Hi everybody! Last week for P Day we went to the beach! It was the first time I've seen the ocean on my mission, and I live on an island! It was so cool and the water was so refreshing. We're allowed to get in up to our knees, so yay! This week I also went on splits with Solo Jebres/Banjesari. They're the sisters on the other half of Solo. It was really cool, especially because I got to see my trainer Sister Antonio again. We got to be companions again, even if it was only for a few hours. We also worked hard this week, even if we didn't get a bunch of lessons in, a lot of people weren't available to meet when we went to their houses. This is me and Sister Solomon at the BEACH! Halfway across on the other side of the world is 'MERIKA. (is that still a thing?) There were also a bunch of pond things with eels and sea stars and hermit crabs. It was cool. I forgot to bring yackbar Vahl, so my nametag will have to do. We ate some es pisang ijo. Ice Banana Green, if you translate that. It was so good! Especially on a hot afternoon. And the most important thing that happened this week! I got to eat a taco!!!! Even though it was an Indonesian taco, it was still soooo good. It was on a little food cart that also sold kebabs. I wouldn't call it a Mexican taco, but Indonesian tacos are good too. Yesss!
Okay, have a good week everybody, have a great summer!
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This week we went on a zone trip to Prambanan. It's a hindu temple in JOGJA and it was my second time going there but it's ok, because it's really cool. It was super hot and we are about dead by the end, but it was a really good day. I got to see my child sister Xiao and hang out with my fellow missionaries. Above is my cheesy jumping shot in front of Prambanan. Not much else to say about that.. haha We walked around a couple of the buildings and looked at all of the statues of the Hindu gods. Maybe there isn't a temple here yet, but at least we got to see this one! Some of you might have heard that there was some flooding in Central Java. We are all ok and still alive! We were actually a ways away when it started raining. We were contacting in a mall and were about ready to go somewhere else when it started raining really hard. So we went back in and contacted some more. When we decided the rain was letting up, we went outside again and the rain started again! So we went inside again and contacted some more. Finally we decided to just brave the storm and went out to a dinner appointment. I think we were in the mall from 2:30 to about 6 jut talking to people. I hope we helped at least one of those people.
As we were riding home, the streets were flooded in some areas. The street close to our house was like riding in a river. I think the water was about halfway up my bike. What made it even worse was that the rain was all on my glasses so I couldn't see as well, but we both got home safely and our shoes are still wet. The house across the street from us was flooded. We offered to help but they didn't want it. The next day when we came to church we learned a lot of the members' homes were flooded as well. We offered to help but they all said no too. ok! It was still cool to see how even though their homes were flooded, they still made church a priority and came to church. Love you all! Sister Stringham This week in Solo we worked with Sister Winanto from the other 2 wards here. It's been really fun! We've been able to get out of our normal routine and meet some new people! These are the rice fields outside of one of the members' houses. It's so far away... t's a tradition in the mission to 'hancurkan' missionaries who have a birthday. AKA we egg them and throw flour on them. It was both Sister Winanto's birthday and Sister Solomon's birthday. Companions
I've had a couple people ask me what I do here as a missionary, because it's a little bit more unique than other missions. Since we are not allowed to knock on doors here, we find people by talking to them on the street, in the mall, on the bus, and something I call RT contacting. Every neighborhood is organized like a stake. The "stake" is called an RW, and there is a leader over the whole RW. Then, there are "wards" called RT, which each has it's own leader. Since we can't go door-knocking, we go to the RT and ask if there are any people who would be interested in our message. They'll either give us names or tell us it's a Muslim neighborhood and we can't go proselyting there. If we receive names we go visit them and ask if they are interested.
Another thing that's really important in our work is visiting less active/inactive members. About half of the members in Indonesia are Inactive. We come to invite them back to church and share a gospel message with them. It's cool to see someone come back to church all because they felt like someone cared enough about them to invite them to come back! Another thing we do is go to member families. We invite them to do missionary work to and be good examples to their friends, to share their testimonies. They also feel us a lot of food, so no matter what you can't go bad. Most cites missionaries ride bikes and can ride for maybe 3 or 4 hours every day. I've gotten really good at riding a bike! We also have meetings we go to and stuff like that. We do service projects too, but I haven't had many opportunities to do many service projects. The most important thing about missionary work is that we learn to come closer to God ourselves, to learn how to work hard and how not to give up. I've learned so much from my mission and am so glad I still have 10 months to go! |
AuthorHOLLEY STRINGHAM: Salt Lake City, born and raised; returned missionary from the Indonesia Jakarta Mission.; a simple folk aimed on changing the world Archives
October 2017
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