NEW STAKE (NOT STEAK) IN INDONESIA

After over 40 years of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints being in Indonesia the first stake was formed last year in West Java. A stake is a unit of members which comprises multiple congregations and is comparable to a Catholic diocese. Today the second stake in Indonesia was formed in Central Java. It was a glorious day for the members of the church here. Some of the members of the church traveled 3 hours by bus to get here. It was estimated that there were over 800 people at the meeting today. The meeting was presided over by Elder Perkins, (a member of the Seventy-a leader in our church) over South East Asia. There was an adult meeting last night. Both meetings had a beautiful spirit to them. Last night there was a choir from Jogja. The Indonesians really enjoy singing. Although I (Eileen), could not understand the words to the song, I felt the spirit conveyed so strongly by watching the chorister. She was like watching a dancer or actress on stage. Her whole body moved with the music. Her face constantly changed expression with the lyrics. It was truly moving to watch her and listen to the music. For Russell it was a touching experience meeting with people from Semarang, where he served as a missionary 36 years ago. He talked to a man that was branch president at the time he served there. Russell was able to find out a little about a deceased member of our church that he had taught and baptized years ago.

 In order to get to the Solo (Central Java) we took a 9 hour train ride. Overall it wasn't bad for comfort. It was a great experience. We saw the beauty of the local landscape, the villages as we passed through each town and the farmers working in their fields. When the train would stop at a location, food vendors would descend on the train trying to sell their wares to us. We saw other trains with people riding on top of the train as it was traveling at a high rate of speed.

This cute man pedaled both Russell and I in this becak.  We tipped him a lot!

Augus Riyadi and family- he is our go to man in addition to working with visas for the mission

 With the formation of the second stake on Java it was decided by the mission president to form a branch for those members of the church not residing in one of the two stakes, the East Java district, or the established branches outside of Java in Bali, Medan or Manado. A branch is a small congregation of members, usually less than 100. Russell has been asked to be a counselor(there is only one) in the branch presidency. Due to the vast area which this branch covers, communication with the members will have to be over the internet. Russell will have to get used to using facebook. Occassionally we may visit some of the members when we are working on humanitarian projects in their area.

 Elder Healy (1st Counselor), President Kusumarmanto (Branch President) and Elder Beaman (Branch Clerk)

 This past week I (Eileen) was shopping with a fellow senior missionary. There are a variety of places to shop here. The place she took me to was an upscale store that caters to foreigners. It had a beautiful seafood display with lots of kind of fish and large live fish in a tank. We were looking at the fish tank when two of the live fish started to fight. All of a sudden two fish flopped out and landed at my feet. We were cracking up. We couldn't believe it. They must have been the fighters because when they left the tank the rest of the tank became calm. They were flopping around on the grocery store floor for a few minutes until the fish man came over, picked them up and threw them back in the tank. I think they must have been dazed, because they both lay on their backs for a while. That night Russell and I had fish for dinner, served complete with the head. It was delicious.

Fish Display

The fish wouldn't stay in the tank

Fish for dinner-Yummy mango sauce and eyeballs

 Russell really needed a haircut this week. We decided to go after work. After 70 minutes we had only traveled 2l/2 miles. We could see the mall in sight where we needed to go however we were on the wrong side of the highway. The cab would need to take a U-turn. Traffic was at a dead standstill. In frustration, we paid the cab driver, hopped out of the cab, crossed the bus lane, climbed over a short wire fence, (yes in my dress), crossed through several lanes of cars and motorcycles going really slowly in the opposite direction, and Russell got one of the best haircuts in his life for 4 dollars. Russell was so happy, he gave the guy a dollar tip, and made the guy's day.

