be happy to hear some of those too. But could you do some following up on that for me? I would greatly appreciate it! I know you have a busy schedule but if you can fit in some time for that I would be so happy :)

Right now we have four investigators who are committed for baptism on the 24th of January, Ibu Y and her son and daughter-in-law, and one other guy named Pak O. None of them were able to come to church this week but we hope they can be ready for the 24th. I am confident Ibu Y will be ready, but her family doesn't seem quite as committed yet. Pak O needs some help with overcoming the word of wisdom and we are going to seek the Lord's counsel on the best way to help him. Hopefully everything goes well with all them, we are really hoping!

I love this branch and am grateful for the opportunity to work here! I am grateful for your support and for the support of our Savior Jesus Christ all the time. Love you so so much!!!

Elder Paskett