Great Expectations

keluarga:::

I just rode an angkot from the metal footstep up into the cab, my feet skimming the asphalt below me. It's the best way to ride, just outside the claustrophobic confines of the inner pleather benches, the wind whipping at your ponytail with one hand hooked securely through the door latch. I love it. I will miss it. Secretly I sometimes pray for overcrowding and endless traffic, just so the option is available.

Luckily, Jakarta has both requisites in abundance, and as I'm back in the Ibu Kota for tomorrow's zone conference, the prayers of several weeks were answered in my twenty minute ride from Ambassador Mall (It is Sister Christensen's birthday and she is celebrating by replacing all her old white shirts with new white shirts at her half-way mark) to the Tebet internet (where everything is familiar again and the sunset fell rosy-red against the golden mosque dome across the street and a circus' worth of children followed me to the door---Hello, Mister! Hey, hey mister! Was you naim?). We came in early today, P-Day a good excuse for a morning train across misty-blue rice fields and a few hours with the JakSel sisters, so we've had a lovely afternoon of taxis and buses and angkots and the general to and fro that is the city. Sometimes I think I miss it. Then we get stuck in traffic and I retract all sentimental musings. Then I get off in Kampung Melayu and there is the gorengan I love and the crumbling concrete corners along blackened and broken storefronts and the bus named Naomi and it all comes back again. It is interesting, every time I return. I get the smallest sense of what it will be like, one day, to miss all of Indonesia---and I don't like it, not one bit. It's a lot of emotions all wrapped up into something quite impossible to clarify or catalog, except that I know it will hurt. A lot.

Remember how I grew up always pretending? Pretending that I lived one hundred years in the past? Because actually I have always really wanted to experience another day, another age. So for a long while---well, all of life, actually---I figured my future was in Europe, in the cobblestoned byways and quaint remnants of those imaginings, countries that still offered up my childhood intrigues though centuries had now passed. That's what I thought. And then there it was, Indonesia Jakarta. And who ever put me in Indonesia Jakarta? Or in Asia at all? But something about reading that call, about knowing that future, made a lot of sense. Like something I'd worked towards long ago but since forgotten, now restored to me in new glory. It felt (and how cliche is this?) right. A feeling which in itself didn't make sense, because, again: Jakarta? Indonesia?

And then I came here, and I loved it. From the very beginning, I loved it. And as I continue to learn to love it even more, I'm beginning to find pieces of myself I never even imagined to be buried here---in the language, in the landscape, and then, this week, in the past. Because in Indonesia, I don't get to simply observe the cobblestones or consider the villages of days gone by. I am living them. Right now. The past in the present. We live in labyrinthine neighbourhoods I imagine would be akin to the London Dickens knew. Occasionally we have to take a horse-drawn carriage to reach an investigator. For fruit and vegetables and fresh cuts of meat we wander through open markets amidst the urban sprawl, stench and sweet scent existing side by side as sewer runs along crates fresh from the countryside. Yesterday I was lugging our enormous kitchen kettle from stove top to shower in my daily attempt to make the mountain water somewhat less survivable in the early morning and I just laughed out loud. Isn't this everything I always wanted to do? I am my own version of 1900 House.

Which then leads me to another thing that we all know but I usually forget: God knows us so much more fully and entirely than we ever fully appreciate. A thought I will leave up to you to connect to all of the above as President wants us back at Senopati and this is it for now and until next week. Bandung is the best, I am sleeping slightly better (five hours last night!) and on Saturday nights I sing Beatles songs with the busker trio across the street from the Church. Oh, Indonesia. I can't wait to share this all with you. I love you.

Sister E.

p-day. hiking. boiled eggs. pink-maned pony.

Hiking to Tangkuban Parahu, an 8 km mountain trek from our
friends' house in Lembang to the crater, hot springs,
and other general loveliness.




Just. . .Indonesia

Indonesia, again. She was taking this bundle of firewood back down to
the . . . apa namanya? Pasar.What is that word in English?
Anyway, to the pasar -- 5k away. We each tried carrying it. No way.

