The Ongoing Adventures of Dan & Traudi

Our Visit to a Remote Village

2007-03-24T15:40:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted March 23, 2007

I feel an increasing urgency to be effective with time and opportunity; they are precious gifts not to be squandered away. Everyone our age now has an increasing number of friends who have already passed through the veil or who are struggling to hang on to the little time left to them. We are thankful to be doing something we feel is tailor made to our characters and very gratifying.

All of our problems here are little ones; we are just too busy to be overly concerned about them. We are also being constantly blessed with people that pop up in our lives to help resolve them.

Last Saturday our cleaning girl came over and we asked her to look after some yard work. She cut the lawn using hedge clippers and did a surprisingly good job. There seems to be little point to trying to tell them there is a better way. In the afternoon Sister Kane taught a lesson on the art of cooking Crepes to the Sisters at the Relief Society Party and everyone wolfed them down joyfully. As we drove to the church our air conditioner was not working as well as we thought it should and we were complaining about it on the way. I didn't think to look at the temperature gauge and just a few moments after I stopped the car at the church to unload our stuff, the radiator hose blew off the radiator with quite an explosion. I was surprised at how calm I was about it and how thankful I was that it had happened after we arrived at church and were parked safely in the parking lot. The hose clamp had given way and an Indonesian member was right there to help. He quickly headed off on his motorcycle to buy a new clamp for about 30 cents (Canadian). He returned quickly and we had it repaired in no time. The whole thing was a real testimony builder to me because if the clamp had blown 5 minutes earlier in the traffic of Bogor, it would have been a whole different story.

After the Relief Society party we came home and cleaned up before we watched a movie called " The Holiday " , which we really enjoyed. After the movie we went to bed as it was around 10:00. We both forgot about the promised delivery of wheelchairs and we were fast asleep when my cell phone began ringing at 11:00 PM. I never take my cell phone to the bedroom with us when we go to sleep as it needs to be plugged in and recharged and the charger is on the desk downstairs. As it turns out the truck was outside our door and they had telephoned the Mission Home who had telephoned me. We got an additional 12 wheelchairs to give us a total of 29.

These small events are evidence that we are not being left alone as we strive to be of service to the people of Indonesia. As I stood at the church thinking about things after we fixed the car, I realized that I actually have not yet fully consecrated my life to the service of Christ and Heavenly Father. If I had done so, I would never get angry or frustrated about things as I would realize that my life, my emotions, my talents and experiences are all supposed to be assets in the toolbox of the Savior. I would not want to offer an inferior service to God and why should I allow myself the disservice of becoming upset over things that really don't matter that much.

Sunday was a great day and I was given the opportunity to speak briefly at a missionary fireside and I took the cowardly way out and spoke in English with a translator. Monday was national holiday here and was a great day except for a totally paralyzing traffic jam we got caught up in late in the afternoon. We spent the morning at the swimming pool and we used their gym for an upper body workout. It was a nice break from the regular routine. In the afternoon we went downtown to get some money out of the Canadian bank account and do some shopping. Sister Kane decided that we had better use up some of the food in our freezer as we are having more problems with the electrical system so we invited the Lees over for diner and Sister Kane made her pear salad and spaghetti. For those of you that have never tasted it you have no idea what you are missing; for those of you who have tasted it, your mouths are watering at the thought. We had a fun evening and we played games with their family. We had electrical problems throughout the day but we shut down all of the fuses on the upstairs last night and the power stayed on. We shut down everything except for the air conditioner in our room and it worked all night.

On Tuesday morning we were up in the predawn hours preparing for a trip to the mountains to visit the area where the village has been relocated after landslides. The Mission President and his family joined us for the trip. They had a daughter, son-in-law and four grandchildren visiting from Utah. The site is way up in Indiana Jones territory and there are two young missionaries assigned to the project to help with the work. We headed off in the early morning looking into the blackness of the rain clouds that threatened to seriously dampen our adventure. Sister Kane poured her soul into a prayer that we would not be bothered by the pouring rain and although it rained heavily en-route, we arrived at the area with sun and heat. President Jensen wanted a memorable adventure for his family and an opportunity to interview the two Elders – everyone got what they were looking for. President Jensen's grandchildren brought a load of toys for the children and it was a real thrill watching them being handed out. It was one of those great moments in life where both the givers and receivers were richly blessed. The Frisbees were a smash hit with the adults. Somehow there was more than enough gifts and candy for everyone. We couldn't have been happier. The church is providing the supervision and materials for four MCKs ( a combination of toilets/showers and wash basins ) and each MCK has five toilets and five showers.

Two of them are near completion and it was an incredible moment for us to see them. We were astounded at the transition of this village. There were now more than twenty permanent homes where there had only been tents 5 weeks ago. We were thrilled. There have probably been other days that we felt that good – but not many. Sister Kane spoke to one kind old soul, who was 90 and had been the mother of 17 children, only 7 of whom were still living. We got a great picture of the two of them together.

We got back to Bogor just in time to attend the Rotary Club meeting, where they were thrilled to know that we were trying to muster some money for a project to rebuild 16 tiny houses in a complex that had been destroyed by fire.

On Wednesday we were blessed to be off on another wheelchair delivery run, this time to the very beautiful vegetable growing area near Bogor. Giving a wheelchair to the desperately poor and needy is one of the greatest gifts we can ever give to ourselves – it is a sacred experience. We gave away 7 chairs.

Thursday was non-stop teaching, preparation or administrivia. I did enjoy teaching both of the English classes and I used the first half of " Rocky VI " to stimulate discussion at the Cipta Mandiri school for the poor kids, who love movies. I went out and bought additional speakers for my laptop, which I used to show the movie. It was a smash hit. The class at the church later in the evening was not nearly as fun. The missionaries delivered our mail to us when we met with them for the District Meeting after the evening English class and it included our replacement credit cards – life is so good. We bought a new scale and I am happy to report that I have trimmed down to 217. I was at 242 when I was in full blossom last year.

Another Friday evening is upon us and the prayers to the faithful are coming out of the loudspeakers of every mosque in Bogor. The main focus of Fridays is teaching the faculty members at the Pakuan University. The classes go from 9:00 AM until 11:00 AM and I was particularly concerned about this one as we wanted to come up with a strategy to allow the class members to spend more time speaking English and less time listening to it. We had a really productive session. We bought a second cell phone that we can use to call home this weekend for family birthdays and other such occasions. We then went visiting teaching with the Relief Society President and visited two sisters in the Branch. We enjoyed getting out to see them and we then dropped Sister Lee off at her home before going to get something to eat. We will eat one main meal in restaurant 6 days out of 7. We can eat a good meal every day and pay about $ 10.00 Canadian, including the meal for our driver. Why would you cook at home when you can eat out that cheaply. We may never be able to settle in to a non missionary life again after this. I am crazy about the food here.

We have now had two successive days without rain. It must be a signal to the tapering down of the rainy season. It is very nice to relax in the wonderful warmth of the evening air, which is the perfect temperature, and not have to worry about lesson preparation or reports. I have come to enjoy Friday evenings, although every once in a while the limits of our understanding are expanded. It happened to me tonight when a huge cockroach actually flew over my head in our living room. I used to think that I knew what disgusting meant.

I pray for wisdom and strength to be able to do all of the things we need to do and to be able to do them well. We are so very thankful to be where we are, doing what we are doing. We pray that you are all well and please take a moment to send us a brief message. It is always such a joy to hear from you.

Elder and Sister Kane

What Really Matters...

2007-03-24T15:24:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted March 20, 2007

Charles Schultz Philosophy

The following is the philosophy of Charles Schultz, the creator of the "Peanuts" comic strip. You don't have to actually answer the questions. Just read the e-mail straight through, and you'll get the point.

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.

3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America.

4. Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.

5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winner for best actor and actress.

6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields. But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten. Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners .

Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.

2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.

4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.
Easier?

The lesson:The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money, or the most awards. They are the ones that care .
Pass this on to those people who have made a difference in your life.

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia." (Charles Schultz)

Evening Cactus Bloom

2007-03-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted March 16, 2007

Another week has blazed by and I am concerned that it is time for another update. I worry that our friends and family at home have become bored with the lengthy weekly reports and I will make every effort to be brief. Our lives have fallen into a pattern and I will try to focus only on those parts of the week that are unique.

One of the more interesting things that happened this week was the theft of Sister Kane's purse while we were shopping for groceries last week. She left her purse in the shopping cart while she turned to sort through a pile of oranges that she wanted to buy. It was not nearly as traumatic as I thought it might be as she didn't have much money in it. It was a real nuisance however as we had to cancel our credit card and replace the copies of the official documentation that we have to carry with us here. We never carry originals.

We were able to finally get our electrical and plumbing problems resolved. We finally just got the names of trades people from friends and called them. We paid for it ourselves and we were promised that we would be repaid by the owner. It is really amazing how inexpensive labor is in Indonesia. The electrician that we used spent a few hours buying parts and installing them and his labor cost us less than $ 4.00 Canadian. The parts cost us about $ 6.00. We had three plumbers over with a truck that they use to vacuum out septic tanks. They vacuumed out the septic tank, the plumbing lines and rebuilt the toilet for about $ 30.00 Canadian. I had some work done on our car this week and they replaced the two ball joints, put in a stabilizer kit, replaced a wheel bearing, and replaced all of the rubber bushings where the body attaches to the suspension points and it all cost about $ 200.00 Canadian. It really amazes us. The toughest part of getting things done here is finding someone you can trust. That is where your friends in the community come in.

We enjoyed a great Family Home Evening with the Lee family and four of the other missionaries last Monday evening. It was a great meal and a fun and spiritual evening. We also moved the missionaries into another house on Monday and it was a lot of work.

We attended a special seminar put on by the Cultural Attaché from the American Embassy at Pakuan University. We were invited to sit with the Rector and his wife and we were acknowledged as high profile guests throughout the proceedings. The Cultural Attaché gave a very interesting talk followed by a question and answer period.

I was able to get the e-mail addresses of some of the Rotary Clubs in Calgary and I sent a message of to them on behalf of the Bogor Rotary Club suggesting that the Calgary Clubs link up with the Bogor Club for some projects. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of it.

We went to the Mission Home in Jakarta and got some information critical to our ability to provide meaningful reports on the projects that we are responsible for and we had a number of other meetings. We made the mistake of trying to get out of Jakarta at 5:00 PM and had to grind through the misery of the traffic. The reason that we left so late was we stopped at a special crafts mall. It is a really remarkable place with some of the most interesting and beautiful handicrafts in the world.

I managed to complete my talk last Sunday and I have been asked to speak at a missionary foreside tomorrow and I will do it in English as I do not have time to prepare in Bahasa Indonesia.

We had lots of English lessons to prepare and to teach and our favorite part continues to be teaching at Cipoko. I will attach a picture of a special catus flower that is rare and the bloom only opens at night. It was around 8:00 PM when this picture was taken and it will not have been in full bloom until around 11:00 PM. It operns and closes every night while it is in flower.

We pray that you are all well. We are incredibly thankful to be in Indonesia as missionaries and pray that we can use our time effectively.

Love

Elder and Sister Kane

P.S. We are forwarding this on at Sister Kanes request. Please have a careful look at it.

http://egg.d21c.com/egg.swf

English @ The University

2007-03-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted March 10, 2006

Another week of our lives has at lightening speed. I hope that we have used it well. Time is a precious gift and we will be held to account for what we did with it. Our sweet baby Jemaica turned 22 this week and we were able to make contact with her via telephone to convey our love. It was a real treat to be able to speak to her however briefly. We were able to do it because of the kindness of Yanti, who loaned us her phone because ours was not working. They are great people. We went out to diner with them last weekend to a huge restaurant/dance floor buffer, where the people who dance all look semi-professional and it was mostly modern ballroom dance. It was a fun evening and I learned a lot about the values and history of Indonesia from my discussions during the evening.
At the recommendation of Yanti we had a social event at our home for our neighbors last Sunday evening. We started at 4:30 and it ended around 6:30 as there was some sort of Muslim event scheduled for 7:00 PM and they all went to it.
At church last Sunday I was given my first speaking assignment and I was asked to speak tomorrow. I have been preparing all week as it will be the first talk I will give in Bahasa Indonesia. It is a huge amount of work but I have prepared it and reviewed it with my Indonesian instructor over the course of the week. I hope it goes well.
We got our internet service back on Monday and felt like we had just been released from prison. We also drove to Jakarta for meetings in the Mission Home and to get two huge future water projects submitted. These two alone will bring clean water to over 70,000 people at a cost of less than $ 7.00 each. We also met with the Mission President who asked me to line up a tour of the water projects and the refugee area on March 20. He will come out there along with several members of his family that are coming to visit. They will be going home in June and we will miss them.
Studying Indonesian is like trying to fill a bottomless pit. It consumes a lot of time. I pray that it will be worth it as we can get by with English in all the humanitarian work we do.

While we were out paying bills this week we saw a severely crippled young man crab-walking across the parking lot on all fours. He had flip flop sandals under his hands to protect them when he walked and he had of his spaghetti thin back legs folded up into one rubber boot each. His tiny knees were at the bottom of each boot and he was actually walking on his hands and knees but it appeared that he was walking on his hands and two short little legs. It was heartbreaking to watch him walk across the parking lot to get to the spot where he sat and begged every day. We had Sudin speak to him and the discussion turned public as the security staff at the entrance of the parking lot joined in when they realized we had an interest in helping this young man. We went and got a wheelchair and came back and gave it to him. It was the first wheelchair we will have given away by ourselves and we pray that it was a wise choice.

Another highlight of the week for Sister Kane was getting her hair done. She was thrilled with the result and the price. It cost her about $ 3.00 and she gave the fellow a $ 1.00 tip.
The frequency and intensity of disasters in Indonesia just does not let up; yesterday there was an earthquake ( 5.8 on the rector scale) and it killed an unknown number of people and did an undetermined amount of damage. Later in the week there was another disaster at an airport and dozens were killed but many survived. We have been in Indonesia for just 11 weeks and there has been a non-stop, series of disasters – earthquakes ( 2 ), landslides ( too many to count ), spectacular ferry boat accidents killing hundreds ( 3 ), floods ( many, serious and extended ), tragic airplane accidents ( 2 ) , tornados ( 1 ), tragic train derailments killing dozens and injuring hundreds ( many ). It is an amazing assault on the endless patience of the good nature of the Indonesian people and here we sit safe and sound. It is all remarkable to us. At the Rotary Club meeting this week there was a lively discussion about the challenges of giving help with limited resources. The challenge is knowing what to do and making it effective in an environment of corruption.
I figured out how to use my laptop to show movies to a class and to have enough volume to make it possible. We showed the kids and staff at one school the first half of " Pursuit of Happiness " and we discussed its application to the 7 Habits of highly effective people. It was great fun and a really effective teaching tool and everyone was crushed when we had to stop the movie half way through. They are all pumped about seeing the last half next week.
Our evening English class at the church ended up being a very interesting experience for us this week. Only one student showed up - a 50 year old Indonesian chatterbox named Freddy. We spent the whole lesson talking to him about his life and challenges. He too went bankrupt in the financial crisis of 1998 and has never recovered. He is without work and desperately wants a job. We discussed his testimony of prayer and ended up having a wonderful evening with him as we tried to teach him about the practical application of gospel principles.
Yesterday was our 2nd class with the University professors at Pakuan University. A few interesting things became clear during the presentations and discussions : They are very conscious of the relationship between what they do in this life and of its impact on their situation in the afterlife. They are humble yet confident in their commitment to their faith. During one of the presentations on the discussions of one group, they were talking about the habits that contributed to their success and one group of three male professors highlighted prayer along with dedication, hard work, sensitivity to the needs of others, focus and discipline. It was a moment of significance for me as I watched the level of comfort and ease that they demonstrated while blending spiritual issues into the habits that shape their daily lives. I doubt that there would be very many North American Universities where a group of professors would give the same level significance to prayer. It was a very interesting lesson and we had a lot of fun while giving them feedback on their English.
In the afternoon we went to an expensive Sudinese restaurant with a great view overlooking the city and had an exceptional meal. We tried a lot of different things and they were wonderful They cooked everything in banana leaves and they had some of the best sauces in the world. Most of the sauces had a bit of chili pepper in them and they had all different kinds of seasoning and it was as fun a meal as we have ever eaten. For Indonesian standards it was very expensive and we went all out on the variety of food we ordered and the bill came to about $ 20.00 Canadian for the three of us.
We then headed off to a district in the City that is world famous for its manufacturing of puppets in home based workshops. They are beautiful creations and we bought three for about $ 20.00 each, they are really impressive.

