Mission Blog of Chuck and Cheri Lambson

  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with the Sister missionaries in our area at a japanese noodle place. The noodles were meh but the company was outstanding. From left to right, Sister Susanto, Sister Halawa, Sister Nugraheni, Sister Abbott and us.  Sisters Susanto and Halawa taking a picture of dessert. It was really good dessert. Sister Lambson completed a major milestone while we were waiting for a flight to Bali this week for our Senior Missionary Zone Conference. She finished the beginner level of Duolingo Indonesian Language course. 669 consecutive days! She is amazing. (Duolingo is a language learning app) One of my simple pleasures while in Indonesia and Malaysia has been making popcorn the old fashioned way, by shaking it in a pan. This is my popcorn pan. Last week Sister Lamsbson tried making some popcorn but she had the heat too high and it melted the handle. Sadly my popcorn pan is being retired. We will fly home in two days so I will do one more post to close out this

  This week we were asked to attend a special meeting on behalf of The Church. This was the annual opening session of the Indonesian Association for Blind People which operates the Eye Bank. One of the areas of focus of this organization is register people to donate their eyes for cornea transplants after they are deceased. Members or the Church have helped to promote and register people as donors for several years so the organization invited us to attend this meeting. The humanitarian missionaries were all out of town so Cheri and I attended in their place. These are wonderful people, many of them are medical professionals in the field of opthamology. They have been operating for many years performing cornea transplants and gradually increasing donors. A group of blind dancers performed at the event. I admire the people who have turned their hearts to helping these blind people to have a way to develop and express their talents through performances like this.

  I'm sure all missions have traditions when a group of missionaries complete thier missions. In our mission we gather at the mission home for a devotional where we sing, hear testimonies of the departing missionaries and messages from our mission leaders and after the devotional is over the mission leaders cut off the ties and scarfs of the missionaries. This group is special to us because they have overlapped with us for almost our entire mission. The two sister pictured here, Sisters Cook and Pickett, arrived a week after we arrived so they have overlapped for the entire mission. Three of the Elders were in the group that we escorted to the Cebu temple. Hard to say goodbye. This is Sister Sri Anon. She is the Church Historian in Indonesia and she came to our office this week to interview us. She interviews all of the senior couples before they leave and submits transcripts with her Church History reports. Sister Sri is 80 years old and is a pioneer in the Church here. She joined

  Elder Lee invited us to go along with him for the closing a a water project nearby in Bogor. The project consisted of two small dams with catchments that were built on two nearby streams in the mountains above the kampong (neighborhood). Large pipes were run from the upper a catchments (the mother reservoirs) down to smaller containments like the one shown in the picture above. There were five of these containments constructed at various locations in the kampong. The small pipes you see exiting the containment distribute the water to houses and public restroom and washing facilities. The water must be boiled before drinking but it is much cleaner than the water the people have been using and they are very grateful to have this water. Previously they had been obtaining water from the streams that run through the neighborhood which had a lot of contamination, especially in the dry season when the flow is low. Some residents of the neighboring kampong came to the opening and asked Elder

  These are the last two bars of soap that we will buy on our mission. We will go home before these bars are used up. This picture is happy-sad because we are looking forward to being back in our home and our native land and able to spend time with our family, but also sad because we will miss Indonesia. We have grown to love being with our wonderful missionaries. About one third of them are from Indonesia, one third from the Philippines and one third from the US and Europe. They are all amazing and they make us happy just to be around them. We will also miss the people of Indonesia. They are among the friendliest and most helpful people in the world. We have made many friends here and renewed many old friendships. We are looking forward to our last 7 weeks here and plan to make the most of them. One of the amazing treasures of Indonesia is the diverse wildlife of the jungles. Our dear friends, Mike and Laurie Hoer are visiting Indonesia for a dive trip and they arranged to come to Sum