IT'S ALL A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

We have found that sometimes in life that perhaps your viewpoint is skewed depending on the perspective from which you look at your circumstances.  Our mission has definitely shown us how true this can be.  We have been very pleased with our apartment, the security which we have here, and the amenities which we have available.  Yesterday a local came to visit us and I (Eileen) said to her, "Don't we have a beautiful view?" Russell and I think we have a beautiful view of the Jakarta skyline.  She looked back at me in astonishment and said "You are looking at the graveyard."  I just started to laugh and said "yes, but it is green". I wonder if they give the foreigners the view of the graveyard thinking they won't mind if they look that direction. I love looking down at the graveyard, seeing the people visiting their ancestor's graves, watching the students walking the path through the graveyard on their way to school, and even occasionally seeing a horse and buggy driving through the small pathways of the graveyard.

During the frequent heavy rainstorms we see the streets sometimes flood.  If the storm is extremely bad you can see people hovering under any kind of shelter trying to stay dry.  Saturday afternoon we sat on our balcony, dry under the overhang, and watched the beauty of a very heavy rainstorm hit Jakarta.   I am sure our neighbors in the three other apartment building towers thought we were crazy to just sit and watch it rain.

Sometimes the congested traffic can be extremely frustrating.  You must give yourself significant extra time to get anywhere, because you never know how bad the traffic or road construction will be to get to your destination. Russell sees the traffic and freeway construction as economic progress as more people can afford cars and motorcycles here in Jakarta.  We have decided we will use the time while we commute in the taxi to make phone calls, answer e-mails, or study.

We are near several mosques.  The call to prayer starts around 4:00 a.m. and can be heard throughout the city. While at first it was quite a challenge to sleep through, we now look at it as an alarm clock to remind us to get up  early, study and exercise. We need to remember that life is what we make of it.  We have been blessed to know many good and kind people in our lives that have been able to take unfortunate circumstances and make the best of them.  We look to them as an example of how we want to live our lives.

OVERLOOKING THE GRAVEYARD

OUR VIEW BY NIGHT

VIEW OF THE OUR APARTMENT COMPLEX POOL-IT IS EMPTY EVERY MORNING!

NOSE ABOVE WATER

We finally feel like we are getting sort of organized and catching up on our work (it may be an illusion).  This past week we have been meeting with doctors and organizations trying to figure out what we will do in the future.  On Monday we met with an opthamalogist.  We are interested in finding someone who would like to partner with the church in east Java who would providing their time for free as we provide the supplies for the poor to receive cataract surgeries.  We also met with a group that works with cleft lip and cleft palate babies.  This was enjoyable for Eileen, especially due to her background with Operation Smile.  This organization does a lot of pre-op and post-op teaching, making sure that the children get enough nutritionally and that the mothers are aware of how to care for the children's needs after surgery.  We will be coordinating with a NGO from the Jogja  area that distributes wheelchairs to those in need, many of whom have cerebral palsy.  It was interesting to see the list of those that they had distributed to recently, included some clients as old as 80 years old.  The pictures below are of Russell and I at the medical distributor looking at equipment that our church will be donating to hospitals in central Java.  The two hospitals are in rural areas east of Semarang.  They were very excited about the possibility of a defibrillator. They don't know about the monitors yet. Another hospital will be getting an X-ray machine. Hopefully this will improve the quality of medical care in the area.

NEED DEFIBRILLATION?