We are thankful for the many wonderful experiences that we get to share together in Indonesia and for the opportunity that the restored gospel of Christ has given us to be here.

Elder and Sister Kane

2007-03-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted March 5, 2007

Dear family and friends,

We are thrilled to report that our e-mail system is back in operation after a few days of being down. It really feels good to be reconnected. I put this update together last friday and will send it out now, albeit a little late. We pray that you are all well and being guided and directed by God's hand in all you do.
Another Friday evening is upon us and the sound of the Imams chanting out their prayers rises above the sound of the steady rain. Our neighborhood is very quiet and it is has a peacefulness to it. It is surprising how safe we feel here in Bogor. There is something very comforting about being here and knowing that you are where you are supposed to be, doing what you are supposed to be doing. It is invigorating and motivating. It makes it a joy to get up and get going in the morning. Everything you do has a sense of significance to it and you want to do it well. It is exciting and fulfilling to be alive, even when you are tired.
The people here seem to have an innocence to them that makes being with them a real joy. They seem to have endless patience and time. You rarely ever see people get agitated or upset, even in the incredible traffic snarls. They really make you feel valued and they seem to have a particular interest in everything you say.
Our busy day was highlighted by our first English class at the Pakuan University. The Rector, who officially greeted us in his office when we arrived, and the staff went out of their way to make us feel welcome. I was both anxious and enthusiastic. There were 25 professors in the class, from all departments. The material seemed to flow quite naturally and logically as I went through the foundation pieces of the nature of truth, ( Known and Unknown ), the role and nature of belief, the risks of believing Myths ( beliefs that are not true ), the role and necessity of Faith ( Hope in things that are unseen but true ), the role of Values in shaping the patterns of our behavior, and my take on the necessity of faith in the learning process. The only tough moment in the morning came during the break, when we were showing them the pictures of our sweet grandchildren and we suffered a near teary moment thinking about them. We divided them into discussion groups of three and they were asked to discuss the concepts and provide a report to the whole group in English. The reports were all positive. The morning flew by and we were then off to our class at Cikopo. We love going to teach that little group of enthusiastic and sweet natured people.
I received a call from the country director for humanitarian services on the way home. He asked that I resend the news article that I wrote about the work we have done with the relocated refugees and I sent it off to him.
Last Friday evening we got a wonderful surprise from Lorne and Leena Merrett, who called to have a visit with us on the phone and to play a little prank. It was great to hear from them.
Last Saturday was a stay at home day for us as there was a lot of activity around the house. We had the plumbers come over to fix the toilets, and they put also put a screen on the back door. The young woman who cleans our house came over and the high speed internet service man showed up and hooked up our internet service and it actually works
Rick and Christine Smith and Christine's mother came by for a visit in the afternoon and we all went for lunch at the restaurant near our home. It was great to visit with them and we had lots of laughs. In the evening Sister Kane made a wonderful meal for the Lee family who came for a meal and a visit. We watched a great movie ( DVD ) together.
On Sunday we attended our meetings and had Sudin and his family over for a meal. A young man from Afghanistan joined us as well. He is a refugee named Ghulam and his conversion story would melt a heart of stone. In the evening Sister Kane prepared lunch for 9 people for Monday as we were going to be off to an early start to one of the remote water projects with the Church Public Affairs missionaries for the Asia Area, who operate out of Singapore.
On Monday we headed off to the water project early and we were gone all day. We went on a brief tour of Nanggun III followed by a trip to Taufiks cabin for lunch. We were worried about the Palmers ( Public Affaires) as both of them have physical limitations but we managed it safely and had a great visit at the cabin. The air was clear and you could see all the way to Jakarta. We were happy that it didn't rain as it would have made walking on the red clay tricky. We then headed off to the area where the community has been relocated. It was a longer, steeper road than I remembered. We were amazed to see the progress that the people had made regarding the relocation of houses and the development of the little community. They had already relocated many houses, board by board and roof tile by roof tile. The Lura asked to have a formal meeting with us and we all ended up having a" Sit on the floor " meeting with him and the adult men of the community. They were thankful for our support and wanted to tell us formally. It is a rare privilege to be part of this great work. One of the things that was noteworthy about the meeting was the fact that they were concerned about the welfare of some of the poor people in the area, when they were as poor a group as I have ever seen. It was quite touching. They asked for help with a few other projects and we were careful not to commit to anything but it seemed clear to us that we might be able to help with a cement pathway. The things they asked for were very reasonable and we had to say that there are limits to the generosity that we can provide because of the scope of the demand for welfare services in the world. They appeared grateful and understanding. We then drove back to Bogor and enjoyed a fine meal at a fine restaurant before coming home. The disparity between the " Haves and the Have-Nots " in Indonesia is striking and leaves you feeling a little strange at times as you move swiftly between these two separate worlds.
On Tuesday we headed off to Jakarta to attend our Zone Conference, which was very good. We took Elders Stuart and Shelby with us. We returned to Bogor at the end of the day to look at a house for the missionaries to rent before heading off to the Bogor Rotary Club, where I was the guest speaker. We took the two missionaries with us to the meeting. After the Rotary Club meeting we had another meeting with Taufik and the two missionaries to discuss the refugee project. The two missionaries will be working at the site for 4 days a week. We discussed the many logistical issues and called it a day. The two fine missionaries went home and packed up their gear as they were going to go to the site the following morning. The site is remote and way up there in Indiana Jones territory. They left on Wednesday and drove out there with Tauffik; our prayers went with them. We trust that they will be guided and protected in all they do. We are happy to know that they have a telephone that works up there as they sent us an SMS message. They are engaged in a great work of mercy and I look forward to seeing them on the weekend and of seeing the project when it is done. It should only take them about one month. We are excited to see it done as it will be the first project to be finished that we started.

Wednesday morning was another wheelchair distribution day and it was very moving even though we only gave away two in the morning. We delivered one to a grateful 61 year old woman that hasn't been able to walk for two years following a fall. The second wheelchair went to a man in his mid-thirties that had been injured on his motorcycle when he was hit by an encot. He had two of his children on the motorcycle with him and they were all seriously injured. The children have recovered and he has not. Both of his legs were broken in the accident and they have not healed properly despite a surgical intervention. He spoke English very well and he used to make a living teaching English but is now without work.
After the wheelchair delivery we went to Yantis place for lunch and had a great visit with she and Eddy her husband. They live in magnificent circumstances and it was one of those unusual moments when you go from unbelievable poverty to splendor. He has a four year old Harley Davidson Centennial Anniversary Special that is a show stopper. He has put 600 kilometers on it in the four years he has owned it because you cannot take motorcycles on the highway in Indonesia and driving something like that around in this traffic is a little silly. They have a magnificent home and they are great people to be around.
I continue to be amazed at the genius of the " Preach My Gospel " book, that I try to read and study every morning. It is a thrill and a privilege to have a copy.
Thursdays we are busy teaching English and preparing lessons. We were able to find an hour in the afternoon to shop and to get money out of our Canadian bank account. Sister Kane bought some beautiful material that she will use to have an Indonesian outfit made for herself.
The weeks fly and we are content with our role in life. We never know what adventures the next week will bring. We pray for ongoing guidance in all we do.

Elder & Sister Kane's New Crib

2007-03-24T14:27:00.000-07:00

We continue to enjoy our new house. Things in Indoensia seem to operate at two basic speeds - HYPERSPEED of super-slow speed. Some things that I think should take awhile are doing in minutes and other things that should be relatively easy take weeks. The plumbers still not repaired the leaky toilets in two of the three bathrooms. There is a good chance that they will do it today but you van never be too sure. Many of the people here use small motorcycles as their primary mode of transportation and the rainstorms really travel dangerous and unpleasant on a motorcycle. It is also not entirely their fault as we have been so busy that we have not been able to schedule a time that was acceptable to both parties. We expect them to show up today at 5:00 PM but it is pouring as I write this update and it is 4:00 PM; we will have to wait and see.
Last Friday we went out to teach at our little school in the country. It is called Cikopo and the C is pronounced " Ch " . It is our favorite part of the week and we love going there. They are the happiest group in the world and we always come away from there feeling great. I was also able to write out a formal proposal for the English course we have been invited to teach too the faculty at the Pakuan University. It is a conservative muslim university and it will be a real adventure for us. It will be a conversational English course and we will use the 7 Habits of Highly effective People as the core theme. They appear to be enthusiastic and it will be very interesting to see how it all unfolds. In the evening we had one of our NGOs and their family over for diner and Sister Kane did a wonderful job on her Butter Chicken and it was a big hit.
Last Saturday we spent the morning studying the scriptures. We got picked up at 1:00 PM by Roeland Lee and his family and we drove to Jakarta with them. Both Roeland and Lie-Lie had to teach at the Seminary Super Saturday and Sister Kane and I took a taxi to the mall and met up with Rick and Christine Smith and shopped for the rest of the day. It was clear that the Smiths were a little surprised to hear me refer to my wife as Sister Kane and fiends at home and here probably thinking the same thing. The answer is fairly straight forward; we do it because we have been asked to by the Mission President. He asks all of the missionaries, including the couples to refer to each other as Elder or Sister. I decided to get over the initial clumsiness and enjoy it. I ask you to do the same. Sister Kane was able to buy some sandals for herself to solve the shoe problem that she is having. She is wearing out her shoes and can't replace them because no-one carries sizes above 40 and she takes a 41. We got back to the chapel in time for the Lees to drive us back to Bogor and we stopped at Lie-Lies' mothers home for diner. It was Chinese New year last weekend and all the Chinese have their family gathering and a big meal. It was fun to be there. There is a powerful Chinese presence in Indonesia and they still call themselves Chinese although most have been here for many generations. The Chinese control the lions share of the wealth in Indonesia.
On Sunday the branch president and his family drove us to church and we enjoyed the meetings. We had a relaxing afternoon and appreciated it. I prepared my weekly report and sent it off to the Mission President and the Country Director for Humanitarian Welfare Services and we had a meeting with Taufik and the two young service missionaries and we discussed a broad range of issue relative to the refugee camp project where the two missionaries will be working for four days a wek for a month. The Bahasa Indonesian capacity of the missionaries ( especially Elder Stuart ) is excellent and much of the discussion was in Bahasa; as a consequence, I am not sure that I understood all of the agreements but I got the gist of things. I believe that we came to a mutual understanding on all issues and I look forward to the project.
On Monday we went Visiting Teaching. Only one of the three women was actually home but we had an exceptional visit with the one family. They are converts of two years. They have a two room house with a bathroom in it. We met in the outside area, which is about 9 feet wide and has a plastic tarp over it to provide shelter from the rain and sun. We had one of the best discussions on faith that I have ever participated in. The depth and magnificent simplicity of their understanding of faith, their genuine gratitude for their blessings and the joyful nature of their countenance was inspiring. We also checked our account to see if the money from Canada had arrived in our account and it hadn't . The money was at the branch but not in our account as I did not instruct Ariana to use our full names. It was converted to Rupiah and placed in our account on Tuesday. We went and made arrangements to get a high speed internet service so that we can have more reliability in the quality of service. We continue to wait for the installer and it is now 5 days later.
On Tuesday we were off to an early start as we drove to Jakarta to get an official Indonesian drivers license and to look around for a good used car. It was a real thrill to get my drivers license and it only took about an hour. It will be an enduring and meaningful souvenir. We were unable to find a used car that felt right for us despite looking at many. It was disappointing. I am sure that we are driving our driver crazy as we continue the search but we will continue until we find the right one. Buying used cars is risky anywhere and Indonesia is no exception. We got home in time to go to the Roatary Club meeting where they had a guest speaker who runs several orphanages and a home for single young women who are pregnant. It was a very touching presentation from and Australian woman who has been here for 30 years and feels that her work is divinely inspired and directed- I would agree with her entirely. Her work has been an amazing act of genuine Christ-like charity.
I restarted my Indonesian lessons again on Wednesday morning and ran into the intimidating hurdle of prefixes and suffixes on the Indonesian verbs. It is a really intimidating aspect of the grammar an there is nothing you can do about it other than put your head down and grind your way through it, which is what I plan on doing. Sister Kane has " Cashed in her chips " o the language issue. She has decided that it just isn't worth it and she may be right. I feel the need to keep t it until I am a little more confident in my ability to get around unassisted.
We also went out delivering wheelchairs again on Wednesday. It was a typical wheelchair delivery day. We saw much of the horror and heartbreak that poverty can produce, intermingled with remarkable examples of the nobility of the human spirit even in insufferable conditions. One chair that was delivered to an older couple was to replace the handmade wheel chair that the husband had manufactured for his seriously ailing wife. He had been a bread salesman and he owned a two wheeled cart that he loaded up with bread and then walked around the neighborhoods with selling his goods. When his wife got ill he took the wheels off the wagon and built her a crude wheelchair that he carefully painted and made as attractive as possible for her. It was very touching. She was skeleton thin and had a look in her silent face that suggested to me that the period of her suffering will not be prolonged. She was only 60 years old and looked like she was 85. Her husband looked grateful and still appeared enthusiastic about life. I marveled at his smiling face and the obvious love he felt for his wife despite the crushing burden of her ailing condition. Few men would be able to measure up to his brilliant example of service. It was a privilege to have been near him. I pray that I can always be moved by his brilliant example.
Life in these small Campons ( villages ) is a very public affair. Everyone knows everyone else's business and there is a deep sense of community that has been long lost in the affluence of the western world. They live their whole lives under the ongoing scrutiny of constant community supervision and support. In the affluent countries we live our lives in acquired isolation.
One family we visited had two sons, both entirely disabled. The mother carried the skinny little 10 year old on her hip as you would a two year old; neither of them seemed to be disturbed by the situation and the little boy refused to sit in the chair when one was offered and the mother was ok with that. We left one wheel chair with the family for the older brother who was delighted with his gift. We decided to take the second wheelchair to another family where we were sure it would be used. We promised to return with another chair if the little fellow changed his mind; it will only be a question of time.
We delivered another wheelchair to a family where the teenage daughter pulled herself around on the floor. It was clear that the father was a mean-spirited man and it seemed to me that he was the picture of ingratitude. The plight of the daughter was compelling and it was clear that she was in great need although I doubt that the wheelchair will bring her much emotional relief from a father that appeared to hold her in little regard. These are the moments in life when we are able to look into the reflection of great suffering and catch a disturbing glimpse of the ugliness of our own ingratitude. In the clarity of the reflection of her suffering we see all of the blessings in our own lives that we just take for granted and rarely, if ever, acknowledge. I pray that we might never take our health, our hope and our loved ones for granted. I pray that we might be blessed with the spirit of discernment to see and appreciate what the kindness of God, the wisdom of our families and the wealth our nation has given to us. I pray that we may have the ongoing wisdom to be generous to God and our fellow men.

