Mission Blog of Rich and Deronda Lallatin

 We are at a humanitarian missionary training conference in Bangkok Thailand this week.  On Wed night we were able to attend a temple session at the just-opened Bangkok temple.  It is beautiful.  That is the moon in the sky.  It brings to mind the scripture about the glory of the moon differing from the glory of the sun.   Or the glory of the temple. Here we are in front of the temple.  All those curlicues say 'Holiness to the Lord' in Thai. I like that the Christus figure is surrounded by greenery.  It's very appropriate for SE Asia. Our session had every chair filled, for a total of 29 senior missionaries and church staff.  The session was in English, but when I got to the veil all the questions were asked in Thai.  I winged it pretty well.  Afterward I couldn't find anyone else that had their questions in Thai.  I don't know if it was a mark of respect, or if they were yanking my chain.  Either way it was pretty co...

If you were to lay a map of Indonesia over a map of the US, and line it up so that the most northwest part of Indonesia was right around Portland, you would see that: The island of Sumatra stretches from Portland to Denver; Jakarta and the island of Java stretches from New Mexico to Arkansas; The island of Kalimantan (Borneo) goes to Wisconsin's border with Canada; The island of Sulawesi stretches from Missouri to Canada north of Detroit; And the island of Papua is out in the Atlantic Ocean. This is a very big country. There is a branch in Medan.  There is one in Manado (go to Chicago and follow the pink up until it gets into Canada).   All the rest of the wards and branches are on the islands of Java and Bali.   Missionary transfers involve 3 hour plane rides. This is a very big country. And when the Hastriters go home next month, it will all be our area. How cool is that?!

  This is one of the elevators in our building.  It is about the same as other elevators I've ridden in (except for the attractive young lady riding in it):  the doors open and close, it goes up and down.  There are a couple of idiosyncrasies that I haven't encountered  before. You will notice that there are no 4s anywhere on the control panel - no 4th floor, 14th floor, ..., or any floors in the 40s.  In Chinese the word for 4 and the word for death are very similar.  4 is bad luck.  In western culture 13 is also bad luck.  I don't know why they skipped the 3rd floor.  Maybe they were just in a groove.  Our apartment is on floor #19, but it's really only 15 stories in the air. The elevator also has a pretty cool security feature.  You can get on at any floor and go down to the lobby or the basements without a problem.  But it won't go up without your apartment key, which is attached to a card with a chip in it. When you p...

 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...