Halo Orang Putih!! Hello White Man!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Halo!
Well, just about one week or so in Indonesia and so far I absolutely love it! It is absolutely insane here, traffic, people, trash, hot, humid, more traffic! But I definitely am loving it thus far!! Right now, I am serving in bekasi which is basically a suburb of Jakarta, but by suburb I dont mean American suburb because in a lot of ways it is crazier than jakarta. But I have two companions right now, Elder Adams from Oregon and Elder Sutarno rom Solo ( Central Java). Bekasi is a VERY muslim part of Indonesia. Imagine that you're in Utah and you see a church on every corner, except here they are mosques which include calls to prayer 5 times a day. One of which is at 4 in the morning, It ALWAYS wakes me up. Bekasi is actually hotter than Jakarta is, I know this because right now I am back at the mission home because we needed to fill out some paper work and it is definitely "colder", if you can call it that.
Because Bekasi is very muslim it is very very hard to proselyte, honestly not really anyone wants anything to do with us. But we often try to talk to anyone and invite them to English class. right now the main means of transportation is an angkut, which is like a VW hippie-van that has seats along the sides in the back that they pack full of people. They are everywhere too along with motorcycles. So many motorcycles!
I feel like I have not learned the language at all, it just sounds totally different here. They say it will take a month or two to start getting comfortable with it at all, I have been a little reluctant to speak because I can't understand but I am trying to force myself to speak.
We have gotten to teach quite a few lessons, the thing is that our area is huge. we have an investigator named anggun . Anggun is dating a member of the ward, named Samuel. The interesting thing is that Anggun has been taking discussions for a long time, wants to be baptized, but her family is muslim and wont let her until she lives on her own for awhile and other things too. She is also from a city maybe 2 or 3 hours from jakarta which is a very radical muslim city that christians, especially white, arent very safe in. so she comes in on the weekends for church and also to be taught. Hopefully things will work out so she can be baptized!
The ward is awesome here and pretty much all of the people are too. They think it is so funny to see a white person. most people dont really know english besides " Hello Mister, How are you? My name is..." so I hear that a bunch every day along with " Orang Putih (white man)" or Buleh which is a littl more slang/ rude. It is fun tough and the kids are hilarious!
But I don't really know what else to say besides that next wednesday I will be moving to a new area, manado which is on the Island of sulawesi which is the northeast part of Indonesia, close to the Phillippines. I dont really know if i will get mail up there if anybody tries to send stuff... but the address is the mission home address which I think you have in the book that came with my mission call.
But I love you all and I hope all is going well for you back in the states. I probably forgot so much stuff I wanted to tell you but there is just a ton of information.
It is amazing, referring back to the church here, that so so far away from where the Church was restored, there are members and wards and a stake! It was such a testimony to me that this is the Lord's Church on Earth once again!
Have a great week! It sounds like your trip was amazing I am jealous big time!
Love,
Kevin