Thursday was busy, as all Thursdays are. We spent the morning at home and Sudin spent the morning looking for a car for us in the area around his home. We had looked at all of the cars in this area over the course of the last week with any spare time we had and we didn't see anything suitable that had not already been sold. We use Thursday mornings to prepare the lesson plans for all of the classes and it is a surprising amount of work , even though we have a well developed curriculum for the course at the church and I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do at Cipti Mandiri school. I really need to focus attention on the curriculum at Cipti Mandiri as it is the trial run for the course that we will be teaching the faculty members at Pakuan University, starting in one week. This is a conservative Muslim University with a lot of political influence. We feel that it will be one of the great challenges and opportunities of our mission.
Today, Friday 23 February, has been an active day. I was able to get on the internet and send a message back to our daughter in Utah. One of our NGOs ( Yanti ) daughters is a student at BYU in Provo and I sent a message to Charity and Ruth and Time to make contact and see what they can do to be of service to the young woman. I had a language lesson and then headed off to look at a car Sudin saw near his home yesterday. He was very enthusiastic and we were encouraged. We ended up buying it and driving it home. It was as exciting as it was stressful. It is an impressive looking 1996 Dihatsu that looks like a jeep but is really a two wheel drive vehicle that gives you good ground clearance. Driving in the hectic traffic, on the wrong side of the road, shifting gears with your left hand was fun. We checked the bank account yesterday and we were happy to see that the money transfer was successful.
We are grateful to be here and really feel that we are being sustained in our calling. We pray that we can be effective in all we do.

Elder and Sister Kane

Another Week In the Field

2007-03-24T14:19:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted Friday February 23, 2007

It is a very good thing that I keep a journal because time is blowing by so quickly that the past becomes a blur. We are alive an well and enjoying our experiences tremendously. It seems that as the weeks go by we just get busier and this week was no exception.
Thursday are really busy for us as we teach two English classes, one in the morning and the other in the evening and we also do all our preparation for the English classes on Thursday mornings and then go out to have all of our photocopying done. The photocopying place hires teenagers to do the work and they are amazingly efficient using old Cannon photocopiers from the 80s. We really enjoy teaching the classes and have fun doing it but it is a lot of work.
For the last several Thursdays the only interesting question has been the severity of the rain and the time of day it hits. It is something that you really have to experience for yourself. It can be cloudy for hours and then have a few drops come down as you are parking your car in a parking lot and have it turn to fire-hose volumes of water when you are half way across the parking lot. On the evening of 15 February it rained so hard that some of the streets in Bogor were flooded in less than 10 minutes. People will inevitably get sick of hearing us restate this but it is unbelievable to me that air could hold that much water. I have always enjoyed thunder and lightning and it is a thunder paradise here.
We continue to enjoy our new house. Things in Indoensia seem to operate at two basic speeds - HYPERSPEED of super-slow speed. Some things that I think should take awhile are doing in minutes and other things that should be relatively easy take weeks. The plumbers still not repaired the leaky toilets in two of the three bathrooms. There is a good chance that they will do it today but you van never be too sure. Many of the people here use small motorcycles as their primary mode of transportation and the rainstorms really travel dangerous and unpleasant on a motorcycle. It is also not entirely their fault as we have been so busy that we have not been able to schedule a time that was acceptable to both parties. We expect them to show up today at 5:00 PM but it is pouring as I write this update and it is 4:00 PM; we will have to wait and see.
Last Friday we went out to teach at our little school in the country. It is called Cikopo and the C is pronounced " Ch " . It is our favorite part of the week and we love going there. They are the happiest group in the world and we always come away from there feeling great. I was also able to write out a formal proposal for the English course we have been invited to teach too the faculty at the Pakuan University. It is a conservative muslim university and it will be a real adventure for us. It will be a conversational English course and we will use the 7 Habits of Highly effective People as the core theme. They appear to be enthusiastic and it will be very interesting to see how it all unfolds. In the evening we had one of our NGOs and their family over for diner and Sister Kane did a wonderful job on her Butter Chicken and it was a big hit.
Last Saturday we spent the morning studying the scriptures. We got picked up at 1:00 PM by Roeland Lee and his family and we drove to Jakarta with them. Both Roeland and Lie-Lie had to teach at the Seminary Super Saturday and Sister Kane and I took a taxi to the mall and met up with Rick and Christine Smith and shopped for the rest of the day. It was clear that the Smiths were a little surprised to hear me refer to my wife as Sister Kane and fiends at home and here probably thinking the same thing. The answer is fairly straight forward; we do it because we have been asked to by the Mission President. He asks all of the missionaries, including the couples to refer to each other as Elder or Sister. I decided to get over the initial clumsiness and enjoy it. I ask you to do the same. Sister Kane was able to buy some sandals for herself to solve the shoe problem that she is having. She is wearing out her shoes and can't replace them because no-one carries sizes above 40 and she takes a 41. We got back to the chapel in time for the Lees to drive us back to Bogor and we stopped at Lie-Lies' mothers home for diner. It was Chinese New year last weekend and all the Chinese have their family gathering and a big meal. It was fun to be there. There is a powerful Chinese presence in Indonesia and they still call themselves Chinese although most have been here for many generations. The Chinese control the lions share of the wealth in Indonesia.
On Sunday the branch president and his family drove us to church and we enjoyed the meetings. We had a relaxing afternoon and appreciated it. I prepared my weekly report and sent it off to the Mission President and the Country Director for Humanitarian Welfare Services and we had a meeting with Taufik and the two young service missionaries and we discussed a broad range of issue relative to the refugee camp project where the two missionaries will be working for four days a wek for a month. The Bahasa Indonesian capacity of the missionaries ( especially Elder Stuart ) is excellent and much of the discussion was in Bahasa; as a consequence, I am not sure that I understood all of the agreements but I got the gist of things. I believe that we came to a mutual understanding on all issues and I look forward to the project.
On Monday we went Visiting Teaching. Only one of the three women was actually home but we had an exceptional visit with the one family. They are converts of two years. They have a two room house with a bathroom in it. We met in the outside area, which is about 9 feet wide and has a plastic tarp over it to provide shelter from the rain and sun. We had one of the best discussions on faith that I have ever participated in. The depth and magnificent simplicity of their understanding of faith, their genuine gratitude for their blessings and the joyful nature of their countenance was inspiring. We also checked our account to see if the money from Canada had arrived in our account and it hadn't . The money was at the branch but not in our account as I did not instruct Ariana to use our full names. It was converted to Rupiah and placed in our account on Tuesday. We went and made arrangements to get a high speed internet service so that we can have more reliability in the quality of service. We continue to wait for the installer and it is now 5 days later.
On Tuesday we were off to an early start as we drove to Jakarta to get an official Indonesian drivers license and to look around for a good used car. It was a real thrill to get my drivers license and it only took about an hour. It will be an enduring and meaningful souvenir. We were unable to find a used car that felt right for us despite looking at many. It was disappointing. I am sure that we are driving our driver crazy as we continue the search but we will continue until we find the right one. Buying used cars is risky anywhere and Indonesia is no exception. We got home in time to go to the Roatary Club meeting where they had a guest speaker who runs several orphanages and a home for single young women who are pregnant. It was a very touching presentation from and Australian woman who has been here for 30 years and feels that her work is divinely inspired and directed- I would agree with her entirely. Her work has been an amazing act of genuine Christ-like charity.
I restarted my Indonesian lessons again on Wednesday morning and ran into the intimidating hurdle of prefixes and suffixes on the Indonesian verbs. It is a really intimidating aspect of the grammar an there is nothing you can do about it other than put your head down and grind your way through it, which is what I plan on doing. Sister Kane has " Cashed in her chips " o the language issue. She has decided that it just isn't worth it and she may be right. I feel the need to keep t it until I am a little more confident in my ability to get around unassisted.
We also went out delivering wheelchairs again on Wednesday. It was a typical wheelchair delivery day. We saw much of the horror and heartbreak that poverty can produce, intermingled with remarkable examples of the nobility of the human spirit even in insufferable conditions. One chair that was delivered to an older couple was to replace the handmade wheel chair that the husband had manufactured for his seriously ailing wife. He had been a bread salesman and he owned a two wheeled cart that he loaded up with bread and then walked around the neighborhoods with selling his goods. When his wife got ill he took the wheels off the wagon and built her a crude wheelchair that he carefully painted and made as attractive as possible for her. It was very touching. She was skeleton thin and had a look in her silent face that suggested to me that the period of her suffering will not be prolonged. She was only 60 years old and looked like she was 85. Her husband looked grateful and still appeared enthusiastic about life. I marveled at his smiling face and the obvious love he felt for his wife despite the crushing burden of her ailing condition. Few men would be able to measure up to his brilliant example of service. It was a privilege to have been near him. I pray that I can always be moved by his brilliant example.
Life in these small Campons ( villages ) is a very public affair. Everyone knows everyone else's business and there is a deep sense of community that has been long lost in the affluence of the western world. They live their whole lives under the ongoing scrutiny of constant community supervision and support. In the affluent countries we live our lives in acquired isolation.
One family we visited had two sons, both entirely disabled. The mother carried the skinny little 10 year old on her hip as you would a two year old; neither of them seemed to be disturbed by the situation and the little boy refused to sit in the chair when one was offered and the mother was ok with that. We left one wheel chair with the family for the older brother who was delighted with his gift. We decided to take the second wheelchair to another family where we were sure it would be used. We promised to return with another chair if the little fellow changed his mind; it will only be a question of time.
We delivered another wheelchair to a family where the teenage daughter pulled herself around on the floor. It was clear that the father was a mean-spirited man and it seemed to me that he was the picture of ingratitude. The plight of the daughter was compelling and it was clear that she was in great need although I doubt that the wheelchair will bring her much emotional relief from a father that appeared to hold her in little regard. These are the moments in life when we are able to look into the reflection of great suffering and catch a disturbing glimpse of the ugliness of our own ingratitude. In the clarity of the reflection of her suffering we see all of the blessings in our own lives that we just take for granted and rarely, if ever, acknowledge. I pray that we might never take our health, our hope and our loved ones for granted. I pray that we might be blessed with the spirit of discernment to see and appreciate what the kindness of God, the wisdom of our families and the wealth our nation has given to us. I pray that we may have the ongoing wisdom to be generous to God and our fellow men.

Thursday was busy, as all Thursdays are. We spent the morning at home and Sudin spent the morning looking for a car for us in the area around his home. We had looked at all of the cars in this area over the course of the last week with any spare time we had and we didn't see anything suitable that had not already been sold. We use Thursday mornings to prepare the lesson plans for all of the classes and it is a surprising amount of work , even though we have a well developed curriculum for the course at the church and I have a pretty clear idea of what I want to do at Cipti Mandiri school. I really need to focus attention on the curriculum at Cipti Mandiri as it is the trial run for the course that we will be teaching the faculty members at Pakuan University, starting in one week. This is a conservative Muslim University with a lot of political influence. We feel that it will be one of the great challenges and opportunities of our mission.
Today, Friday 23 February, has been an active day. I was able to get on the internet and send a message back to our daughter in Utah. One of our NGOs ( Yanti ) daughters is a student at BYU in Provo and I sent a message to Charity and Ruth and Time to make contact and see what they can do to be of service to the young woman. I had a language lesson and then headed off to look at a car Sudin saw near his home yesterday. He was very enthusiastic and we were encouraged. We ended up buying it and driving it home. It was as exciting as it was stressful. It is an impressive looking 1996 Dihatsu that looks like a jeep but is really a two wheel drive vehicle that gives you good ground clearance. Driving in the hectic traffic, on the wrong side of the road, shifting gears with your left hand was fun. We checked the bank account yesterday and we were happy to see that the money transfer was successful.
We are grateful to be here and really feel that we are being sustained in our calling. We pray that we can be effective in all we do.

Elder and Sister Kane

Check Out the New Ride!!

2007-03-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted Feb 23, 2007

Dear family and friends,

We just got hooked up with high speed internet and we are able to send a few more pictures. Two of the pictures are of the one family where the husband had fashioned a wheelchair for his wife using the wheels from his bread wagon.

Before:

After:

One is of the vehicle we bought and another is of a very common sight of a family on a scooter. This one only has three people on the scooter. We have seen scooters loaded up with more but not when we had our camera.

Elder and Sister Kane

The Rain Cometh - Valentine's Day

2007-03-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

Originaly Posted February 14, 2007.

It was a bright day in Bogor and it will be covered in greater detail later in this message. It is my hope that we can finally get hooked up to the internet and get the message out as an update. We have not had any real success since we moved last Friday. The house is bright and full of light and it is located in a wonderful area ( Bogor Lakeside ), very near to the home of Yanti, one of our NGOs. The sunshine is a great blessing as it may signal a lightening up of the rain and an end to the flooding.
We spent all of last Friday moving into the house. We did it in two trips with a small truck. We almost made it without rain but it did pour briefly during one drive over. Everything appears to have made it in great shape and we are very happy to be here. We have not had time to set up the home telephone or the internet and that will have to be looked after early next week. The distribution of this update will be delayed accordingly. Yanti came over in the evening with a plate of food that was delicious. We had a nice visit with her and we then walked her home. Yanti advised us that they will be fogging for mosquitoes in the area today and they will do the inside and the outside of our home around noon.
We saw a car yesterday that would certainly do the job for us. It was a 1991 Dihatsu Taft ( diesel ) with almost 300,000 kms. The price is right and it looks great and drive well. It was the first time I have ever driven a car with the drivers seat on the right and the stick shift on the left. It was also the first time I ever drove on the other side of the road. It was great fun. We will have to see how things go with the drivers license and then get a car, we would like to have one before next weekend.
On Monday ( Feb 5 ) we headed off to Jakarta to help in the emergency kitchen and we prepared meals for the people that have been displaced by the flooding. It was a great experience and we enjoyed the day. There are around 300,000 people displaced by the flooding. We cut vegetables, packed meals and delivered the food. It was very touching to be part of it.
The process in the temporary kitchen was interesting. Indonesians eat rice with every meal and they love to have some well seasoned food to go with it. Each meal was a large scoop of rice with delicious fried tofu cubes in a spicy sauce and spiced vegetables along with fresh corn that had been mixed into a dough and deep fried. They then take it all and roll it into paper that it waxed on one side and put an elastic bag around it with a large plastic spoon. They put 10 of them in a bag with 10 glasses of water ( purchased that way ) and 10 straws. They pack thousands of meals daily and send them out to distribution points where the people are living in temporary accommodation. The food was really good and I would have been happy to have bought it in a restaurant. The kitchen was a very large tent that had been set up in the church parking lot. They had a series of propane heaters with very large pots or woks on every one. Being in that tent ( with the side lifted up ) was a real weight loss program because of the heat. I have no idea how hot it was in there but I was drenched in perspiration and it was such a treat to be asked to go out on a food delivery. We loaded the food into one of the vehicles and off we drove. The only good news about the flooding in Jakarta is that it has limited the number of cars on the streets so that the traffic jams are a little more tolerable. Rick and Christine Smith were working in the tent with us along with Indonesian members and that stalwart little army of missionaries. Our hearts are so touched by the gift of service that they bring. I cut onions for a large part of the morning and I don't think I will ever get the smell out of my fingers. The commander in chief of the operation was Elder Subandrio, an Area 70, who never stopped smiling or working. He was an inspiration to watch and great fun to be with.

