We Completed our First News Articles and Saw More of Jakarta

 

We each completed our first article for the church newsroom this week. I pasted a snippit of mine on the left and Sister Lambson's on the right. The article I wrote is about the missionaries going to the Cebu temple and is written in Indonesian (with help from local friends), and Sister Lambson's is about FSY and will be translated into Indonesian by the local publications team. 

We stopped by the school where Barry Obama attended elementary school as a kid. They put up this statue in the school yard. There was no school that day so they invited us in and we were allowed to go right into the classroom that Obama visited in 2017. The picture on the right is of the whiteboard in the classroom where they had written a message to welcome him. The part I circled up in the right corner is a "thank you" and his initials written by Obama. They have never erased it.

We went into Old City and saw some of the buildings from the Dutch Colonial period. The Dutch were in Indonesia for about 350 years. Their colonization ended during WWII. Jakarta was called Batavia in colonial times and several buildings from that period still survive.

We visited the Jakarta cathedral and I had a pleasant chat with this very friendly fellow.

I've got to show you my favorite fruit here in Indonesia. This is called salak. Sometimes we call it snake skin fruit or snake eggs because the skin is just like snake skin. Its strange to see a fruit that has scales. The taste is difficult to describe, it tastes rather like a dozen tiny fairies dancing on your tongue.

We are at the main seaport north of the city. Three of the four boats behind Sister Lambson are wooden boats made in Indonesia from local wood. They carry supplies to and from the many inhabited islands of the archipelago.







Comments

  1. Russ and Robin MissionJuly 25, 2022 at 2:07 PM

    Elder and Sister Lambson,
    Thanks for the update of your mission. I particularly like the picture of you with the "Pope." Okay, he's not the Pope, but it's a great picture. What did the two of you talk about. Was your conversation in English or Indonesian? Do very many people speak English where you are serving? With Jakarta being such a big city, I would imagen that some, or perhaps many, do speak at least some English?
    Robin and I found out last Friday that our mission start date has been postponed due to delays in getting visas from Peru. We are disappointed, but I knew it was likely to happen when we submitted our visa paperwork because the Missionary Department told me that Peru visas were taking about four months. If that is true, we will likely enter the MTC about mid-September instead of August 22, and leave for Peru in late-September or early-October instead of September 3. We plan to call the Missionary Department tomorrow to see if they can provide any more information. Today is Pioneer Day so they are closed.
    We had a nice Sacrament Meeting yesterday. Two of the Langford boys spoke; Derek and John. Derek got home from his mission to Brazil about a month ago, and the John will be leaving on a mission to Argentina soon. They both gave great messages. I was impressed with how excited and prepared the younger one seemed to be. At the end of the meeting, Bishop Maughan asked Joshua Langford to come up. I think he is about 16 years old. So all three of them stood on the stand while the Bishop spoke about what great young men they were. Pretty cool.
    Our new Stake President, President Greer was in our meeting so I introduced myself to him after the meeting and told him we were going to Peru. He was happy to meet me and told me he had received the email about the delay in our mission and was planning to call me to "mourn" with us. Ha!
    Keep up the good work!
    Russell Jacobsen

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