Some guests in our house. And Facebook

Selamat siang, Nama saya Elder Hymas dan saya adalah seorang misionaris dari Gereja Yesus Kristus dari Orang-orang Suci Zaman Ahkir. Kami suka membagikan pesan tentang Yesus Kristus dan Keluarga.

This week was a good one. It started with me getting a hair cut last P-day. Getting hair cuts are nice because they give you a nice massage and crack your neck when they are done. And it all costs Rp 12,000 or about $0.87. I guess that is a pretty good deal. Then on Tuesday we had a District leader meeting at the mission office with president. He taught us more about the roles of a district leader and then gave us some training for using Facebook. Ya so now all the district leaders in the mission are going to use Facebook for an hour everyday to help with our missionary work. Fun stuff huh? haha but don't get any ideas.. I can't add any of you as a friend! 

Oh so we have this new investigator who is awesome! He is about 17 years old. His basketball coach invited him to our English class and we found him there about 2 weeks ago. I invited him to church with us at class and he was interested so he came with his little brother. We taught him a few time and he is just great. He comes from a Catholic background and is pretty confused learning about all the different stuff in our church, but a few members who used to be Catholic comforted him yesterday and hopefully all goes well with him!

So a few missionaries had to go Jakarta and then to Singapore for a few days because they had to renew their visa in some special way for some reason. Fun for them huh? They got back 2 days ago and have to hang around in Jakarta for a few more days to complete their visa process so 2 of them are staying at our house so that is fun. It is Elder Paskett and Elder Thomas from my MTC group who are staying with us for a few days. So it is a party in our house. 

The other Elders in our house had a baptism yesterday, that is always great to see. 

Well that is about it his week.

Sampai nanti,

- Elder Hymas

Elder Arthur and the gang did surgery on me

Elder Arthur and I

group photo

Me and elder Atkinson

The Bishop's house

Some Terror in Jakarta

Hello all, this week was good and a bit interesting. I don't know if it reached much of the news there but ya there was a bit of a terrorist attack here in Jakarta. I think in the missionary hand book we aren't allowed to talk too much about problems like that about my mission but yeah let's just say that a Burger King that I have been to a few times got bombed and a Starbucks that I have never been to got bombed. Also there have been some people that have gotten shot. I guess the Terrorists were targeting American brands and people. We just stayed in the mission office that day and it was pretty fun.

We wanted to take the busway that day to the mission office but it was closed because the bomb went off right next to the busway so yeah we just took a taxi. Hopefully more attacks don't happen. Other than that our week wasn't that interesting, the attack kinda wrecked our week. Elder Atkinson was pretty sick this week too.

Yesterday at church we had 3 investigators come. Awesome ya! They have great potential and we will continue to work with them. This week we went to some members from the Jakarta 3 ward, (the English ward) it was pretty cool. I love the English ward, it is like a breath of fresh air.

Well the sisters are bugging me because they want to use the computer to email so I guess I better let them. Take care and choose the right!

- Elder Hymas

Appointment with White people from the Jakarta 3 ward

Jakarta 2...

Selamat siang semuanya. Well This week was great and flew by super fast again. We have spent a lot of our time out and about on the busways and populated places. I have talked to people and contacted people here like never before. I talk to so many people a day and they are so happy to talk to a white man and they practically throw their numbers at us haha. It is a real experience.

We have went to the place called Kota Tua again a few times this week. It is always such a crowded place and people will ask to interview us for school homework and take pictures with us like the whole time we are there. But once they do that I ask who they are and stuff and invite them to our free English class, usually they are super excited about in and I get their numbers. We also find a lot of people there who are interested in our gospel message too. The one thing that is hard about Jakarta is following up and meeting people for the second time. Usually everyone is so busy and/or live far away so it is tough to meet them again, but we try!

The other day we went to a new members house and she has a nephew who lives with her and he has been learning with the missionaries. So we visited with him, he is a cool 15 year old and we invited him to be baptized on the 31st of January. His only issue is that it is hard for him to get to church because he is busy with his work at the market and lives pretty far away. Hopefully we will have success with him!

Oh I have a funny story, so two days ago I got this text from an unknown number and they asked us if we can meet up and talk together right now. So I said of course and asked if we could meet at the church. They asked if they could just meet us at the Kota Tua place so we thought okay sure. So instead of studying we went out to meet them. It takes about an hour or more to get to Kota Tua by train but we did it. Once we got there and met up with them it turned out they were just some high school Muslim kids who just wanted to interview a white person for their school homework. We were kinda ticked but I was patient with them and did their interview. I then invited them to our English class and they left. It was a little bit of a waste of time but whatever haha we got punked.

Yesterday we went to church. We went to the English ward first at 8am and then went to the Indonesian one after that. It was weird going to church with a lot of white people and hearing everything in English, it was really really nice haha. The talks were given by a mission couple here. They talked about the importance of reading the scriptures as a family and raising children in righteousness. They were great talks and I am thankful for my wonderful family who raised me. Well that is about it this week. Bye.

Elder Atkinson sitting in a rather empty bus

- Elder Hymas

Jakarta...

Hello all, apa kabar? This week has been a fun one indeed. So last Monday and Tuesday were my last days in Tangerang so I said goodbye to a few people and packed up and moved to the capitol city Jakarta.

Jakarta is crazy! It is literally packed full of people like nothing I have really experienced yet. They say that serving in Jakarta is its own mission in itself. It really is too. It is like super rare to meet with someone in their home and most of the people here are super busy and only work in Jakarta and live in one of the neighboring cities. So I think the main focus of the missionary work here is planting seeds everywhere. We do a lot of introducing the gospel to people and giving them our information, in hopes that the seed we plant in their heart will grow until the day they meet with missionaries again or desire to meet with us.

We have spent a lot of our time on the busway going back and forth and going places. On the busway we are able to talk to so many people and most all of them are interested in us and our message. It is pretty awesome. We have also went to some public places and monuments with a lot of people and talked to the many people there. We went to this one place called Kota Tua a few days ago and there were so many people there taking pictures and stuff. I think I ended up taking at least 600 pictures with random Indonesians that day but we also were able to give away lots of Books of Mormon and get their contact info. Nuts I tell ya.

Well my new companion is Elder Atkinson from Delta Utah. He is new about 4 months in Indonesia but his language is already super good and he loves talking to people. Everything is going well and we are having a great time. Yesterday for church I helped translate because the English ward just joined up the the Indonesian ward because of the holidays a lot of the English ward members went home or stuff like that so they just joined together for a bit.

Well I hope everyone has a great week! We are going ice staking again in a mall with a bunch of missionaries so that will be fun. I am actually not that bad at ice skating compared to most people here haha.

Love Elder Hymas

Kota Tua

me by the Monas Monument