We left there around 2:00 PM as we needed to get back to Bogor before 4:00 PM to sign the lease agreement as the landlord had added on amendment to the lease. I needed to get an original copy and then arrange to get it back to Jakarta to the Mission today as they pay all of the rent up front for the rest of our mission. We will then repay the mission on a monthly basis. We couldn't get the keys until the landlord got the money in his account and we were supposed to take possession this Friday, so timing was tight.

People here pay many of their bills in a very efficient way. You just transfer the money directly into the account of the payee from your account and the transfer receipt serves as confirmation of the process. As a consequence financial transactions can happen very quickly and safely.
When we got home from Jakarta and signed the lease we had a meeting with one of our NGOs about the flooding in this area and we arranged to purchase three propane heaters for a kitchen that her organization is setting up to feed 500 people that have had their homes washed away. They are poor people that had built their homes on land that should never have been built on and they have now lost all they owned in the world. We also spoke to Supraman ( Maman ) from the little school where we teach English out in the magnificent country side and he asked us not to come this Friday because houses have been washed away in the Campon ( village ) and it isn't safe as the land is not stable. He wondered if we might help and we promised to come and see his situation as soon as possible. Its all quite heartbreaking as there is a limit to what we are able to do in a world of limitless need. When I consider how few members of the church that there are in the world and compare it to the humanitarian aid that is provided I am quite amazed. I pray that I might be of some aid in helping people realize how valuable their humanitarian donations are in a world of great need.
On Tuesday we were alone as our driver took the lease agreement to Jakarta and got the car registered for another year. We were up early and had our Indonesian lesson before heading off on the encots to do some banking and some errands. We met with Tauffic at 1:00 PM and met with Leanny at 2:15 PM and had a good discussion with the Mission President about a possible project for a young missionary companionship on one of the refugee areas. We went to the Rotary club meeting in the evening and came home and went to bed.
On Wednesday ( Feb. 7 ) our day started at 5:00 AM as I forgot to adjust the alarm. A friend at home sent me an extensive summary of the key messages of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It was a timely and valuable gift as we had been asked by the head of the Pequan University to come and teach English to the faculty members and we had a meeting scheduled to discuss it. I needed to put some thoughts together on what I would teach, how I would teach and what criteria we would set for the students. I was able to use the time wisely and put it all together, using the framework of the 7 Habits. We went to the University and had a good discussion with the Director and the head of the department responsible for English. They accepted our conditions and seemed pleased with our plan. We asked that the staff have some ability in English, be motivated to learn and to attend class and be willing to be evaluated. We also asked for support in photocopying. They agreed to everything. We are now awaiting their formal response and I have to draft a proposal. We then got dropped off at our home and we immediately went to the home of RIka ( one of our NGOs ) and dropped off 5 wheelchairs before going to the home of the Sister Missionaries, who are having a water problem, in that their water goes off for extended periods at a time. We took them to a department store and bought them some large plastic containers that they can use to store an emergency supply of water. We dropped them off close to their next appointment and we went and bought a water cooler for our new house. We also picked up the key to the new place and moved some things over there.
On Thursdays we taught two English lessons , one at a high school in the afternoon and one at the church in the evenings. It ends up being a busy and somewhat stressful day when you throw in the Indonesian lesson and the banking and other things you need to look after. We also paid our propane and electrical bills. You have to go to the offices to do this and the process is slow despite the fact that the amounts are very low.
During the English class in the school we were discussing the importance of having goals and dreams in your life. One of the teachers asked me what my dream had been and I told her that it had been to go on a mission. As I was explaining it to her I suddenly realized that it had been my dream to serve a mission in a place exactly like Indonesia and to be able to teach a group exactly like them in a place exactly like the one we were in. It suddenly dawned on me that I really was living a dream that had come true. It was a wonderful moment.
We have our District meeting at the end of the evening English class and we send our driver home at the end of the English class and then meet with the missionaries. We then took the encots home. It was fun. They are really small and the one we were on was packed with other adults. I had purchased a new " ultra-huge " umbrella that proved to be a great help in getting off the encot as it served as a cane while I was struggling to get out of the thing.

Last Saturday was spent waiting, something I don't do particularly well. The neighborhood sprays for mosquitoes and they use a fogging machine that spays out a fog of fine mist. They do both the inside and the outside of your house. We believed that they would come at noon and they finally got here at 3:00 PM after we went looking for the and spoke to them in my faltering Indonesian. We had to cover all of the furniture and bedding with newspaper and it was fun to watch them fill the house and the yard with a thin cloud. We took our bird over to Yantis house to keep him safe from the fog, that would otherwise kill him. We also waited in the morning for the plumber that never showed up to fix the leaky toilets. We finally left for our walk to preserve my sanity. We walked for over two hours and I enjoyed it although Sister Kane doesn't seem to have any reliable walking shoes that do not give her blisters.

Sunday was a rain free day and we enjoyed a quiet afternoon at home. We made our own arrangements to go to church with the taxi in the morning in Indonesian. I was amazed that it worked. We met the two new Elders that have been assigned to Bogor to do service projects. I hope that we can keep them busy. We will need some divine guidance and some help from our NGOs but I hope that we can be of use and that the combination of us and them works effectively. In the evening we went for another long walk in the beautiful evening temperature and came home and watched a movie on the DVD player called " The Nativity " , which we enjoyed.
On Monday ( Feb. 12 ) our language teacher did not come and I really miss her assistance in helping us focus on the language. There is just so much to do and so little time to get it all accomplished. We got all of the office equipment hooked together and we managed to get over to the internet place to have our internet service changed to this address. We went to the rental agency and got the telephone situation straightened out and they gave us a new phone to use that actually worked. We are now up and running in relation to the telephone and our new number ( 0251 357 523 ) . We could not get the internet to work and I pray that we can get this problem resolved quickly so that we can regain communication with the outside world. We picked up the new Service Elders and took them over to Rikas house where they helped prepare meals for the displaced by the floods. We went out to the little school that we teach at and viewed the results of the three landslides that they had in their area. There were two people killed and 30 families lost their houses due to the landslides. We took blankets, clothing and an 18 kilo bag of rice for them. Maman and some of his people met us at the place where we park our vehicle and helped carry the boxes and things to the site where the families are staying until they can get re-established. We then went and looked more carefully at the sites of the landslides. It is amazing how much damage moving earth and water can do. It is easy to understand why the landslides occur as the land has been destabilized by the rice paddies, which are in turn destabilized by the huge amounts of rain. All it takes is for one piece of earth to give way high on the hillside and a chain reaction is triggered. The net result is that houses and buildings are simply washed away in the massive flow of mud and earth.

It is a cycle that is destined to keep repeating itself over the decades. This is the first time that we have been here in the rainy season and it is sort of what we expected. I am surprised by the floods in that the rainy season comes every year but not the flooding.
On Tuesday morning we were off to an early start as we left to tour one of the water projects and to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the Camat of Suka Makmur, in the highlands of the Bogor Region in western Java. The Camar is the level above the Lura in the rather rational political system that they have in Indonesia. I will not try to describe it here as it deserves a full description and I am not in a position to give it just yet. We left our house at 7:00 AM in the morning and Tauffice came in our car. We drove through some beautiful country side and ended up in the high country East of Bogor. We went to a very hilly and poor part of the country where Tauffics crew will be installing the next water system. We transferred to Tauffics " War Wagon " - a 1982 extended cab diesel Land Rover , that was needed to manage the incredibly steep and tricky roads that took us to the Campon ( village ) We met in a school room filled with men from the community and we had a very enjoyable meting where I actually used some of my Indonesian to say a few sentences. We toured the country side, visited the base camp and took lots of pictures. It is a wonderful feeling to know that you are providing a much needed service in a poor part of the world that can greatly benefit from clean water. We have spent enough time in the country side of the highlands to begin to have it appear to become more normal to us, when there is nothing normal about it. It is breathtaking scenery and it is a thrill to be out there. We were deep in the hinterlands and simply awestruck by the beauty of the place. Java is heavily populated and there are little villages throughout the landscape, even way out in the hinterlands. It is a combination of beauty, poverty, hospitality and a peaceful acceptance by the people of their circumstances that is very moving to the western visitor. The smiles of the people are wonderful. It was a great day. When we returned home we did some shopping and hooked up the washing machine in the bathroom that would normally be used for the house servants and we did laundry. We were in bed early as we were tired from all the hiking. We noted that there is something seriously wrong with Indy, our bird. He is paralyzed in his legs and doesn't look like he is long for this world.

Today is Valetines Day and I awakened at 4:45 and came downstairs to a flooded house. Happily the floors are concrete and covered with tiles as the hose to the washing machine popped of the faucet and water poured out for an unknown length of time. I didn't want to disturb Sister Kane early so I started the clean up using a very large and very handy squeegy that has a broom handle length handle on it. Sister Kane joined in at 6:00 AM. It took a long time to get it cleaned up but now you would never know that was a problem. Sudin came over at 9:30 and we did errands before going out to deliver wheel chairs.

The wheelchair delivery process is always a very moving experience as most of the recipients are in tears as we place them in the chair. We gave away 8 wheelchairs. The most touching for me are the oldsters, especially the military veterans. When they look at you and burst into tears it is very tough to stay composed. It is as good a feeling as we will ever have in this life and it is one we will never tire of. There is something magnificent that occurs when appropriate generosity intersects with both great need and genuine gratitude; everyone in the process is so richly blessed. The wheelchair recipients were mostly aged people and some had suffered strokes. There was one severely disabled teenager who had apparently suffered from polio at some pint in his life; as far as I am concerned that is the greatest tragedy of all - the full potential of a human life destroyed by a disease that is so easily preventable.

Sister Kane and I have traveled in many places in our lives and we are not easily shocked but I must confess that there are some scenes in life so horrible to view that even seasoned veterans recoil in the horror of the moment. We had been invited to visit an old folks home for women and we were very much enjoying the company of these aged, sweet, withered, and toothless daughters of God, when we were invited into one room in the most distant corner of the attractive compound. It is the room where these sweet souls wait patiently to meet God, the three that were in there will not have to wait long. What was left of their tiny, wrinkled and shriveled bodies lay in a fetal position of their cots in the brutal heat of the day. I am ashamed to say that I came to the outside limits of my willingness/capacity to serve and simply turned away and walked out into the sunlight and ease of a more tolerable scene. We were not being asked for anything and we were not in a position to provide anything. It was just a disturbing moment to face your own cowardice and shrink from the opportunity to extend a kind hand. I don't know if they would have even been able to respond or recognize the gesture - I will never know - it was never offered. I pray that God might still accept the offering of our limited service.

We have many pictures that we did not send as the speed of the current service is so slow that I dare not. We will send more pictures when we can get the service improved.

Elder and Sister Kane

I Can't Believe I'm Sixty

2007-03-18T23:23:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted 3rd of February 2007

Dear friends and family,

I am resending the weekly report as we have ben informed that many of you could not open the document we attached to the last e-mail message. In the meanwhile I seem to have fugured out how to paste it into this e-mail message. Sorry for the inconveneience if you have received it on the previous message and you were able to open it. This meaasge is the same only it doesn't have any pictures attached. The flooding in Jakarta continues as does the rain herer. It is now 1:15 PM on Sunday 4 February. Sister Kane did not go to church today as she came down with a serious head cold and just wasn't feeling up to it. I went without her and bore testimony in Bahasa Indonesia. Apparently I only made one error which I was able to happily correct immediately. As in english there are many words that sound very similar. Instead of telling them that I wanted to share a message with them I was in the process of telling them that I wanted to become a pig. I'm glad I recognized the error and got it out correctly or there would have been many confused faces.