STATE OF THE ART MONITOR

AT THE DISTRIBUTOR

DEFRIBRILLATOR MACHINE

WE WOULDN'T WIN THE AMAZING RACE

BAJAI

BECAK

There are several forms of transportation in Jakarta.  As mentioned in our previous posting the traffic here rivals anything either one of us has ever seen. The becak was used quite frequently when Russell was here, and is used outside of Jakarta.  Now Jakarta is so congested we never see them here. They are a pedicab which has a seat for two people in the front, and the driver pedals a bicycle in the back.  In the afternoon heat the drivers can be seen asleep in the seats of the becak.  The bajai is the motorized pedicab and a step up from the becak.  The fit in the back is quite tight for two people, but the bajai is definitely much less work for the driver!  The motorcycles are everywhere, and you can take a motorcycle taxi called an ojek complete with a helmet provided.  Ankots are minivans with one side open. People jump on and off as the minivan slows down.  We take a taxi from our apartment everyday to work.  The ride is about 25 minutes to 50 minutes depending on traffic.  There are several cab companies.  The one that we take the most often is called Blue Bird.  We learned that you don't want to take the Silver Bird  cab as it can cost almost double the price. The Silver Bird is a small mercedes benz. Nice, but more than we need.  A typical cab fare is anywhere from 2-4 dollars.  Saturday night we went out with some fellow senior missionaries and grabbed a cab to go home. The driver immediately pulled over to the side and started looking at his GPS system. He wasn't sure how to get to where we needed to go. We ended up getting lost, seeing parts of town that I had never seen in my two weeks here.  Finally we ended up in a large round about with a statue in the middle. Russell recognized the statue and realized that we were going north when we needed to go south.  We were in the center of town and the round about was very busy. Before the driver of the cab could turn around and exit the round about we were hit by a bus.  No injuries to the passengers, but the left front fender didn't look good.  The bus kept going without even slowing down. Earlier in our ride,  Russell had been talking to the taxi driver in Indonesian, and the poor man had only been driving a cab for 1 month.  We felt sorry for him, but not sorry enough to stay in the cab, so we hopped out and found another cab with a driver that knew how to get us back home.

MOM HOLDING BABY

ANKOTS

TAXI

LOCAL BUS

FAMILY ON MOTORCYCLE

DRINKING OUT OF THE FIREHOSE

This week has been both eventful and extremely busy. After arriving on Sunday evening and meeting the mission president we attended a missionary conference on Monday. Russell introduced us in Indonesian and we were asked to bear our testimonies (share our beliefs). Thank goodness we had learned a little bit of the language before we had come. We have received a number of projects to work on. The existing projects that we have ongoing are a water project in central Java, preparation for a hospital ship in Sulawesi, a wheelchair project on Java, and two new projects working with members. We have been asked to help with employment needs and combating pornography. Our language training didn't really cover the vocabulary needed for these subjects. On Friday morning, just when we thought we might avoid drowning we found there was a conference we needed to be at the next day in east Java. Change of plans: won't be finishing unpacking, doing wash, or going to the store on Saturday. We learned in the MTC, "Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape." So off we went. More on the Saturday meeting below.

We are based in Jakarta on the island of Java. Java is smaller than Utah, it's length comparable to Utah from north to south. Jakarta is about the size of the Salt Lake City Valley, however there are approximately 15 million people in the metropolitan area. As you can imagine there are crowds of people everywere. Our office is 3 miles away from our apartment. Travel time is anywhere from 25 minutes to over an hour depending on the traffic. Many people use motorcyles as a means of transportation. We have seen families with as many as 5 people on a motorcycle. Mothers will sit sidesaddle, feed their babies while dad drives. It is amazing what people can do while on a motorcycle. I even saw one lady doing her nails while balancing on the back of the cycle. We hear the sound of motorcycles constantly out our windows. It sounds like a speedway 24 hours/ day. Our question initially was why wouldn't someone just walk the 3 miles to work? The heat and humidity would make you soaking wet by the time you reached the office. It is about 90 degrees here and 85% humidity. Our apartment is on the 20th floor and has a beautiful view of the city. Our first night in the apartment there was a huge thunderstorm. It was beautiful to watch the clouds roll in, see the lightening and hear the thunder. The thunder was so loud it set off car alarms in the parking lot below. The rain came down harder than I have seen for a long time.


We were invited to go to the eastern part of Java to visit with the leaders of a group called the NU an acronym for Nahdlatul Ulama.  They are an Islamic Group that is one of the largest Islamic memberships in the world.  They help to educate and provide medical care for the poor. On a sign on one of their buildings was a saying, "Religion without education, is like a bird without wings."  We were invited in as the only Christian guests there.  It was kind of like something out of movie. Eileen was the only one without a jilbab (headscarf) on.  Cameras were snapping photos everywhere. The man at the end of the table that everyone is looking at is the leader of the organization.  During our visit there, we were able talk to representatives from two different hospitals about medical equipment we would possibly be donating to rural hospitals that were operated by the NU.

