Happy Halloween everyone! Good thing it's P-day so we can try to at least have a little fun :) Sister Hyde has slacks they gave her from the MTC, a button up shirt, and one of the Elders left a tie in our house and an Elder's old name tag, so she took a picture of her as an Elder. Me and Sister Roylance are matching in our most Halloween colors, and I bought some candy today. That's the extent of our Halloween here :) I love your pictures you sent of the costumes. Sparky is an adorable super dog.
This week was sadly uneventful. It was honestly one of the harder weeks as in lessons and finding people to teach. Our area is MASSIVE! So lots of times if we talk to people that will listen to us, they live in the city of Depok which doesn't have a church building yet. It's right in the middle of Jakarta, Bogor, Bekasi, and Tangerang. so it would take them about an hour and a half to get to any of the churches by riding a motorcycle. So that's our challenge, is to get people to be willing to go really far to come to church. So, we didn't have very many lessons, but the ones we had were pretty good :) My favorite lesson this week was with ...... She is the neighbor of a member an has had a pretty rough life. She is just the sweetest thing. Her family causes her a lot of stress, having to have her grandkids over at her tiny rented out "house" all the time. We started teaching her because she was just curious to know more, but now as we have moved a little farther forward, it is definitely cool to see her curiosity turn into really wanting to know the truth. She is Muslim, and really didn't know anything about Jesus Christ. We taught her about Jesus Christ from the living Christ, talked a little bit about the plan of salvation, and explained about the Book of Mormon. We were waiting until she understood enough to teach about the Pemulihan, and this week we had our opportunity. She asked us where the Kitab Mormon came from and how did Joseph Smith get it, So we felt she had enough of a little foundation to understand the importance of having a restoration of truth that was lost. When we explained about prophets and dispensations and how sometimes people don't receive prophets, she said "Why would people reject the prophets?" It was so cute to me. She really is starting to understand. She believes there are people who teach truth, and we are going to focus on going to her house and reading the Book of Mormon with her a few days a week so she can have someone there to help her understand, and then do the regular lessons as Sister ...... house so she can have a member there with her too. She is going to move REALLY slow, but I know the Lord can do miracles and I believe one day she will be baptized. The Lord really can work amazing things in the hearts of those who are humble enough to receive Him. Sister Roylance and I get a long really well. It's a little hard because we're both only 5 months in Indonesia and still aren't really great at teaching and planning and language and everything, but we help each other and it's working out. She is so funny and likes picking up lizards and snails and stuff like that. I love her and it will be fun that now I have someone to come home with instead of being by myself. I'm sure we will do a lot of things together when we get home. This letter is really short, but this week was really uneventful. Hopefully I will have some investigators this next week that will be willing to come to church! My faith is being tried here, but I just have to remember that a witness only comes after a trial of my faith. Love you! Have a Happy Halloween and eat a lot of Halloween Candy for me! Love, Sister Davis Sorry there aren't any pictures either because our original warnet was closed, then the backup warnets power went out 20 minutes in, so we rode an angkot to our plan C warnet haha. Hopefully next week I will have some good ones!