It is noon on another Saturday as the rain pours down and Bogor earns its reputation as the " Rainy City " . We have had a lot of rain over the course of the week and all of the rivers in this section of Indonesia run towards Jakarta, which is flooding as I write. We have had one day ( Tuesday ) where it did not rain at all up in the Highlands; and that day happened to be my birthday. We were taking a tour of a water project that is under construction in a place called Cikidang. It is a magnificent area very high in the back country. It is the kind of place we would pay a lot of money to be able to hike in and we were there as part of our mission. We walked about 8 Kilometers over the course of the day and we enjoyed every step. The sun was very strong but at that altitude the temperature was perfect and there was a god breeze all day. It is the stuff that dreams are made of and we will send a few pictures along with this message.
I am now officially 60 years old and it feels quite odd to say that. I pray that I can use my " golden years wisely.
Our daily scripture study is guided by one of the greatest publications of the church, " Preach My Gospel " and it really makes scripture study wonderful. We have also really enjoyed our morning Indonesian lessons, which we had every day but Tuesday as we were off to the high country early in the morning. Learning Indonesian is a real agony/ecstasy experience depending on what you focus on. When we look at how much we have learned it is wonderful. When we look at how much we have learned compared to how much there is to know, it is frustrating. Our teacher is kind and patient and we have a lot of laughs and the lessons are well structured and you can really see the progress, if you can remember the vocabulary. Up to this point, the grammatical structure of the language is very simple so it is all about vocabulary, and there is a lot of it to know. Tomorrow is Fast Sunday at church and we have made a commitment to bear testimony in Bahasa Indonesian. I hope that it goes well.
Following our meeting with the landlord last week we decided to take a good look at the rental market before we extended our lease as the price that the landlord wanted seemed high relative to the market. As time was available over the course of the week we looked at places. It seems to us that most of the houses in Indonesia have been constructed and designed to keep the sun out, which tends to make them appear a little dreary. The tropical environment seems to be hard on paint and varnish and the general appearance of many houses seems to be below standard for our taste. We were able to find one home that is acceptable and we put a deposit on it and the landlord was supposed to sign the lease yesterday but got trapped in Jakarta because of the floods. We hope that this gets rectified soon as we have served notice with our landlord.
The location of the house we are leaving is excellent and the place we are moving to is a little further out ( Bogor Lakeside ). It is a very large residential area with wonderful places to walk. It also has a very classy golf course and swimming pool, if we are ever in the mood. The Mission President gave us permission to take in the occasional round of golf and swimming as opportunity permits.
The new location got us thinking about transportation on weekends and we decided to buy an older car while we are here and we can drive it on weekends. The mission President advised me on the process of getting a drivers license and we will do it as soon as possible.
Last Saturday was great fun. Ghezine came over and picked us up at 9:30 to take us to her school. Ghezine is a woman who started the school at her own cost and runs it with donations that she gets from corporate sponsors. It is fairly close to our house and we have been asked to teach there. We attended their Saturday morning " Sharing Meeting ", where the young men and women ( around 18 years old ) gather and talk about issues under the direction of a teacher. As fate would have it Ibu ( Mrs. ) Faisal was leading the discussion when we got there. She is one of our NGO partners, and was influential in getting the mushroom projects going at the orphanages. She is a really an impressive woman, who is kind, joyful, very well educated. She speaks outstanding English. Her husband did his Masters degree and PhD in agriculture in American universities and she lived in the US for many years while he was in school. She teaches moral values and her strategy is to try to help the young people understand that Gods commandments liberate us instead of control us. It is a great goal and a significant challenge as all of these smiling youth come from very difficult circumstances. We were introduced to the group and we were asked questions that led to a discussion that we enjoyed. The group then put on a " Cave Man " dance that was great fun to watch and you got a picture of them earlier in the week.
In the afternoon we went shopping for a birthday cake and took an encot to and from the shopping centre and we bought a cake and some tomatoes that Sister Kane used to make her famous bean dip. It was a big hit later in the evening. We went out to diner at a fancy restaurant with the Lee family and Tauffic and his family and we had a fun evening. There were 9 of us at a fancy restaurant and the total bill came to about $ 60.00 Canadian.
The distribution of wheelchairs last week was covered by a newspaper article that I read this week ( after translation ) The wheelchairs were distributed under the influence of our most active NGO partner, who uses her remarkable network with the Luras ( heads of the villages ) to identify needy candidates. The Luras are involved in a ceremonial " handover " of a wheelchair before the actual distribution begins in their area. Leanny's network with the community structure is a mixed blessing that must be handled delicately. Her political profile has blurred the clarity of the role of the LDSC in the article. The local newspaper article did not even mention the name of the church. We had been unaware that any newspaper coverage had been arranged. Even if we had known about it we were not sufficiently experienced to have been able to ask the right questions or direct the matter appropriately. The same mistake will not be made again. Leanny has been a powerful and positive influence on the humanitarian work in the Bogor area in the past and still has great capacity to be of service but she needs to be more tightly controlled.
I finally figured out how to get the Project Proposal process going and have initiated discussion and examination on the proposal to provide MCKs to a group of people that have been displaced because of landslides. The ensuing discussions led to the arrangements for a meeting with the Indonesian Directing Council for Humanitarian Projects that will happen soon, as will a meeting with the Country Director. I believe that we have made a few " Rookie errors " in the administrative process and I am hoping that these meetings will help us learn.
On Thursday we taught two different English classes at two different locations and had our District Meeting. We took the encots home after the last class under the experienced guidance of the Sister Missionaries. It poured rain en route and our fold - up umbrellas were just not up to the task. I'm not convinced that even an extra large golf umbrella would have been sufficient. From our knees down we may as well have been standing in a river. It is all part of a great adventure.
We are thankful to be alive and part of this great work. We love the people here and we are becoming increasingly comfortable in our capacity to move around effectively on our own. We pray that we can be effective in all we do.

Elder and Sister Kane

Don't Mess with the Best

2007-03-18T23:17:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted 31 of January 2007

Dear Friends and Family,

The attached photograph is a pirture of our visit to a remote area of Indonesia, where we were treated kndly an offered a great deal of protection. I hope that you enjoy it as mch as we did.

The people we are with are actually students from a school where we have been asked to teach. They are great kids and fun to be around.

If any of you can send me the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People ( just a summary of the & Habits ie . Seek first to understand before seeking to be understood ) we would greatly appreciate it. Again, I do not want a copy of the book, just an articuation of the 7 habits, we would greatly appreciate it.

Elder and Sister Kane

No Sign of Dice Anywhere!!

2007-03-18T23:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Uriah,

Thank you for yor thoughtful letter. It was greatly appreciated. We continue to enjoy oursleves and pray that we can be of some use to the Lord in Bogor.

We appreciate you thought of having a care package sent to us and I have not yet followed up with the Mission home to find out if it is possible. I wil contact them tomorrow and let you know. If you do put a package together, please include 6 dice. We have not been able to find any anywhere, even though I can now ask people if they sell them : Apakah anda jual duda ? Some things here really amaze me and the inability to buy dice is one of them.

We had a fun day yesterday. We went to tour one of thewater projects that is failry far from here. I will include a few pictures to allow you to have an idea of the country side. We hiked for 7 kms in incredibly beautiful country. I could not have done anything better on my birthday. We love you and think of you ofetn.

The bad news is that the pictures of Ridley didn't come through on your e-mil and we are dying to see her. Please resend them.

Love

Elder Kane ( Dad )

Birthday Digs for Dan

2007-03-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted 27th of January 2007

Dear family and friends,

Elder Kane's birthday is on Tuesday so we celebrated with a diner out with friends at a great restaraunt in Boger and then we had them over to our home for cake. . The Lee family brought him two gifts; both gifts are the headgear worn by Indonesians at fromal events. Elder Kane was surprised how well they matched the Batik shirt that he bought earlier in the week. He would now be ready and welcome for any formal event in Indonesia, although it does not conform to mission standards so will only be worn at home on special occassions.

We include a pictue of Elder Kane in his new outfit and a picture of the group at the restaraunt. We hope that you enjoy the photos. The picture at the restaraunt include the Lee family ( in the forefront , Elder and Sisiter Kane and Tauffic and his family at the end of the table. Tauffic is the architect that we use on the water projects. These pictures are to let you know that we are having a wonderful experience with great people. Please note that the picture of Elder Kane in front of his birthday cake also includes a good image of the gong that we had made heree in Bogor.

Elder & Sister Kane

The Gift of Mobility

2007-03-18T23:00:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted Jan. 26th 2007

Dear friends and family,

It is Friday evening and another remarkable week has flown by at lightning speed. Last Saturday we headed off to Jakarta with the Sister missionaries in tow, to attend a formal adoption ceremony for the Mission President and his wife. They were being adopted into a prestigious family in Java that dates back to the last Javanese King , who died in a battle with the Dutch in 1907. We were told that it would be formal but we didn't know what to expect.

The drive into Jakarta was atypical and we made it to the university in record time. We got there in less than an hour as it was a holiday because it was the Muslim New Year and the traffic was relatively light. As a consequence, we had time to visit the precious stone market in Jakarta before we went to the ceremony. The place was filled with precious an semi-precious jewels as bargain basement prices. Our driver used to be a precious stones trader and was great fun to have along with us. We bought 4, I/4 carat faceted cubic zirconium stones for about 25 cents each.

The head of the university is the person responsible for the adoption of the Mission President and his wife, who were being adopted in as a full brother and sister. We were told that it would be a formal affair but had no idea what we were in for. There was an Indonesian Navy Honor Guard and everyone was dressed to the 9s, including President and Sister Jensen, who were in special costumes, made for the ceremony. No expense was spared for the event. There was a live band, a troop of the most beautiful Indonesian classical dancers in the world, great food and a non-stop unfolding of local customs that made for a great afternoon. It was an extravaganza and all of the adult missionaries and the mission home missionaries were treated like dignitaries. The heads of the families, their direct families, the Mission president and his wife and the senior missionaries were all part of the entry procession. We all had to follow the Indonesian dancers under the drawn swords of the honor guard, with the beautiful Indonesian flute and folk music playing as we entered the grand hall. It was not something we ever imagined doing on our mission.

The formal wear is very impressive, especially for the women, who were all decked out in fancy Indonesian dress; except for the nannies, whose job it was to look after the children in their care. Watching the nannies look after the children in this formal environment was very interesting. Each child from the family had their own nanny, who stuck to them like glue. There was a relationship between the nanny and the children that was fascinating. The children and the nannies never seemed to make eye contact, yet the children were very quick to respond to their direction. Whenever the nannies intervened, it was always from behind the child. It seemed clear that there was a close bond between them but an unusual one for our western culture. Except for being so out of place by reason of their ordinary clothing, the nannies could almost have been invisible and hardly a word ever passed between the nannies and anyone at all, including the parents. Everyone seemed to just know what needed doing with never speaking about it.

Most of the traditional music during the event was fun, except for one irritating reed instrument that was hard on a western ear. It bleated and didn't seem to have a lot of rhythm or clarity. The western style music was impressive but Elder Tutau ( A handsome skinny Tongan - I didn't think there were any skinny Tongans but there he is ) stole the show. He is a gifted entertainer and would have been the star of the show even if he had stuck to an English repertoire. It was when he broke out with an obviously famous and much loved Indonesian song that he turned the crowd into putty in his masterful hands. He is a tall dark and handsome young Elder that comes alive in the spotlight and he shone like the star he is. However brilliant Elder Tutau's performance was, it could not outshine the impression left by the Indonesian dancers. Each one was as beautiful as a fairytale princess and dressed identically in the local costume. They danced in the most dignified asian style and dazzled the crowd.

The Indonesian food is spiced exactly to our taste and we seem to love most all of it. The only real surprise was when they brought in the roasted head, skin, legs, hooves, and tail of the water buffalo; eyeballs and all. It was brought in on a ceremonial tray It was part of the ceremony when the host gives a part of the carcass to the visiting families. Happily the westerners were not included.

As the festivities bore on, President and sister Jensen sat patiently in the middle of a raised platform, with their hosts on either end of the platform. They were eventually outfitted with woven wraps ( made of elaborately woven material shaped like blankets ) and head-dresses. The process was surprisingly similar to some western Indian ceremonies I have attended. They were quite a picture when it was over. The whole thing was covered by a TV crew and the highlights of the party were shown on national television the following evening.

The last person to receive this honor was the governor of Java in 1979. The relationship between ranking members of government and the church in Indonesia is very long standing. President Jensen was eventually called upon to speak . It was fun to hear how he blended in the eternal principles to the audience. A wheelchair was given away to an aged recipient and the ceremony came to a close after all of the visitors from the mission ( including us ) were given beautiful woven wraps. It was a great event.

Indonesians appear to be heavy smokers and there was no smoking allowed in the banquet hall. That was certainly not the case in the foyer outside the hall, where a secondary feast was underway. All of the drivers and servants of the wealthy people inside the hall, along with all of those who just needed a smoke, were having their own party and you could have cut the blue smoke with a knife. After the party we headed off home to Bogor and went out to diner with the Lee family.

Sunday was a quiet day. We took a taxi to church because the Lee family was off on a church assignment. At church we met a fine young man from Afghanistan that joined the church and can never go home as a consequence. He is now an international refugee waiting for some country to accept him. In the afternoon we rested and studied Indonesian.

Monday started off with our Bahasa Indonesian teacher coming here at 7:30 for our first one hour lesson. Our Bahasa vocabulary is still limited but we have enough to be able to begin saying simple sentences and asking very simple questions. The hour flew by and Janet ( or teacher ) seemed to enjoy it and it was a great help to us.

One NGO partner ( Leanny ) sent over a truck to pick up 11 wheel chairs at 8:00 AM. We picked up Leanny at 9:30 took the wheelchairs to the homes of extremely needy people. Most of them were aged adult stroke victims. One was a 23 year old young woman that had suffered severe harm from a fever two years earlier. She could not stand. She moved around in a squatting position by walking on her hands and feet. One elderly woman had been bedridden for two years and had not seen sunshine or been out of her bed. You could see that it was painful for her to be in the chair as she had lost all flexibility in her back. One ten year old child was severely crippled by polio that struck her down two years ago. She was small for her age when the polio struck and now she was even further behind in her development. Another young man had been crippled from birth. It was quite an experience as we wound our way through the labyrinth of tiny cement walkways and streets and jungle paths of the poorest parts of the outskirts of Bogor.

One poor neighborhood that we visited was in a small spot directly between the wealthiest neighborhood in Bogor and the wealthiest cemetery, where people spend a fortune building elaborate burial sites for the dead parents. It had a strange feel to it.

For me the most tragic scene of the day was seeing the little 10 year old girl hopelessly crippled by Polio, a preventable disease for which inoculations are provided by the Indonesian government free of charge. Many of these poor villagers are barely literate and don't know about the inoculations or don't trust them. It is tragic.

This wheelchair distribution process was somewhat different from the experience of last week. It is hard to know exactly how or why. It was raining and that changed the whole feel of the day. We visited with several Luras ( the head of the area ) and their staff as we never give out wheelchairs except with the approval of the local authorities. Perhaps we were in a bit of a rush and we may have been less relaxed and limited in our capacity to enjoy the full spirit of the work in which we were engaged. It did seem that the people we visited were somehow less prepared to receive the wheelchairs. It struck me that the attitude of the receiver has a significant influence on the experience of the giver and I reflected on how much more joyful the experience of giving is, when there is a spirit of gratitude demonstrated. I thought about the sacrifice of the Savior and those prophets that have given their lives and how casual we can be about it all. I thought of the inoculations that we have been given to protect us and our families from the ravages of deadly and crippling diseases. I thought about how much we just take it all for granted and show such limited gratitude or appreciation.

We stopped briefly at a cottage industry that had been helped by Latter Day Saint Charities by way of a micro-loan ( we were advised that the loan was about $ 110.00 ) that had been given to them several years ago for materials and basic equipment such as scissors. The business seemed to be booming and employed about 5 - 6 people. The loan had been repaid. It was not the kind of work that we would aspire to but they seemed to be fully engaged and had broad smiles for us. We promised that we would return to the area and review more of the cottage industries.

We then stopped by an area where there was a request to have a portion of a creek covered over in one district. As it turned out the request was from Leanny's boss at the university, who lives beside the creek. It seemed to us that very little would be accomplished by this investment other than to enhance the value of the boss's property. We advised him of that as politely as possible and left. I had asked Tauffic ( our architect and water expert ) to come with us to look at it because On the way home Leanny admitted that the only reason that she submitted the project was because it came from her boss at the University and it would have been awkward for her to say no. She was satisfied that the right decision had been made and that she could now go back to her boss and report that she had done her duty.

We met with Tauffic in the evening and scheduled a visit to the Cikidang water project next week. We also scheduled a visit and hike to the mountain tops to see the cleanest water in the area.

On Tuesday we had out language lesson and then for fun we looked at a magnificent Bali style house in our neighborhood that was selling for $ 220,000.00 ( US $ ). It is the stuff that dreams are made of but not at this time. We tracked down a copy of Microsoft office 2003 and installed it on our computer and can now prepare the project submissions. We went grocery shopping and paid bills. We bought malaria pills for 20 cents a pack of 4 to take before we go out to the water projects next week. A pack of 4 in the US cost $ 60.00.

We attended the Bogor Rotary Club meeting at 6:30 PM. The group was very small, with only 5 members present but they are doing great things, one of which is to provide free corrective surgery to those babies born with hair lips and cleft palates. It is a marvelous thing that they are doing.