President and Sister Groberg and Elder and Sister Healy

WITH ELDER SUBANDRIYO

LEADERS OF THE NU

MISSIONARY TRAINING CENTER (MTC)

On Monday, March 26th we entered the MTC in Provo Utah, on the BYU campus. Currently there are about 2,000 missionaries there, approximately 150 were married couples or older sister missionaries. The senior missionaries, generally come there for two weeks. The first week focused on teaching basic gospel principles and utilized Preach My Gospel as it's text. The second week focused on the various roles senior missionaries will do as they serve.  For us it was on welfare and humanitarian services. Others were trained in member leadership support, mission office work, employment services, etc. For those serving in non-English speaking countries, there was language training available in the evenings.

During the first week, we had the opportunity to practice teaching gospel centered lessons. It was indeed a learning experience. In the first lesson, Eileen and I alternated teaching parts of the lesson. It was immediately evident that we had very different teaching styles. When asked by our instructor to critique ourselves I said I needed to do a better job supporting Eileen in her teaching method and that we would have to better coordinate our teaching styles. For all of our married life we have had this almost unspoken division of labor. Some tasks, like providing the family finances are my job, others dealing with the home and Op Smile were Eileen's. We each had our responsibilities and personal "space," for lack of a better term. And now we were with each other 24/7 and teaching a lesson together, alternating speaking every few minutes. For this couple, married over 33 years, we went through a very new experience. No more division of labor, now we must work closer together than we ever have before. I have learned that we need to compliment each other rather than change each other, and I have also learned that Eileen needs her personal space now and then.

The second week was really interesting for me. I was impressed at the emphasis on sustainability for the humanitarian projects the church is involved with. The guiding principles of building self-reliance, recipient participation and work, fostering local leadership and project sustainability are at the center of all humanitarian efforts. It is the principle of teaching someone to fish rather than giving someone the fish. What I did not realize is how much harder it is to do the latter. We must respect the recipients view of what is needed and methods to meet those needs. This means that just because I think they may need something or that I know a better way to execute the project, my beliefs should not dictate what is done. Until the recipient sees the need, and not just buys into, but formulates the solution, there is not the foundation for a sustainable project. I would have been a better parent had I learned this earlier.

Russell is right. For this independent woman (Eileen) being together 24/7 was a little different. I have spent my whole life getting used to being alone while Russell has traveled, but I think we have finally figured things out and are enjoying each other's company immensely.

Operation Smile has prepared me for this "Amazing Adventure". I look at all of the wonderful people that I have met throughout the years and am totally in awe at the time and effort that they have sacrificed in giving up their lives to going to other parts of the world to serve their fellow man. The picture above is with me and Ann. Ann's husband has worked with Russell for years. Ann will be going to Lima, Peru for 3 years with her husband while he serves over all the missionaries in that area. We also trained with couples that were going to Ukraine, Laos, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, and Brazil. Each couple had an inspiring story.

During the time we were at the MTC we were able to go to an Indonesian mission reunion. We met with Elder Subandriyo. He is a regional area seventy, and will also be our supervisor while we are in Indonesia. He is a man with a huge smile and a friendly disposition. It was Elder Subandriyo that told Russell in December how much he needed us to speak the Indonesian language. NO Pressure or anything! I am my doing best to learn! He spoke quite a bit to us in Indonesian and fortunately Russell could understand most of it. I was a few sentences behind in responding. I am grateful for his encouragement because I know that I will have a better experience in Indonesia if I speak to the people in their own language.

SETTING APART AND SAYING GOODBYE

On Sunday March 25th, the night before we entered the MTC, Eileen and I were ordained as missionaries by our stake president in a ceremony know within our church as a "setting apart." Most of our children and grandchildren were present. Becky (our second daughter) and her family came down the week previous when we spoke in church but had to return home to Idaho later that afternoon.