Having completed another forty minutes of really ridiculously steep steps
through the jungle. Honestly, it was hilarious, and if we hadn't been laughing
so hard,we would have been crying.
It was like two hours of non-stop, full-on lunges.

We boiled eggs for lunch. I don't even like boiled eggs. But from a hot spring? Okay.
There's a popular ad here that always end"Kalau bukan sekarang, kapan lagi?" ---
If not now, when again? That kind of sums up what Indonesia is like.
Also, re: boiling eggs in sulfuous craters? I met an American couple there and we had a nice, long talk about liability issues outside of the United States -- the place was a mother's worst nightmare. But such the best.

Pony in a poncho and pink mane. Told you it was magical.

:::beyond flying monkeys:::

From a hand-written letter dated 27 December:

Walking home after church today -- walking from the angkot to our street, I mean; we're not that close to the chapel -- the little lane outside our house was full-up with little barefoot children, all shrieking and clapping to the music of two youngish boys playing pots+pans drums and a broken tambourine. With a monkey. This is all pretty normal except wait a minute, stop the presses -- have I told you about organ-grinder monkeys here? How they tumble and cartwheel with a chain linked tight to one leg and how maybe I should feel sad and/or bad or at least feel that inner Jane Goodall rise up inside me but oh yeah: did I mention they also have a baby doll's face strapped to their heads, with the eyes pulled out so they can see through the painted lids, the synthetic blonde curls tumbling over their little grey monkey ears that stick out over the chubby white doll cheeks held up against their nose with elastic cords? Because that's all true, too. And it's ever so much more terrifying than Flying Monkeys. These poor creatures are the new stuff of my nightmares, the scenes that flash in horrible night-neons across my dreamscape. Animal rights aside, I cannot stand it. I can't even look at it. But one of these days I'm going to have to be brave enough to at least get a picture, if only to cure others of their Wizard of Oz phobias -- there are far more scary things out there, my friends.

New Year's Eve foto-foto

Atmi fans the flames Bali-style for our Tahun Baru Barbecue

Me + Mi: Marno made the halo, which was actually our Christmas wreath.
This was taken a few seconds after Sodjo was playing our (very broken) guitar
like a lyre to accompany Atmi in some traditional Javanese dancing.
It was a pretty great way to ring in the new year.

:::Dua Cerita:::

::P-day. Mountain Air::
The view from Lembang down into Bandung

Two stories in the interest of time:

Saturday afternoon I was waiting for an angkot to Antapani when a small hand tugged at my skirt folds. My hand went automatically to my coin pocket--- my heart's far too weak for this, no matter the effect on my monthly stipend---and gave the boy whatever I could fit in my fist, our hands touching for the fleeting exchange of a please and thank you, and then he was off running again. I watched him turn the corner, dashing barefoot across the eroding cobblestone before taking a long leap into the neighboring bakery. He offered my coins to the woman at the oven, along with a broken bottle he must have picked up mid-flight. She filled it for him from the tap, water still brown and murky, and then he was off again---passing my way with a shy smile before arriving at his final destination, the concrete island divider between traffic lanes at the height of rush hour. In between the bumpers and motorbikes I watched him share his spoils, the small troop of street kids passing the bottle around their circle in measured sips. It was gone within a few rounds, and then it was back to work. They strapped on their ukuleles, picked up their tambourines, and began to play from window to window.

I don't really understand why I got the life I did.

Sunday a shuttle-load of tourists wandered into Sacrament Meeting, visiting Bandung for the weekend from Malaysia. Members? Nope. Christians, looking for a Sunday service. And how did they find our little building, hidden away in the greenery of Taman Cibuening in a relatively undeveloped part of town? Their bus driver, the same one that drives us out of Jakarta every PLD [zone conference]. Muslim, but knows us and our name tags---and looked up where we meet and worship. All ten of the visitors stayed all three hours, each leaving with a Book of Mormon.

