Brochures and Language Classes

 

We usually have several irons in the fire. One of the things that we are working on at this time is modifying one of Church brochures to be published in Indonesia. The brochure is titled: Introduction to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is a high quality publication with lots of pictures and a few brief explanations about the history of The Church and some of the key teachings. We give it to government officials and other high profile persons when we have occasion to meet with them so that they will know a little about The Church. We obtained the template for the Hong Kong bochure and we are substituting the text with the Indonesian text which has been translated by our Publications group here in Jakarta. We are also substituting many of the pictures with local pictures from Indonesia. In the square collage above, all four of the corner pictures have been replaced with pictures from Indonesia. It is going to take many hours to complete because it is 24 pages long and we need to format and replace many of the pictures. After we finish the draft version, it will be reviewed by the National Communication Council here and then by the Area Authority Seventy before we publish and distribute any brochures.


The slide on the left above is from our Indonesian lessons and the one on the right is from our English lessons. We teach one Indonesian zoom class each week for new foriegn missionaries and seniors who want a little extra help with Indonesian. This is just an 8-week primer to review many of the things they learned in the MTC and to answer the many questions that they have once they get here and start to use the language. I have made these classes from my own knowledge of the language and I draw on vocabulary and word usage from the Indonesian Preach My Gospel book. We also teach one zoom English class each week for local Indonesian and Philippine missionaries who want to improve their English skills. For this material we borrow from the English Connect 2 curriculum that The Church has prepared. For Cheri and I, these classes are a lot of fun because it is time spent with our beautiful missonaries. It always brings us joy to be with them. It does take a lot of time to prepare and give two lessons each week, however, there is a new English program that the Asia area will soon roll out for the missionaries and when that is ready it will take the place of our English class.

I hope this blog post gives you an idea about some of the other activities we are involved in as missionaries. Most of the senior missionaries have time for some service outside their official callings. We miss you all and we want you to know that we love you and pray for you always.

Lots of love, Chuck and Cheri






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Young Missionaries Returning Home And Searching For Family History On The Far Off Isle of Alor

Image
  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
Read more

Final Mission Post

Image
  The picture on the left is our last day in the Jakarta office and in the picture on the right some of the young missionaries stopped by our apartment to say goodbye in the evening before our flight. We left our apartment at 3:00 am on Thursday and arrived at the Salt Lake City International airport 26 hours later at 4:00 pm of the same day. By 7:00 pm we had been released from our full-time missionary service as communication missionaries in the Indonesia Jakarta Mission. People sometimes asked us, "What is the hardest thing you face on your mission?" A mission is hard. We often miss that point when the talk about our missions because we tend to hang on to the sweet memories and not dwell on the challenges. This blog, for example, is written mostly about happy times and uplifting experiences. I will not go into all of the challenges we faced except to say that, for us, the hardest part was being far away from our family for so long; our 5 children, 2 daughters-in-law, 2 son
Read more

People Who Help People See

Image
  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.
Read more