On Wednesday we had our language class and Sister Kane is really struggling with the vocabulary, which is entirely foreign. We had a District meeting with the other Bogor missionaries and enjoyed it. We loaded up five wheelchairs and took them over to an NGOs home and participated in a large organization meeting for an event that will be providing free medical and dental check ups for the poor on March 5. They have 20 doctors and dentists lined up to provide the services and they expect over 2000 people to come. They asked the church for some support in the registration process and we will see what I can do to be of assistance. While we were there we another German woman who runs a free school for the poor in Bogor. We will tour the school with her on Saturday. She wants us to have us teach English there once a week and it would be nice but we need to be cautious about our time.

At 5:00 PM we met with the landlord to discuss the lease for our house and we were informed that the lease would cost us 80,000,000 ( $ 10,000.00 Canadian ) Rupiah for the duration of our mission, whether we stayed for 16 months or 18 months. We asked for one week to consider it and we will have a look around as we really do not need such a large house. If we could find something smaller it would be fine with us. If we cannot then we will pay the money and get on with it.

Thursday was a long but gratifying day. We had a wonderful morning out delivering 5 wheelchairs. We went to two different areas of Bogor. We gave two wheelchairs away at the public service office in the area with lots of civil dignitaries present and it was a memorable experience as we heard these Moslem civic leaders speak so kindly about the work that the Latter Day Saint Charities has done in their area and in Indonesia overall. The church has a surprisingly significant public profile in Indonesia and seems to be well known and highly regarded everywhere we go. The wheelchair recipients there were both disabled from birth. The handover ceremony was brief and moving and full of pictures and smiles. I actually practiced my very limited Indonesian and said a few lines. I had the same opportunity at the three other homes that we went to deliver wheel chairs, one of which was a little girl that appeared to have suffered from polio, although the mother didn't know as it had never been diagnosed. At every home the immediate community gathered and I stammered out a few more words in Indonesian. It is a small start to a very long process. It was a joy to be able to thank them through the interpreter and to comment that we were all players on Gods team to serve the needs of the needy and that we could all feel the joy in our hearts as payment from God for our contribution.

Indonesia is a culture that is very comfortable discussing spiritual things openly and every civil servant that spoke at the gatherings asked that Gods blessing would be poured out upon us as a consequence of our work here. It is a world full of poverty, modesty, humility, and amazing smiles. It is a culture of kindness and gentleness. We are privileged to be here. One of the interesting qualities on Indonesia is that it is free from any overt signs of pornography, anywhere.

In the afternoon we looked at a house that we might rent and bought some groceries and I bought a typical Indonesian batik shirt and we both got hiking shoes for the water projects. In Indonesia a long sleeved batik shirt is considered to be very formal attire, suitable for weddings and high society events. In the evening we taught another English class at the chapel and enjoyed it.

Today began at 7:30 when our Indonesian teacher arrived and started her lesson. We find her coaching to be helpful. We ended the class a little early as we needed to be off to the International Garment Training Centre for their graduation exercise. It was a really impressive event. The garment business is a significant part of Indonesia's export trade and is a large part of their economy. The school was originated and is run by one of the German Expats from the Rotary Club, who retired from the garment business after a successful career. He sold his companies 7 years ago and has been doing this since. He works for free and is a keen believer in what he is doing. The school has several hundred students who live in residence, most of whom come from the Ache area that was the hardest hit from the Tsunami. The graduating class of 39 was entirely supported by scholarships from private sector contributors. The graduation exercise included an impressive fashion show with models and clothing created by the graduating students. It was great fun and we have been asked to consider teaching some courses there. The graduation exercise went until almost noon and we then headed off the school where we teach English. We met with Maman at the school from 12:50 until the class started and he agreed to help teach the teachers using the curriculum and text book that we gave him. It is a great asset and he will benefit from it very much if he just commits himself to the process and the material. We will continue to go there every two weeks and they will have three lessons a week from Maman, which we will review when we go there. We love teaching there.
We are privileged to be able to be of service here and pray that we will be effective in all we do. We pray for ongoing guidance and for our friends and family at home.

Elder and Sister Kane

Indonesian Feast

2007-03-18T22:31:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted 20th of January 2007

Dear Friends and Family,

Yesterday was a big day for our Mission President and his wife, who were adopted into a large and prestigious Indonesian family. The event was elaborate and facinating. Further comment will be reserved until nest weeks updat but I am sending along a few pictures that are of interest. You will love the whole story so stay tuned.

Elder Kane

First Picture from Indonesia

2007-03-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted 17th of January 2007

Dear family and friends,

We have had wonderful day in Jakarta at our first Zone Conference where Bishop Burton visited with the missionaries in our Zone. One of the Elders in the Missiona home taught an old dog new tricks and hopefully I was able to convert some files so that I can send some photos. I hope that the attached pictures get through to you as samples. If it works we will inclue a picture of two with every letter.

Elder & Sister Kane

Weekly Update for Jan 13, 2006

2007-03-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted Jan 13th 2006

To our friends and family,

We hope you enjoy reading these messages half as much as we enjoy experiencing them.

Another Saturday is upon us and what a great week it has been. The weather has been perfect all week long and there has been no trace of rain and few clouds. Bogor, the rainy city, has been showered with brilliant sunshine and a cooling breeze that makes everything pleasant.

Our gardener and his family have come over for the morning. They come intermittently to keep the yard in good shape and his wife ( Ester ) cleans the house. They are members of the church and they have 8 children. The previous mission couple paid them handsomely and we will for this time as well and them research it out a bit more. Ester speaks reasonable English as she was a missionary in the past. One of the interesting rules of the mission is that they are supposed to speak English if one of the companionship speaks English. This is intended to assist the Indonesians in learning English as it enhances their capacity to get a better job. Ester and her family arrived just after we received our first shipment of 24 wheelchairs. We will receive the rest of the shipment of 50 in total later in the morning.

Last Saturday was nothing short of a real thriller. We went out looking at two of the completed water projects. We were very impressed. The technology is simple but effective. They uses concrete, plastic pipe and gravity to deliver clean water to the campons ( villages ). The engineer finds springs of water high up in the hills and test them for water production and water quality. They then build a tiny dam at the source and put in a 3 - 4 inch pipe to direct that water towards the villages. There will be primary, secondary and tertiary collection points that are concrete tubs that hold the water and distribute it through other smaller pipes. The church is only responsible for the water distribution up to these collection points. The villages then us a variety of small plastic tubes to distribute the water to the actual homes or to common troughs. It is a crude but effective method of getting them clean water. They would otherwise be taking water from polluted sources.

The country side is spellbinding. It is rice production country and every hillside is transformed into rice paddies by backbreaking labor. The net result is a breathtaking mosaic of paddies contoured to the shape of the land. The paddies are actual dams that hold about a foot of water to plant the rice in. There is a system of overflow outlets so that the water goes from one paddy to the next, filling the entire patchwork. It is quite amazing to see how carefully each dam in constructed from the mud. The entire system can be drained quite simply by controlling the depth of the outlets in the mud walls.

The problem used to be that the villages depended on the same water that they used to irrigate their paddies. They would bath in it and cook with it, even after it was fertilized and walked through by both man and beast.
Another problem is the destabilization of the steep hillsides by the elimination of the large trees and their critical root systems in order to create the paddies. In the absence of these roots the water seeps into the earth and increases the likelihood of land slides.

My Tilley hat was a real godsend to protect me from the tropical sun. We are only a few degrees off the equator here and the sun is strong. Sister Kane forgot her hat and ended up having to use one of the umbrellas that we brought in case of rain. The sky was atypically clear and we could see all the way to Jakarta from the highest point of the day.

We traveled around with a convoy of vehicles, one of which was a 1982 Land Rover whose odometer quit working several hundred thousand kilometers ago. The climate is very kind to automobiles here. They actually still have three wheeled taxis in Bogor that came with the Japanese in 1942. They are held together by weld upon weld upon weld but it is amazing that a vehicle that is more than 60 years old can still be in used as an income earning taxi. I want to ride in one before they all disappear. We drove through Indiana Jones territory high in the mountains all day. It was spectacular.

The saddest part of the day was when we visited a refugee area filled with 185 families all living in large tents made of plastic tarps. A small part of their village has disappeared in a landslide and the rest has been condemned by the impending threat created by a large crack in the earth just above their village on the hillside. There are 6 families living in each tent and their situation is very heart-wrenching. They still have all of their clothing and household effects but they have been displaced by misfortune. They have been working like Trojans to carve out terraces to put their tents on. The only donations that they have received thus far have been the water piping to get then a clean water supply and one large tent from the army. The water engineer that we work with had the good sense to donate some of the church's water pipes and hook them up to an existing church water system so that they could have clean water. They have no toilets, bathing area or laundry area. Its time for Elder and Sister Kane to step up and do something to help them. It will be one of our first projects. It was a very full but rewarding day.

On the long drive back to Bogor we saw a man with no legs moving around remarkably well in wheel chair on the outskirts of Bogor. Leaany recognized the wheelchair as one of the ones that were distributed through the church. It was a reaffirming indicator that there are small things that can make big differences in the lives of people.

Frank and Leanny run one of the NGOS that the church has had association with for may years and they have been really kind to us. They came with us on our outing on Saturday. On Friday evening they took us out to a fancy restaurant recently opened by a friend of theirs who was looking for westerners to come and give them feedback on their operation. We got an unbelievable meal of bar-b-qued ribs with chicken and cheese casadias for free. It was a dream meal and great fun as we spoke to the chef who was trained in California. It was a real surprise.

Sunday was spent at church and with the missionaries. Sister Kane cooked butter chicken and it was a huge hit with the missionaries, who left soon thereafter. Sister Kane and I watched a video and then we had a long discussion about what we should be doing as missionaries and what our priorities and goals should be. Somehow I felt that we weren't sufficiently productive. As an antidote to the problem we discussed it as a companionship and put a list of issues and priorities together. Perhaps it is still a little early to be expecting that we should be fully effective but it is our desire.

On Monday we studied Indonesian and the scriptures in the morning and had a productive planning meeting with Sudin when he arrived for work. We got word from the school that we visited that hey want us to teach English to the teachers and that they could accommodate us on Fridays at 1:30 PM. We went and picked up our gong at the gong factory and went and visited with two of our NGO partners, Rika and Faisal. Rika's husband is an ex-pat who works on another island and is only home one week a month. He was admitted to the hospital yesterday and it was clearly an issue of concern to her. We had a great visit and stayed for almost two hours before we took Sudin out to the soup making restaurant where you cook your soup meal right on your own table. After diner we came home and then went for a long walk together.

On Tuesday we drove over to the missionaries apartments early to complete our monthly inspection. Sister Kane did a great job of it. While we were there we got a call from another set of missionaries, who asked us to go to an area near Bogor, to give a blessing to a Sister who is ill. We drove over there and administered to her and enjoyed a brief visit with the family. She appears to be suffering from either Typhus or typhoid fever and was grateful for the blessing. Happily we have been vaccinated for both. We drove around the area where the sick sister lived, about an hour away, to get a sense of what was around there. We spent most of the rest of the day studying. It was the first day for Sister Kane to deal with an upset digestive system but she seemed to handle it well.

When we came home I checked on the canary, only to find him sitting on the ground under the cage outside, where I hung it. He was easy to catch as he had no apparent interest in flying away. He must have gotten out of the bottom of the cage as I left the tray out after I cleaned it and apparently the gap between the wicker bars is bigger there.

Wednesday was a slow day. We used it to study Indonesian and we asked Sudin to help Elder Kane write out his testimony so that he could begin studying it and could bear testimony in Indonesian a-on the next Fast Sunday. Sudin couldn't have been more helpful despite the very slow going. The words are all so different and strange sounding. The only thing that keeps us going in this exercise is faith. We worked at it unitl we just couldn't take it any more and sent Sudin home early to enjoy time with his family and we went for a long walk. The evening air here is incredible to walk in.

We were supposed to tour another water project on Thursday but Tauffic ( the engineer ) was ill with Typhoid fever and was not up to the climbing around. We used the morning to study Indonesian and to open another bank account to handle all of the church business matters. The process went much faster the second time. In the afternoon we went to visit a truly impressive residential project near Bogor. It was the first place in Indonesia that I have seen where I could be happy living here, if ever we decided to spend a lot of time here. It is a really beautiful project built around a huge and very impressive golf course. We also went to visit the home of some members and enjoyed a last visit with Sister Bytheway, whose parents had come to pick her up and take her home. We had a farewell in the very humble but relevant environment of the home of people that she loved. It was fun to visit with her parents. They are doing a driving tour of Java and heading off to Bali before going back to Jakarta and flying home.

We spent the evening preparing for the English class were would teach on Friday and we went for a long walk and had a good meal at Pizza Hut. You can eat so cheaply here in restaurants that it is silly to cook at home.
On Friday we toured the manufacturing plant that produces the plastic pipe that we use in our water projects. We had been given a special invitation and it was great fun. We went through the whole process and the quality control testing. They treated us as though we were visiting dignitaries and it was really an enjoyable morning. We went for lunch and bought some fruits and vegetables when we left the manufacturing plant. Sister Kane loves going to the grocery stores here. They are spotlessly clean and have an unbelievable variety of fruits and vegetables that are very inexpensive. After the brief shopping experience we just went to a local A & W for a great meal. They still freeze the mugs before they put the root beer in them here and it makes for a great treat. Here a Moza burger with curly fries and a root beer cost about $ 2.25, so the three of us eat for about $ 7.00 per meal.

We then headed off to the school a short distance outside of Bogor. We got there in record time today. The last time we went took us two hours and today we made it in about 15 minutes as the traffic was light. The last trip was made on the last day of the Christmas long weekend and we were told that it was unusual for traffic to be heavy. The traffic was so light because it was Friday and we were traveling just after noon, when all the faithful are at Friday prayers at the mosque. The weather was perfect and the walk in to the school is not long but it could not possibly be more breathtaking. It is such a pity that I haven't figured out how to send pictures attached to our email or the people at home would be green with envy. We were welcomed in the school like dignitaries and we went to the classroom that was large and spotless. The Indonesians are very clean and orderly and it was well organized but everything was a little worn. The blackboard, which had no chalk, was in very poor condition. It looked like it may have been used in elementary school during the era in which I went to grade 3.
We were introduced to our class of 6 teachers and one ex-teacher. There were 6 women and Supraman, the son of the founder of the school. We call him Maman. The women teachers are all from Munchkin-land. They are all about as tiny as tiny can be. The climate here is very humid and it makes for flawless complexions on almost everyone. Sister Kane and I would not have been surprised if we has heard that they were all around 15. They were all Muslim and all wore the headscarf. They all had brilliant smiles and couldn't have been more fun to be around. We did our introductions and were amazed to discover that they averaged about 24 years old and several were married with children. We did an assessment of their skill levels and commitment to learn. Everyone but Maman \was at a beginners level and it makes it easy for us to structure the lessons for the group. It was an introductory lesson and the purpose was just that. We did teach them to sing " Give Said The Little Stream " which was a big hit with them. They are enthusiastic singers and were complimentary to Sister Kane and I about our singing. We went through it with them several times and Maman had us record it on his cell phone so he could remember the music and melody. We had them all get up and tell us about themselves and 90 minutes blew by in an instant. We ended the lesson by having each of them get up and tell us about something they learned that day and we helped them with their vocabulary and pronunciation. It was such fun to be with them that we hated to leave. They all seemed disappointed that we didn't leave them with home work assignments so we told them all that we expected them to teach the song to their class and they all agreed. We promised to have lots of homework for them the next time we go out there, which will be in two weeks. It was just a great afternoon and then we got to walk back down through their little valley of paradise. Who is luckier than we are ? No-one ! It all had the feel of a dream coming true. What a day it was ! What an experience it all is ! Thank you for taking the time to share it with us. Keep us in your prayers as we will keep you in ours

Elder and Sister Kane

Weekly Update

2007-03-18T22:14:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted 31 od December 2006

Dear Family and Friends,

It is currently 6:20 AM on Sunday 31 Decmber, 2006. It will soon be 2007 and a brand new year wil be upon us. Happy New Yera to you all. We pray that 2007 will bring you all the richest of blessings. we wanted to send out our update yesterdau but we could not get access to gmail for the entire day. We hope that everyone is having as much fun as we are.