God works in mysterious ways. But it looks like He's working in Bandung, too.

Am late and will have to call President because of it, but I love you! Am feeling somewhat better, especially after all that mountain air. Sorry for yet another short email without a lot of connecting thoughts, but I know you know that I know the Church is True! Even in Indonesia.

love love love
E

Gitulah. (like this:)

kelku:::

Yesterday I doodled out the last page of my Moleskine study journal, the same one that carried me through my last month in the MTC and my first months in Indonesia. It's not very organized (or really organized at all), just a sort of spur-of-the-moment catchall to keep my thoughts in one place as I'm reading or listening or feeling. One thing that put my pen to paper all those months ago was something Elder Garret said in a District Meeting. I remember the moment very clearly, him at the front of the room with his hands in his pockets and his shoe scuffing the carpet floor. "Sorry," he said, apologizing for the story he was about to launch into. "All my stories are from last year. Because that's when I grew up."

I think I get it now, why Returned Missionaries get that rap. You know, how they talk about their missions and only their missions and always their missions and before all this, before I had had a lick at this lollipop (as it were; I am practicing positive thinking and isn't this sweet? And colorful! And lovely and special but oh-so-fleeting), I thought "Oh, really. You've been home two months/one year/a decade now and haven't you lived anything else?" But that's not the point. Of course they've lived more and longer, but the Mission is where that Living began.

So I guess what I mean to say is that I'm sending this apology a long ways in advance, just so you can practice patience before I come home a year from now and never ever shut up about it. Sorry, she said, apologizing for the story she was about to launch into. All my stories are from last year. Because that's when I grew up.

Terima kasih for the phone call. I would've never made it out of the nursery without you.
I love you.
Sister E.

ps: something in my brain is trying to connect Peter Pan ("How am I deficient?"--"You're just a boy.") with A Knight's Tale ("You're just a silly girl, aren't you?") but it's not quite making the jump. But maybe you get what I mean, anyway.

pps: really. I love you.

pos udara:::airmail

email 30 December 09:::

Do you ever feel, when you're reading scripture, that you just want more? Especially in Ether, when you spin through centuries of Jaredite history in just a few verses of Moroni's abridgment, or Nephi pulls one of his "And it came to pass I saw the single most amazing, incredible, beyond your wildest dreams of a vision ever yet revealed and---oh, sorry. Can't tell you that quite yet." And you kind of sigh, and imagine for a moment, and then write across your heart the promise to read every word of God ever revealed front to back and forwards again the minute it's all revealed---while tossing the month's unread Liahona/Ensign among the broken power cord and last year's White Pages and postponing your next scripture study for the next day.

Or I don't know. Maybe that's just me. At any rate, I'll give you the moral of the story before I even begin: there is always more. Because as members of the living Church of the living God, His word is given to us in very nearly daily doses through a living prophet---and then it's up to us to apply it in our own lives so that we become living ourselves.

That's what I've learned these past few days, after Saturday morning's phone call (Alhamdullilah! I love you.) spurred me onto some sort of premature spring cleaning spree here in Bandung. I started in the bedroom, scrubbed out the kitchen, and had just started in on the study room when I found in the corner a cardboard box just wide enough to fit a magazine and deep enough to hold a good hundred of them---which it did. A hundred, if not slightly more, Ensigns, New Eras, Liahonas . . . all in English. Christmas, indeed.

So for the next little while I sat cross-legged on the cold tile, sorting through the stack of them all, organizing them into piles of usefulness (as far as outside appearance goes, of course; they'd been there for a while and most were battered beyond repair) until I had a sizable group of them just tall enough to fit at my bedside, which has gotten shorter and shorter with the week as I read each one cover to cover and then dive right into the next.