Later that evening we had dinner together as a family for the last time. It was an emotional experience seeing those you love and saying goodbye for 18 months. While we will keep in touch by Skype, I (Russell) wonder how much the younger grandchildren will remember of us. I hope that the example we set of serving God and our fellowmen will somehow have a positive effect in the lives of our posterity.

I (Eileen) had a hard time saying goodbye to the children and grandchildren. They have been a huge part of my life for many years. I will miss seeing them for the next 18 months. I will also miss seeing my parents and sisters that I am very close to. Russell and I both feel strongly that this mission is the thing that God wants us to do at this time in our life and we have been blessed with so much. We truly want to give back to others. I have received much joy in doing 19 Operation Smile missions over the last several years. This mission will be different in that I will be gone for 18 months rather than two weeks, I will get to experience it with my best friend Russell by my side, and I know that the call to serve has come from a higher source than just my own desire to serve. We appreciate the love and support our family members have given us in this endeavor.

BISHOP WADLEY,  PRESIDENT STRONG, RUSSELL, EILEEN AND PRESIDENT SMOOT

EILEEN WITH PARENTS ONE LAST TIME BEFORE LEAVING FOR INDONESIA

FAREWELL SACRAMENT MEETING

EILEEN, RUSSELL AND PREVIOUS RETURNED MISSIONARIES FROM INDONESIA

On Sunday, March 18th, we spoke in our church sacrament meeting. Our bishop asked that Eileen speak on charity and I speak on service. At the end of our talks, each of us shared our feelings in the Indonesian language. While most there had no idea of what we actually said, a few could. Several returned missionaries from Indonesia and a couple Indonesian nationals were present and could understand our rudimentary language skills. It was good practice for what lies ahead. After the meeting, family and friends gathered at our house. Many members of our ward and family had graciously brought over food. We really appreciated their love and support.

LANGUAGE TRAINING

By the latter part of February, I (Eileen) had spent 5 1/2 weeks at the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah learning the Indonesian language. It made me feel kind of old at times as I remember French and Spanish coming to me pretty easily and it seemed like a crash course in Indonesian wasn't quite the same as a high school language course. After Russell retired from Huntsman in the middle of February he spent the next 3 weeks at the MTC trying to relearn the language.We made some great friends at the MTC. In addition to teaching basic grammar and conversational language skills, Scott, my tutor told/taught me all about his engagement plans in the Indonesian language. In addition to our MTC hired tutor there were several people who volunteered their time to supplement our language training. Bianca, a BYU student from Indonesia, volunteered frequently to tutor me. Russell knew her grandmother when he served in Indonesia 36 years ago. Several former missionaries from Russell's era also assisted in volunteered in our training. One, Ralph was actually Russell's companion for 3 months in Semarang. We also made dear friends with Elder and Sister Welch. They are serving their 9th mission, as office volunteers. Elder Welch made me a beautiful handwoven rug that I plan on bringing with me to Indonesia and I will kneel on it each night to pray.


It was amazing to see the young (19-21 year old) missionaries being dropped off every Wednesday. The cars would line up each week and I could see the anxiety in the young missionaries faces and in the parents faces, knowing that they wouldn't see each other for 18 months-2 years. Then as they pulled their suitcases out of the cars and were lined up to go into their respective dorms and were greeted, my heart went out to them. I wanted to go hug each one of them and tell them it will be ok. You can imagine what the cafeteria is like with 2200 young and old missionaries trying to eat a meal. It can get pretty crazy at times. I think Wednesday is ice cream day to help the new missionaries feel more comfortable.

SCOTT JOHNSON-MY TUTOR

ELDER AND SISTER WELCH-MY FIRST FRIENDS ON MY MISSION

ELDER WELCH AND EILEEN, WITH HAND WOVEN RUG BY HIM

BIANCA TANDIMAN AND EILEEN-SHE WAS A FUN STUDY BUDDY