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Selamat Siang :)
This week was transfers! On Tuesday morning Sister Hyde and I said goodbye to Sister Simanungkalit who moved to Jakarta and Sister Kaleopa who is moving to be an STL in Surabaya. I was sad but also ready for a new change here too. Sister Roylance got here from Jakarta at about 11 and Sister Wheeler got in from Surabaya at about 12. Sister Roylance, my new companion, is a small town country girl. She likes looking at lizards and snails but also likes looking really cute and doesn't like the ants that crawl on her desk. She is just a little ball of joy and we are overall getting a long really well. :) Sister Wheeler is a former STL and goes home next transfer. She only moved because her and Sister Antonio were the STLs in Surabaya and they were both going home at the same time. One of them had to move so Sister Kaleopa could be trained as an STL. We are really happy to have her and her desire to be 100% obedient to be a good example of how we should be as missionaries. We think president sent her to train us how to be the best missionaries so we can eventually train in the next couple of months. Thursday we got up at like 5 am to make the train to go to Senopati by 9 am. The train is only like 50 cents for an hour and a half ride and it is fantastic. I love Indonesia :) We had interviews and then went to the church in Jakarta to do a Cuci Motor Gratis (free car wash). The Jakarta missionaries are really lucky because we all got a lot of contacts for them from it :) On Friday morning we had Zone Conference. It was so awesome and I really loved the things that President Rowley taught to us. He talked about the vision for Indonesia in the next couple of years and told us exactly what has to be done to have a temple built in this country. The Jakarta stake will hopefully be able to be split soon, but for that to be done we have to make Bandung a ward and split another Ward in Bogor to have a new building in the city of Depok which is just south of Jakarta. It's like this awkward part where people go to Bekasi, Tangerang, Jakarta, or Bogor, depending on if they live north, south, east, or west. Depok right now is our area, so we just have to find those people who are willing to go far to a church right now so eventually a new building can be built there for all those members. It is awesome to see it drawn out so we have a long term vision about what needs to be done. The last few weeks have been kind of hard for Bogor 2. We don't have a lot of investigators that are really enthusiastic to actually make commitments, so we have been weekly planning mostly to fill time. We decided to drop like 4 investigators so now we only have about 6, so our goal this week is to find more. On Saturday we decided to just go outside and contact people, but that was just so not effective at all. It's so much easier to just contact people as you are on your way to an appointment. In Preach My Gospel, it doesn't talk about finding people through tracting or contacting until 9 pages into the chapter about finding people and it is only a tiny sentence. So we decided it will be way more worth our time to really meet with as many members as possible and help them help us. We are going to ask for referrals like I never have before. It probably will take a little while for the success to be seen, but hopefully it will come soon. I'm excited to see the progress here in Indonesia, and I know I will come back here to this beautiful place with all the people able to have the blessings of the temple so much more accessible. I love you! Hope you have an awesome week!! Love, Sister Davis Don't worry Mom, I have already thought about what I want for Christmas. An umbrella, my backpack that is upstairs by the bed, and the mini version of Preach my Gospel in Indonesian. I NEED that really bad because I always have to bring my English one if there are district meetings but the meetings are in Indonesian so it's just weird. That would help tons. I also want a good family picture to show people here. I want a good photo that is laminated that I can always bring with me to show people. Other than that I just want lots of candy and maybe something special like for my Birthday or something. Because I assume you'll just send one package for both. Don't send clothes because clothes here are SO CHEAP and SO MODEST! Literally it is such a blessing to live in a country where it is no way appropriate to wear shirts without sleeves and shorts that don't go to your knees. Definitely blessed here in Indonesia. My hair is still pretty sad on the ends, but the roots are DEFINITELY growing, but slowly because it's only been 2 months. I think the roots at the top of my head will be to my ears by the end of the mission, but it's gonna take a good year after that until it is completely normal. So I don't know if its the shampoo or what but it's growing slowly but steady :)
This week was great and surprising. This next week is transfers, so on Friday we got a call from President and were pretty surprised that one of us was actually moving. Sister Kaleopa is moving back to Jawa Timur and is going to be an STL in Surabaya. She is pretty sad because Bogor is so awesome and she was only here for just over a month, but I know it will be an awesome experience for her to be an STL. Sister Simanungkalit is also moving to Jakarta. My new companion is moving from Jakarta to Bogor. Her name is Sister Roylance. She is from Arizona and went into the MTC right after me. So she knows all the Thai missionaries from my MTC District :) I hope our language is okay with us still kind of newbies, so we'll see how this works :) I think we are going home at the same time now because now I'm one transfer behind. I'm so much more prepared to lead the area this time so that will be a lot better now. I don't have to be as nervous as the first time. The highlight this week was our baptism!! She was my investigator for a while before I got split just to Bogor 2, and she FINALLY got baptized! She has had 3 baptismal dates. 1 from the Elders before we got here and 1 for 2 weeks ago. She finally stopped smoking and was able to answer all the baptismal interview questions. Saturday was her baptism and it was so cute. There were definitely many trials and boulders in the way for this baptism. It rained the hardest it has in Bogor since we have been here. And the traffic was INSANE! The other sisters and ..... were a half hour late. But when she finally got there there were like over 50 members that came. I LOVE BOGOR! The fact that they all sacrifice their Saturday to drive an hour or more to the church to see this cute little woman be baptized is amazing. And she was worried that no one would come. She even bore her testimony that she wrote out and it was cute. I just see an angel when I look at her. She is definitely a part of the ward now. We have so much hope for her twin 14 year old boys that were so lost before she met with the missionaries. They hadn't been to school in MONTHS and just went to internet cafes all the time to play online games. But they finally went back to school and they both have an interest to get baptized. A lot of her family also came to the baptism which was really cool. If they could all get baptized eventually, that would be a miracle bigger than I ever could have hoped to be a part of. I am so excited to see the future for their cute family. I love Bogor. I am so blessed to have been assigned here when before I wouldn't have ever thought it was a possibility. This is literally one of the best places in the mission to serve and to have fun, and I'm just so blessed. The Lord has definitely allowed me to receive blessings after having trials at the beginning. I love you all! I hope you have a fantastic week :) Love, Sister Davis Every week is so different as a missionary and I love it. You never get bored and if you do it means you're not working hard enough.