It is early Saturday morning as we sit in our home in Bogor Indonesia, planning our day in the absence of our driver/translator, who has the day off. It will be our first day in Indonesia on our own and we are interested as to how it goes.

Bogor is cooler, cleaner and much rainier than Indonesia. It is the place that the Dutch chose to rule Indonesia from because of the better weather. It is however known as the rainy city and it is earning its reputation as I write. It rained almost all day yesterday, except for a brief period in the evening when we went our for a walk. The temperature is probably around 27 C, so it is very pleasant.

Our house is very spacious and located in a nice neighborhood with excellent security. The Indonesian people are very warm and friendly and respond with huge smiles when you greet them anywhere. Our Indonesian is virtually no-existent, other than our capacity to say hello and it will be a real challenge for us to learn it in the absence of a real need to. One of the limitations of having a translator is that we will never likely get proficient at the language. That being said, it would be impossible for us to conduct any real business at all in the absence of the translation. It would be impossible for us to do much driving around without him either. The style of driving here has the look of being reckless, yet hardly any of the millions of cars and scooters have any dents or scratches. The driving style is very un-nerving, yet they appear to be comfortable with it.

We have likely been able to put our jet-lag behind us but the process took much longer that we expected. We were exhausted by 8:00 PM and fought off sleep as late as possible, only to awaken at 4:00AM to repeat the same pattern. We were up until 9:45 last night and didn't awaken until close to 6:00 AM, so we are just about there.

We arrived in Bogor on Tuesday, December 26 in mid-morning and then spent the day getting groceries and a general orientation to the city. We still have not bought maps of the city or country and we have not yet been able to get a reliable orientation as to direction or relative distance. People here do not seem refer to distance when they talk about going anywhere. Everything is discussed in terms of the approximate time it will take to get there. Although there are some stretches of freeway, they are short and the bulk of the driving is done on shoulder less two lane roads that are congested with cars and trucks. It takes little to cause serious delays and slow-downs. Yesterday it took us two hours to go 30 kms to visit an orphanage where we are doing a mushroom project. It was quite an impressive place but it took a long time to get there and the same amount of time coming home. There were two points of congestion en-route that took up half the time.

The highlight of the first day in Bogor came when our debit card worked when we withdrew money from the local bank machine. It was a great relief to know that we have ongoing access to local currency at an appropriate exchange rate.

It was also a thrill when our credit card worked when we were buying a few things for the house. That joy was short lived, when it suddenly wouldn't work any more. We were able to telephone the credit card company the nest day and get it resolved, Apparently they have a computerized system that disables any credit card that is used repeatedly in quick succession in strange places. It is part of their defense system against stolen cards.
The missionary Sisters came by for a visit on the first night and it was great to se them and to get their impressions of things. One Sister was from Utah and the other was Indonesian. Sister Bytheway is going home to Utah in two weeks.

Indonesians are early risers and we entertained our first guests for the day at 8:00 AM on the second day we were here. Rolland Leis and his family came by as they were heading off to Jakarta. Rolland is a counselor in the District Presidency and his wife ( Lily ) is the Relief Society President in the Bogor Branch. Sister Kane will be her visiting teaching companion. They will usually drive us to church on Sundays, as our driver has Sunday off. They will pick us up tomorrow. They are a very impressive family. We had returned from our morning walk by the time that the Leis came by and I had not yet changed into my missionary clothing. They didn't seem to mind.

In the afternoon we went to visit a previous community school where the church had provided the cement to allow the community to build a cement path to give students access their school more easily. It is in a very beautiful part of Java about an hour away from Bogor. The school sits on the opposite side of a small but steep valley that is completely terraced in rice paddies. There is a brilliance and orderliness to the to the flow and lines of the rice paddies that is breath-taking. It was like a story-land world.
We walked the length of the steep path and visited at the school with one of the teachers. It was very warm and humid and the perspiration poured.
We discussed the possibility of teaching the teachers to speak better English. Tentative arrangements were made for Sister Kane and I to teach them on Saturday mornings for two hours, beginning on January 8th . It would be the realization of a dream as I think it would be better to teach a group of teachers, that could in turn teach students, than to just teach students. We were visiting with the son of the School Mistress and you would have thought we offered them a free trip to Disney World. There is something about being in the radiance of genuine gratitude that stirs the heart. We look forward to it and we hope it works out well. While we were visiting the school it rained. We were equipped with our umbrellas. On the drive home the rain turned into the " Real Deal ". It was nice to be a car and out of the elements. The explosion of the lightening was particularly impressive. The massive explosion was preceded by a microsecond by a tearing sound, like a huge ice-field rupturing through the middle.

In the afternoon when we visited with the Indonesian man who has been the key architect in the provision of clean water to over 80,000 rural Indonesians through the church humanitarian aid programs. It was a privilege to be in the presence of someone who is absolutely inspired and innocently unconscious of it. His name if Toffic. It looks like we have two more major water that will soon be ready to go and we look forward to helping them along. projects that we need to get.

We also discussed a goat breeding project that would have the local goat breeds upgraded through a selective breeding program that could be initiated by a stock herd of 20 purebred goats. The plan was quite impressive and appeared to be very well thought through. The plan was to bred the high quality purebreds with the local variety through 5 generations until the local variety were substantially upgraded in terms of their capacity to produce increased quantities of both meat and milk, thus increasing the long term prosperity of the local farmers. I did some immediate follow up with the Country Director and was advised that this project had already been initiated by the church in one section of Indonesia but the farmers had all sold their first generation of baby goats ( 50 % purebred ) because they felt they needed the income immediately. As a consequence the breeding program was killed off as the 50% goats would have been bred with the purebreds to get a 75 % goat and so on for 5 generations. It seems to be a sad reality that a significant part of the poverty problem is the incapacity to value the long term dividends of investment over immediate gratification.

On Thursday 28 December, we picked up the young Elders in the early afternoon and drove out to a remote little Branch for their Christmas party. The members of the Branch ( around 16 in total ) had invited other Christians to be with them so they had quite a little group and they had a program, which included a play about the council in heaven. Unfortunately that is about the time that Elder Kane had his first ( and ongoing ) experience with Indonesian diarrhea. The good news is that they an outside outhouse. The bad news is that it was the Asian variety with no lights. Necessity is a powerful force that intermittently drives us well out of our comfort zone. It was an otherwise great night. The missionaries were able to teach a first discussion to a man that is married to a member. They live two hours further away from the Branch that is already 1 ½ hours from here.

En route to the Branch we went by a large business that specializes in polishing up petrified trees and marketing them. They had the most beautiful specimens of 3,000,000 year old wood. We will buy some and have it shipped home after our mission.

Yesterday morning we went out to an orphanage that was only 28 kms away but took us two hours to get there. It is the orphanage that we will be doing the mushroom project with and we were very impressed with the organization. In the late afternoon with picked up the Sisters and drove them to an appointment with a woman whose mother died one month ago. The mother had one of the wheelchairs from the church and the woman felt that it should be returned for use by some one else. We stayed there while the Sisters reviewed the First discussion on the Plan of Salvation. It was a remarkable thing to see a young woman from the USA play a powerful teaching role in a foreign language, supported by her companion. It was evidence of the miraculous work in which we are all engaged.

We are still in the early stages of our orientation but we feel guided and protected in all we do. We pray for the ongoing guidance of the Holy Spirit and are thankful to be part of the work. Our hope and prayer is that we can be effective in our service.

Elder and Sister Kane

Good Morning Friends

2007-03-18T22:12:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted Wednesday 27th of December 2006

Dear friends and children,

This is just a quick note to say hello and to let everyone know that Glenda Evans has offered to help with anything that she coud do for Noahs wedding arrangements. Please give her a call as she has been laid up with a broken ankle that required surgery to repair.

We are all well here. It is very warm and humid and it takes little exertion to really get the perspiration pouring. We vivisted a little four classroon counrty school yesterday. It is parked in a small valley that is completely terraced in rice paddies that explode with a brilliant greeness and orderliness that paralyzes the newcommer. It was like we got to spend time in some sacred storyland world, that only very special children get to visit at the invitation of the Elves. We have made tentative arrangments to give free english lessons to all of the teachers in the school and any other teachers in the area on Saturday mornings. We were visiting with the son of the School Mistress and you would have thought we offered them a free trip to Disney World. There is something about being in the radiance of genuine gratitude that stirs the hearts of men.It was one of those precious and rare moments of congruence in your life, where every cell of yor body sings " This is the right time. this is the right place, just stand up and offer a gift - a little time with you to learn to speak english a little better".

The day even got better in the afternoon when we visietd with the indonesian man who has been the key architect in the provision of clean water to over 80,000 rural Indonesians through the church humanitarian aid programs. It was such a privelege to be in the presence of someone who is absolutely inspired and totally unconcious of it. I will not say more lest I undermine my capacity to write an interesting report for the week. It did rain yesterday afternoon and it was the " Real Deal ". The explosion of the lightening was preceded by by a microsecond of a tearing sound, like a huge ice-field rupturing through the middle. There were only a few lightening bolts but it was quite amazing.

We are thankful to be alive and of service in the Kingdom.

love

Elder and Sister Kane ( Mom and Dad )

Ho Ho Ho From Jakarta

2007-03-18T22:04:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted 25 of December 2006

Dear friends and family,

It is now 6:30 AM in Jakarta and we will be off to Bogor to move into our house and start our independant service. It is all quite thrilling we had a great Christamas day and I will forgo the details as it will be insluded in ur next weekly update. All I'll say is that we attended the best church Christmas party in the whole church. It was the most laughs I can remember having at a family church gathering.

As soon as Christmas is behid us, it becomes wedding planning time for family anf friends in Calgary. Noah and Jen have very little money and need a bit of hlep i the planning. I know that each of you will reach out to offer whatever support that you can. I expect that the independanat nature of both Noah and Jen may make it very difficult for them to actuall ask for help, so you may have to be proactive in your support. I can promise you that you will all be richly blessed for whatever you do.

I have sugested to Jen that she get in touch withh each of you to seek your advice. She is looking on-line for ideas now. I have also asked her to have Noah speak to Lyndsay Jensen, who is a talented and enthusiastic soul.

We are having the time of our lives, although there have been some tearful moments as we think of you on Christmas day without us. We pray that you will all be happy and richly blessed in all you do and desire.

Lyndsay and Bart, we trust that all is well with your family and we are anxious to hear about your daughters pregnancy is doing. Please give us an update when you have moment.

Love Elder and Sister Kane ( Mom and Dad - except for Bart and Lyndsay, in which case it is good friends )

Merry Christmas to Our Children

2007-03-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted 25th of December 2006

To all of our children,

It is now 7:55 AM on Christmas day in Jakarta and our hearts are with our children and grandchildren.It is hot and humid here and it is hard to not love it. We will be attending a meeting with the Indonesian branch this morning and going to the Mission Home in the afternoon for a Christmas diner.

Please know that we love you and we are thinking about you at this improtant time.

Love

Elder and Sister Kane ( Mom and Dad )

Greetings From Jakarta

2007-03-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted 23rd of december 2006

Dear friends and family,

Let the bells ring out ! Let the banners fly ! Let all men everywhere know that the God of Heaven hears and answers prayer. Our son Noah is officially engaged to be married to one of Heavenly Fathers choicest daughters - sweet Jennifer Irwin, a young woman of great faith and courage, who has won a place in our hearts.

It is a long prayed for moment of joy and hope; a moment of both agony and ecstasy. On the one hand we couldn't be more thrilled, on the other hand, we couldn't be more separated by distance. We weep our tears of lonely joy, feeling a little isolated in Jakarta Indonesia. We hoped and prayed that this marriage would happen and we couldn't be more thrilled by the choice that Noah has made. Sweet Jennifer is a young woman of extraordinary faith and independent courage. Her influence on our son has earned her a place of significance in our family and in our hearts. Our prayers and gratitude fill the world around us as we ask our friends back home to offer the support to this young couple that we cannot offer ourselves. When we decided to go on a mission we knew that certain sacrifices would be required and we also believed that certain blessings would flow out of those sacrifices. We believe that this is one of the great miracles that have Heavenly Father has granted to our family and we pray that Noah and Jennifer will be richly blessed despite our absence. I have confidence that our friends will be able to reach out and provide the love and hands on support that we cannot, as they plan their marriage. We feel as though our family has been blessed with a spiritual giant and a heavenly gift that has come in the form of a daughter-in-law. Isn't life wonderful ? Isn't it marvelous just to be alive and to feel the richness of Gods love and see His divine influence on those we love. It's a good thing that we aren't Baptists or there would be a string of " Halleluiah's " that would pour out of our hearts and mouths that would confuse the life out of the people of Jakarta.

It is currently 5:00 PM on Saturday evening in Jakarta Indonesia as we send out our love and regards to our friends and family everywhere. The journey to Indonesia has been long and tiring and we are in the process of adjusting to the inevitable combination of both jet-lag and culture adjustment. The good news of our sons engagement has overshadowed the adjustments here so it all still seems to be a little odd and surreal. We awakened at 4:00 AM this morning to the Imams call to the faithful to prayer. I did not go to the mosque but did use the opportunity to offer a prayer of gratitude to our Heavenly Father for the privilege of life and the blessing of being on a mission with my companion. I was thankful for the reminder that we should be prayerful and thankful for all of our blessings. Every single person in Canada needs to drop on their knees in gratitude for the inherent blessings and opportunities that they have available to them, simply by being where they are.

The weather in Jakarta is very nice but we have never seen anything like the smog here. There is no blueness to the sky. It is all grey and casts a grey gloom over everything here. Perhaps it is a small blessing because if that tropical sun ever actually broke through it would make for an interesting experience, in an already very warm place.

Thus far, Jakarta has certainly lived up to its reputation of being one of the most polluted and congested cities in the world. With the exception of this mornings taxi ride to a shopping centre, the traffic is beyond belief. Sister Kane and I have been to a lot of places in the world but we have never seen anything to match to the traffic here. You could drive a bicycle far faster than you can drive a car, although it would be worth your life to be out there. We thought the traffic in downtown Rome was the worst we had ever seen but it is a freeway compared to the snails pace that the million of cars and scooters move at here. I can easily see how anyone with breathing problems would have a hard time here. We will stay here until nest Tuesday, ( Boxing Day ) before we relocate to Bogor, where we will be living.

