Mission Blog of Rich and Deronda Lallatin

 One of the senior sisters commented that she often felt that serving a mission was like going camping in a dress.  We have come to agree.  For instance:  last Sunday we knew that we didn't have church until 1:30 so we decided to make a big breakfast of fresh buttermilk pancakes, fried eggs, bacon - the whole 9 yards.  We spent Friday and Saturday making sure we had everything we needed. We got up Sunday morning, started working on the pancakes, and pulled out our (one and only) frying pan..... our small frying pan (that's a phone beside it).  We cooked our pancakes one at a time (they were pretty big pancakes), scrambled our eggs, and didn't even try to cook the bacon.  We made do with what we had - camping in a dress. A quick word on bacon:  Muslims don't eat pork.  In Indonesia there is beef bacon.  We decided to give it a try.  It turns out that it is not bacon, with all the wonderful salt and and curing additives.  It is t...

 Let's talk showers.  This is the shower in our apartment. As far as missionary showers go, this is outstanding.  Junior missionaries have a drain in the floor with a bucket and ladle.  This one is attached to our hot water tank.  Not that we use the hot water much. It seems silly to shower off sweat with hot water.   Notice the bowl upside down over the drain.  This keeps out the cockroaches. The one big difference between this shower and your shower is that this one uses Indonesian water.  It is not safe (for anyone) to drink, and you should do all you can to keep it out of your eyes. So a typical shower, for me, is to wash my body and rinse off.  Then I locate the shampoo, the soap, and a face towel.  I close my eyes and my mouth (I still spit a lot while I'm showering), and stick my head under the water.  I feel for the shampoo, trying not to pour too much out, and lather my hair.  Then I feel for the soap and wash my ...

We are not in John Day anymore!  We arrived in Jakarta Indonesia Monday evening.  As you can see, our new neighborhood is very busy! (Busy, except for that street down below.  I'm not sure why it isn't used much.)  This is the view from our balcony.  It's very beautiful!  We are 14 hours ahead of the time in John Day, so we are working on learning to be awake in the daytime and asleep in the nighttime.    We should be in the rainy season, but they have not had rain for 6 months.  Our weather widgits have predicted rain a couple days now, but we haven't seen any yet.  The mission president and his wife picked us up at the airport and brought us to our apartment building.  They handed us off to the Snows, a senior couple from Caldwell, Idaho.  They arrived 3 1/2 weeks before us.  They had gotten our apartment all ready for us with dishes and towels and food.  Sister Snow had washed everything for us, so we could just us...