Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope Santa came and gave you all some nice presents! Make sure you don't forget the true meaning of Christmas, which is Christ and his endless Atonement!

We spend most of the day Skyping on Christmas day. All the missionaries form our zone came to Solo to Skype. So it took a little while for everyone to finish, we Skyped at both the chuches. I enjoyed Skyping my family a lot! It was great to see them and hear their voices! But the time went by so fast :c. The webcam I used and Elder Hayes used worked all right. But right after us the microphone got busted somehow and no one was able to talk to their families with it. A sister was supposed to go right after us. She could hear and see her family but she couldn't talk to them. We were trying to fix it but nothing worked so then Elder Hayes and I just left to go and try to find a headset we could buy to use. We found one for around $7 and went back to the church. By the time we got back though the sister decided to try Skyping at the other church and was gone. It was alright though because lots of other Elders were still there and used the headset.

After we all Skyped we played futsal for a couple hours. I didn't play though because I had to be at the Banjasari Christmas party and didn't have enough time to shower and change and all that fun stuff. The day after Christmas was the Jebres Christmas party. The missionaries performed a little lip sync dance at both of the parties. We did pretty good I think.

It has been a little harder getting lessons in this week because of the holidays. One of our investigators Hedrick came to our Christmas party and came to church again yesterday with us. So he is going along just great!

Selamat Hari Natal dan Tahun Baru!

Christmas presents from the wards, notice the names

- Elder Hymas

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Actually it still looks the same, not at all like Christmas. But Christmas is this week so that is awesome! Selamat Hari Natal! 

We had Elder Funk from the seventy come to Indonesia for a mission tour this earlier this week. He met with all of us and talked to us. He was awesome and I learned lots. Some things I learned is to just open you mouth and it will be filled, and the importance of being obedient. 

One of our students that goes to our English class named Hedrick became really interested in the gospel all of a sudden and came to church with us yesterday. I'm excited for him, I know that he will get baptized soon. 

Yesterday the primary from the Solo 2nd ward sang at the mall. All the missionaries in solo where there too and contacted people while they were singing. It was awesome. 

I can't wait to skype my family on Christmas! I'm looking forward to that! 

Have a great week! 

- Elder Hymas

Some Indonesians on the sidewalk playing chess. Indonesians love playing chess.

We held a fireside about Christ earlier this week for the Jebres and Banjasari wards. It was awsome

We met Mickey Mouse's Indonesian cousin at the mall! 

The primary singing in the mall

One of the 2 churches in Solo, Jebres ward isn't in this one. This one is for Solo 1 and Solo 2

Elder Baize and I with Elder and Sister Funk

Goooooaaalll.

Hello Hello,
This week has been pretty good, our new investigator from Madagascar went to church with us last week and had a good time and was active in the lessons. He didn't go to church yesterday though because he had to go out of town to Jogja to visit a friend from Madagascar, so I guess that is an okay excuse.

We had a Zone meeting this week so other missionaries from our zone came and had slept over at our house, there is always a party when that happens. We also have a mission tour with Elder Funk of the seventy tomorrow so the zone came back to Solo and we had another sleepover/party last night too.

We learned that obedience as a missionary is very important. Sometimes it is hard to be 100% obedient but I am going to try my hardest to become more obedient because miracles follow obedience.

We played futsal on Saturday night with the youth, I made 3 goals in one game so I was pretty proud of that and thought I would share. Because the people here are pretty good at soccer.

My new futsal shirt

Oke, have an awesome week!

-Elder Hymas

A delicious coconut beverage that I can buy anytime I want for less than $1

JJ from Madagascar

So this week has been a pretty cool week. At the beginning of the week I wrote some letters for people for Christmas. On Wednesday I really wanted to send them after we ate lunch so we went to the post office, which is a good bike ride away, and I sent my letters. As I was sending them a person who was a little darker than the average Indonesian came up to us and asked us in very good English if he could talk to us once we were done. We were a bit surprised and said yes of course. So after I finished mailing we went out of the post office and talked to him. His name is JJ and he is new in Indonesia. He has only been here for 3 months and is still learning Indoneisan. He came here from his home in Madagascar to go to University here, and he plans to stay here for 3 years. While he was living in Madagascar he took lessons from Mormon missionaries, but he had to tell them he had to stop because he was moving to Indonesia. Once he got here he never saw any Mormons or Christians and thought everyone here was Muslim. But then he saw us at the post office came right up to us! It was awesome. So we showed him where the church is and gave him the first two lessons there and it was great and we did it in English, so I did most of the teaching haha. He went to church with us yesterday. It was a pretty cool miracle if you ask me. So I really hope he progresses fast and gets batpized.

I also went on splits with one of our zone leaders, Elder Murphy. It was good, Elder Murphy is a great guy.

We had 2 potential investigators who were really promising. They live next door to a member named Sister Samsi who referred them and helps us teach them. But apparently one of the members from our ward asked sister samsi about them and visited with them and insulted them or something because next time we met with sister samsi she told us about it and that they gave our Books of Mormon back and don't want to visit any more, very upsetting.

The weather is the same, it rains everyday and it is hot, but not as hot as it used to be.

Well have a great week everyone


- Elder Hymas

Our Christmas tree

baptismal font selfie

I'm thankful for A/C

This week was a pretty good week, it just flew by. These past two weeks felt like nothing. Probably because we are working hard, yeah I'm gonna stick with that. We had Thanksgiving dinner provided to us by the mission couple Elder and Sister Lewis. It was yummy and pretty close to an american thanksgiving dinner. I said I was thankful for A/C when we went around saying what we were thankful for. Man I love air conditioning. 

We have got a few referrals from a sister in our ward that was baptized pretty recently, we have visited all of them with here with us. I think we have some real potential with some of them so I'm pretty excited to continue to visit with them. Member referrals are pretty much the best way to get new investigators, so I love it when members actually give us referrals.On Thursday I went on spits with Elder Hayes in the Banjasari ward. It was cool and we found a new potential investigator. We rode our bikes sooo much and there are HUGE hills in the Banjasari area. I'm glad I don't have to ride them everyday. 

I still have yet to have a progressive Investigator, we're trying though and hopefully we get some with these new referrals that we got. 

Have an awesome week!

- Elder Hymas

Sweeping the Park

Kids playing in the rain. (kid doing a handstand in the background)

Thanksgiving dinner!

My office.