There are some clear reasons why poor countries are poor. Perhaps those reasons are more obvious to a visitor. Poor countries have layers and layers of inept beaurocratic procedures that strangle time and energy. We spent all day yesterday getting finger printed by the national police and getting an immigration stamp in our passports. These things allow us to stay here that will allow us to stay but they are over and above the three month process that it took to get a visa to be here. We will be able to pick up our passports some time next week.

It is clear why we would need a driver / translator to be able to get anything done here in terms of working with governments or other agencies fro humanitarian projects. There are protocols and procedures that we would never be able to learn. We look forward to leaving Jakarta to go to Bogor next week. We are staying in a very nice hotel that is reasonable as the mission home is full of missionaries that are either arriving or leaving.

We had a chance to visit with the Mission President and his wife yesterday evening after we got the immigration procedures cleared off. The lines ups in the government offices ( which still operate with typewriters ) and traffic jams took us more than 7 hours. It was very helpful to meet with the Mission President and hear his counsel and we then went to dinner with all of the senior missionaries in the district but it was tough staying awake as we were still in the midst of the adjustment from jet-lag. We wonder how long the process will take.

We are happy that we have the company of Elder and Sister Pier, who we have trained and traveled with. They have been great supports for us and we have become good friends. They will be staying I Jakarta as employment specialists. They will be setting up the Perpetual education fund here in Indonesia. We will be sad to leave them behind when we head off to Bogor next week.

Our journey to Indonesia was interesting. It started off with a delayed flight in Salt Lake City and a change of planes, but it all worked out. miracles happen to us as evidence that we are being looked after in our travels. We arrived in Los Vegas with only minutes to spare before boarding the flight to Korea. The flight from Los Vegas was more tolerable that I thought than a 13 hour flight would be. Korean Air does a great job and the plane and the staff were truly impressive. The stewardesses were all candidates to star in " Memoirs of a Geisha " . They all were as beautiful as they were tiny and incredibly well dressed in impressive uniforms. They bowed when they spoke to you and could not possibly been more gracious or classy. We were at the airport in Korea for almost 11 hours as it was too cold to go out and have a tour of the city. This was followed by an uneventful 7 hour flight to Indonesia.

We arrived two nights ago at 11:00 PM. We were picked up at the airport by Elder and Sister Peterson ( Country Director ) and Lieshman ( Employment Specialists ) and it was good to see them and to get to meet them.

Our adventure here is being modified by the luxury of our current circumstances. We are staying in a very nice hotel in Jakarta while we wait out the Christmas Season before going on to Bogor. There is little point in heading over to Bogor before Christmas as our driver/translator has the day off tomorrow and Monday ( Christmas Day ) and there is precious little that we can do without his help. We really are babes in the woods without the assistance of translators and it would be next to impossible to find our way around the city without a driver.

We are grateful to be here and share this experience together. We wish all of you the very best in the Christmas Season. Keep us in your prayers as we struggle to be worthy of our callings.
Love

Elder and Sister Kane

Today's The Day!!

2007-03-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

Originally Posted Tuesday, 19 December 2006

To Our Sweet and wonderful family,

Let the bells ring out! The the banners fly! The day of our journey to the lands of the Orient and our mission has arrived !

Please know that we love you and that we will be praying for you every day of our lives. Please know that we are as thrilled as thrilled can be to be able to head off to the place where the shoe leather hits the pavement as far as our mission is concerned. The MTC has been a great experience and we have learned a great deal. Although it has been a bit of paradise, we cannot wait to get to the real thing. We will keep you posted of every exciting step along the way. We are the luckiest people in the world. Thank you for being fun, funny, kind, thougtful, sensitve focused and faithful children, family and good friends.

Elder and Sister Kane ( Mom and Dad )

Merry Christmas 2006

2007-03-18T21:49:00.001-07:00

Originally Posted 17th of December 2006

Dear friends and family,

We realized that we forgot to wish all of you a Merry Christmas in our last message this morning and that we may not have access to the internet before next Christmas day. In reality, our time at the MTC has been so focused on preparation that we have been surprisingly unconcious of the fact that Christmas is upon us once again. I feel that we have been blessed with one of the greatest Christmas presents we could ever receive in our stage of life, a wonderful healthy family who say they love us and the opportunity to wear a name tag that identifies us as servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. I feel that if I died tomorrow my life would have not been wasted.

We had a chance to teach an english class to a small group of young missionaries this week. I have taught hundreds of classes over the course of my life, perhaps thousands; and I have never before been so priveleged to teach such an enthusiastic, beautiful and appreciative group. Sister Kane taught them about the " comparative " form of an adjective using " er " - tall and taller. I got to teach them the superlative of " good better and best ". Today at sacrament meeting, one of the young Tonga Elders, with a face that shone like a beacon of love and hope came up to me and showed me that he had remembered what we had taught. " Will you come back to teach us again " he asked in his gentle tongan accent. " No " I re[lied," We are leaving ". " I'm sorry " he said, " We had fun when you taught us ". " Good, better, best " he replied as evidence that he had not forgotten. " Good, better, best " I responded, " like each of you wonderful missionaries in the class - The Very Best ". " I want to be a good missionary " he said. It brings me to tears just thinking about it.

We wish you the Best Christmas of your lives. If your Christmas Season is anywhere near as good as ours has been thus far, it will be a memorable Christma indeed. to you and yours, May the light and joy of Christ shine in evey fibre of your being and in everything that you do.

Love
Elder and Sister Kane

Sunday, December 17th, 2006

2007-03-18T21:45:00.000-07:00

To frineds and family,

When you are on a mission, it is always a joy to receive mail and you can never receive too much. It is not always possible to respond to all letters immediately but we will do our best to keep up. Thank you to those who have responded and we promise to try to get back to those that are on the list but not yet at the top of the list. We have been kept very busy at the MTC and have loved every minute of it. You are in our thoughts and prayers.

As promised, I am sending off another weekly update on our experiences as missionaries. It is later in the morning on Sunday, 17 December and I have a few minutes alone, while Sister Kane is off at her relief Society meeting with the other women. We just left our last sacrament meeting at the MTC and we were thrilled to be able to spend it with the English as a Second Language group from the South Pacific. The young missionaries from Tonga sang as a choir again and it was another highlight of the week. I could listen to them for hours but it is hard to watch them through my tears of joy. We had a chance to teach several of them as part of their English program earlier in the week and it was a joy to be with them again. The only other two young missionaries that were in the meetings that were not from the South Pacific ( Tonga, Samoa, China, Japan, and the Philippines ) were a young Elder and a young Sister from the Ukraine; all of these young people will be serving in North America.

The past week has been spent with an explicit focus on the actual humanitarian work that we will be doing in Indonesia. It has been a busy schedule, full of fun and interesting things to do, see and learn. On Monday we toured the actual Humanitarian Centre in Salt Lake City, which is the central distribution centre for the goods that are distributed to the world through the regular ongoing humanitarian efforts as well as the disaster relief efforts that follow natural disasters around the world. We had no idea how much work is being done on a daily basis around the world. We also toured Welfare Square and visited with the Director to be briefed on how all of the church farm production flows through the Bishops storehouses to feed the needy and provide work, training, language skills, and employment development for legal refugees and other needy people. We sampled the food and dairy products that were manufactured there and learned about the principles and means that govern the Welfare system. In the afternoon we watch a movie called " The Restoration " at the Joseph Smith Building and we were deeply moved.
I had the opportunity to speak to those working at the Welfare Square and ask questions. It was a great strength to me to learn that the sole reason for the whole humanitarian effort around the globe, at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars , was to follow the instructions of the Savior to " Love thy neighbor as thyself " . The church spends hundreds of millions of dollars simply being obedient to that commandment. We do it because it is the right thing to do. I always believed that the humanitarian work linked more directly into the commandment to "Preach my gospel " . The only link is that both commandments came from the Savior, who said " Whatsoever ye do unto the least of these my brethren, ye do unto me."
The rest of the week was spent in classes either learning or practicing the skills we will need to know to be of effective long term service to the people of Indonesia. The focus is to identify, worthy and effective local organizations around the world that are providing enduring and important services to the locals. The scope of the work was as amazing as it was inspiring. The church is working with a broad range of other churches, schools, universities, governments, non-governmental agencies and volunteer organizations providing services with the focus of health, nutrition, and education. The strategy and goal is to work with local organizations to enhance their effectiveness and capacity. These are the organizations that will be around in those locations for generations and they are in the best position to assist their own people. The major initiatives of the church usually involve the provision of pure drinking water, neonatal training to local doctors and nurses to reduce infant mortality rate and the provision of the relevant equipment, local training of doctors to alleviate blindness due to cataracts, the provision of wheelchairs to those who need them, and educational initiatives. There are a broad range of local small scale initiatives in each area where the humanitarian services missionaries serve.

The week was a great opportunity to learn and to focus. We did have some great but brief meetings with significant people. We met with Elder and Sister Bikker at noon on Wednesday. They are the missionary couple that we will be replacing in Bogor Indonesia.They gave us a brief but encompassing overview of the work and the situation that is waiting for us. They had arrived back in the USA the night before and had gone to the trouble and personal expense to come here too meet with us. It was a pleasure to meet them and it was both humbling and intimidating to listen to their report.

We had a chance to see Elder Jessie Nelson ( a new young missionary from our home Ward ) shortly after he arrived at the MTC for his trainng and it was really fun to see him.

On Saturday we had the chance to attend the temple, enjoy a great visit with family in the area and do a little packing and last minute shopping. The time for preparation will soon be transformed into the time of actual service. I pray that I can be a great companion to my wonderful wife and that we might lose ourselves in the service of others.
Pease keep us in your prayers as you will be in ours.

Love
Elder and Sister Kane

Greetings From the MTC

2007-03-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

Originally sent Sat, Dec 9th, 2006.

Our first day at the MTC started on December 4, 2006 and it was one of the greatest days of our lives. Our life at the MTC began with a tearful goodbye with Uriah and Charity, who drove us here. For those of us that have never served a mission before and have been looking forward to it our whole lives, getting our own name tags in the Indonesian language was as touching moment as I can remember.

We are part of a larger group of senor missionaries. There are 32 couples and 4 single missionary sisters of which we were among the youngest. We all had the look of being rather ordinary and no-one would take notice if we passed them in the shopping malls. But as we introduced ourselves and said where we were going to serve, it became clear that the Lord had called us to participate in a most extraordinary experience. We were all heading for different places that dotted the globe: Indonesia, India ( Delhi ), Republic of Georgia, Slat Lake City, India ( Bangalore ), the Marshall Islands, Moscow, Arkansas, Perth Australia, Dominican Republic, Mexico City, Australia, Boston, New Zealand, South Africa, California, Nigeria, Nashville, Italy, Florida, Guatemala, Croatia, Germany, Uruguay, Madrid, and London. It was an astounding experience as we listened to these wonderful people talk about their assignments with enthusiasm and great hope. It was one of those rare moments in life where you know that you are in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, doing exactly the right thing, with an amazing group of people. Wonderful; people off on one of life's great adventures in the service of God and man. Our sense of enthusiasm and gratitude felt like it would burst out of us and it was a losing battle to fight the tears. Traudi and I were the only senior missionaries not from the USA.

As it turned out, one day was no better than another here, they were all spectacular. On the second day we met sweet Sister Mazerole and her son in the administration building as she was dropping off her son, who is going on his mission to Australia. She used to be part of the Ottawa Stake and was a visiting teaching companion of Traudi's. It was a brief but wonderful encounter.

There is another mission couple here who is going to Indonesia as well, Elder and Sister Pier and who are real go-getters, we were supposed to fly to Indonesia with them on Dec. 29th. Elder Pier is not the kind of man that sits around idly and he was able to get on the computer and find a flight to Indonesia on December 19. He ruffled some feathers in the travel department but we are all now able to get to Indonesia on the evening of Dec. 19 th. God bless Elder and Sister Pier as our training finishes on the 19th. missionaries here.

We got to go to a devotional where Bishop and Sister Edgely ( Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric ) spoke to us. It was a great event and we got to sing " Called To Serve " with two thousand other missionaries. We love being here with the young missionaries. We love to eat with them in the dining hall and to speak with them . They come form around the world to learn to teach and spread the message of the restoration of the gospel of Christ. It is a great privilege and thrill to be able to be here and to be a part of this incredible work. I am so grateful to have my wife and to have her strong testimony as a support. She is an amazing person and she has been the source of immeasurable blessings in my life. She is the best companion in the world and I look forward to working with her in the mission field.
We found a young sweet sister, who works here at the MTC part time and who is a student at BYU, who was willing to allow us to use her password on the BYU internet so we can use our laptop computer to access the internet. We can now send and receive e-mail.

I cannot adequately express how much we love having the privilege of being full time missionaries. We cannot wait for out flight to Indonesia that will be routed through Korea and will last 34 hours. We are sure that we will be exhausted at the end of that great journey but we cannot wait to get in the harness of service.

Throughout the week we have been trained on " Preach My Gospel ", a remarkable book designed specifically for missionaries. We had the most amazing class in the world on the Book of Mormon and its power to touch hearts and change lives. It was taught by a Brother Pinegar who carried the Spirit of the great work in every word he spoke and every gesture he communicated. We then had the chance to test this out for ourselves in a discussion that we had with a member of the church, who brought us a real life problem that he had with his own family. We had the chance to visit with him and to discuss his concern and use the Book of Mormon as the instrument of revelation and conversion as he worked through what he needed to do to resolve this problem. It was a moving experience as he expressed his appreciation and all we did was point him to the Book of Mormon Index and watch in awe as he found his own solution to a problem that was troubling him deeply.

In the afternoon we got to sit in the Call Centre and take calls from people who were phoning in to receive the free offer that is offered through television and the media. My first call was from a 38 year old mother of two children from Louisiana, who wanted a Book of Mormon. She was willing to have two missionaries come around to deliver it and she was willing to gather some friends to meet with them when they came. It was my first call and it was of the thrills of the day. Her name is Juanita Coco, a black lady who has been a Baptist her whole life. When that phone call ended I just about floated off my chair with joy. we could talk to the young missionaries from around the world. I love every meal with them.

I am quite amazed at how well Sister Kane is doing with all of the assignments. I had no reason to believe that she wouldn't do well but it is a real joy to see how she loves the people and how well she does at everything. She is the best companion in the world.

We have grown to be very close with the other senior missionaries and a bucket of tears have been shed as we have listened to their sweet stories. The blessing of being here is overwhelming and we are so thankful to be a small part of this great plan. Life is magnificent and full of hope and gratitude when viewed through the eternal lens of the Gospel of Christ. What a blessing it is to be married to my companion and to be able to share this extraordinary experience with her. It frightens me to think of the many excuses that we could have found to have missed this experience. Every senior missionary couple that is here had a life full of reasons why they could have stayed home. I am so thankful for their faith, commitment and enthusiasm. We ask that you keep us in your prayers and commit that we will render the same service for you.

Over the course of my life, I have read many books about many things. I am so thankful for the Book of Mormon and it spectacular influence on anyone that will read it with even the slightest interest and curiosity to know if in fact it is true.

Be safe ! Be happy ! Be grateful.

Elder & Sister Kane enter the MTC - Dec.4 2006