This week started on P-day going to the Bishop's house to go to his Catfish farm. We grabbed Catfish from out of a crate into a bucket and then the bishop brought them home and cooked them right up so we had awesome fried fish, literally as fresh as you can possibly get. It was way good and really fun! We also met with Sister ..... and her sister, Sister ..... on Monday. I loved hearing their story and just how sincere they were. They have been inactive for about a year, and all they needed was a push to come back to church. We talked with Sister ..... for a while and she said before this time, she didn't really feel like she had a testimony. She is just newly married and was going to just go to the same church as her husband. But since they came on Sunday, she told us that she knew that she had a testimony, and she couldn't let go of what she has believed since she was young. She said it was the first time she has prayed that there would be an opportunity for her husband to want to be baptized into our church. The sad thing is they moved this week to a place where there isn't a church, but they are going to come to stake conference and they really hope they can eventually have an opportunity to move to a place where there is one. On Wednesday Sister ...... and I went to Jakarta for exchanges with the STL's. I was kind of worried it would be sitting on the busway and contacting all day, but the appointments I had with Sister Jatmiko actually worked out! The best one was a lesson we had at the mission office with their investigator Sister ...... On the outside she is probably the last person I would contact, but they found her because she heard in on Elder Tuttle contacting someone and then she came to church. She is so amazing! She has had a rough life but her faith and willingness to follow what she hears is wonderful. We taught about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and she really understood and loved it. She has a baptismal date for next Saturday, and I really hope everything can work out with that. The thing that is hard is that right now she is working at the ministry for the church she goes to, so if she changes churches she loses her job. I can't imagine having faith like that to just really trust that that is the right thing. This weekend was conference! I was so so excited, and then the Zone Leaders called and said there was a new rule that missionaries weren't allowed to watch it in English, which really bursted my bubble... I was really sad because I didn't trust my Indonesian enough and I thought I would fall asleep from having to translate everything in my head, but it ended up being a lot better than I thought it would be! I understood the gist of most of the talks and was still able to write a ton of notes. But on that note I really really need the English one as soon as it hits Deseret Book because I want to actually understand all of it. The overall message I got was that these are the times that members need to understand all the foundational doctrines of the Gospel to prepare for the second coming of Jesus Christ. Literally every single talk related to one or more missionary lessons. The restoration, the plan of salvation, The Gospel of Jesus Christ, The commandments, and laws and ordinances. It is so much more important to understand and to live the simple doctrines because that is what is going to give us the greatest happiness and prepare us most for the eternities. Today for P-Day was AMAZING! We went to the area Puncak again, because you could stay there a week and not finish everything. I think Bogor is literally the best place for P-day in Indonesia. This place was a huge waterfall that was so pretty! We went with ....., a member who is planning to go on a mission within the next year. We took lots of pictures and went on a hike. At the top, we got stuck in the rain, so we waited at this shack store place where we ate, and then when the rain calmed down we started to go back down the trail, but then it started raining again! Luckily I brought my umbrella to save everyone's bags from getting wet. I also bought a bag for P-day that was about $3.50 so yes Indonesia is literally the greatest. I'm so happy to be here on my mission. I get to see the Gospel work miracles and bring happiness to people's lives and also to go on crazy adventures half way around the world. Love you! Have an awesome week! Love, Sister Davis |
Sister Jacqueline DavisSister Davis is currently serving as a missionary in the Indonesia Jakarta Mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. ContactMission Address: Sister Jacqueline Davis Indonesia Jakarta Mission Jalan Senopati 115 Kebayoran Baru Jakarta 12190 INDONESIA Email: [email protected] Prepare to Serve Link: http://preparetoserve.com/indonesia-jakarta-mission Learn more about the LDS Church:www.lds.org
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August 2017
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