At times, this has been a stupidly painful process to put me through---turn a page and there's the Sharp family! Lindsey Brinton sitting pretty in pink on a front cover. A Kershisnik in full color. Susan Tanner eats cheese toast. You know, the little parts of my heart that leap up at me in odd places. But for the most part, it's been akin to . . . oh, I don't know . . . Malachi 3:10? Windows of heaven opening, and all that. Wisdom, counsel, comfort, Truth, words of prophets directed by God; I realize this shouldn't be so much of a revelation but up until this moment in my life I've never been so in awe of the resources available to us. Here we are, and Life is Hard. But then God goes and gives us a million ways to make it all the easier. I read stories from members all over the world, their faith strengthening mine. I read an article from a former sister missionary and didn't feel so alone. I read talks from Apostles that answered the very questions I'd just been asking. I read words from Prophets that spoke directly to my soul.

I read about Ruth May Fox. A British girl who crossed the plains as a teenager, a mother of twelve and champion of Woman's Suffrage. A woman called to serve as YWs president at age 75 and then lived to be 104. The poetess who penned the marching hymn "Carry On!"

I wanted to be more like her.

Then I read an article from Elder Holland on the progression of Eternal Self and the eons that shape our personality and realized I could.

In Indonesia, the Saints are fond of a hymn called "Kita Maju Ke Kemuliaan"---our "We Are Marching on to Glory." What is this little gem of a verse I don't ever remember hearing at home? Here they sing it like we sing I Am A Child of God; from Primary to Priesthood, they all know it by heart. And I've come to love it, too; though it's meant to be sung at a marching clip, they play it slightly slower here and the words are given this grateful gravity to them that fills me fuller with each new note. It's such a sure song, a bright song, a knowing song----that makes me want to do. Kita maju 'tuk kembali, the chorus reads, ke tanah yang suci. Tujuan kita t'lah pasti: Hidup yang abadi. We're marching to return to holy land, our purpose already sure: eternal and everlasting life. It's easy to put life back into perspective, when you see it like that. We are the lucky ones; we know where we came from, we know what we're doing here, and we know where we're headed. Our purpose is already sure. So why am I so easily beset by distraction, by weakness, by the ways of the world? With a message like the one we wave from our banner, there should be no need to deviate from our marching course. I've been thinking over this for these last few days, the memorized verses tumbling about in my head, and I've decided it's the chorus that I'll sing to greet 2010. I really want to change. I really want to grow. I really, really want to become. And these are new year resolutions I don't want to break. So, as the Indonesians would say, "Ayo!" It's time to march straight on into the light---even if that does mean walking, stumbling, on these shadowfeet. The secret is: we can (and should) lean on Him all the way.

maju, terus maju.
I love you.
E

ps:::If Kemuliaan's my anthem, Ruth May's my conductor---she even inspired me to doodle a bit, too [see below]. Read up on her if you can!

:::Ruth May Fox:::

:::post scripts:::

Sister Atmi's been teaching me Cantonese. And now calls me "Ma" like they do in HK, which comes out like a short bark more akin to a distressed goose than a small child needing her mum. It makes us both laugh every time.

Pres took us to Cafe Bali, which is this terribly expensive-looking little restaurant just a ways above our house that super swanky people are always walking towards and I always thought, "wow, that's so beyond anything we could ever experience," and then we go today and their prime steak dishes are maybe the equivalent of US $4. The incredible jump between have and have-not continues to astound---astound---me.

:::a new desk:::

email excerpt 30 December 2009:

Today two little boys helped me carry my new desk into our house (new desk! President does read our green letters, turns out), and as we're toting it down the street (the street's too narrow for any cars to get through), me walking backwards and the two of them pretending to be stronger than their little arms could really manage, all three of us laughing at the situation: barefoot bule, rain, etc . . . I just thought "What happens when this doesn't happen any more?" And then I gave them American licorice for their loyal service, which resulted in another ten neighbour friends crowding around me, hanging on my arms and tugging on my skirts and I feel something like "This is one of those moments you're going to miss." And then we're driving around Bandung with President (everything's different from the rear row in a car) and I'm realizing "They don't have that in America . . . they don't have that in America . . . they don't have that in America . . ."