(and other eternal truths in all their
extraordinary simplicity)
FamilyMine,
I live in a house. A real, live, with-a-floor-plan and even-barest-semblance-of-a-front-garden house. And it's a House Beautiful house. A house I would honest-to-goodness like to pack up and slow ship all the way back to America. It is white, and light; there are long open windows on every wall to illuminate soaring ceilings and the feminine step-shadows of crown molding in every room. There's a coffee table in the front room (there's a front room!) with Liahonas and letters to read before heading out the door; there's a chandelier (a chandelier!) above the foyer and a framed batik map of Indonesia above the loveseat. In the courtyard (there's a courtyard!) there's a water pump and geraniums and just enough square space for some six a.m. shuttlecock (did I tell you SisLily bought me a badminton racket for my birthday? Is life the best? Do I love her?) and in the bathroom there is limestone tiling and a shower head (a shower head!) and a western-style toilet. In my bedroom I still sleep on a sunken mattress on the floor—-but it is a sunken mattress on the floor next to a dark-wood armoire and full-length window with decorative metal screening and a sand-and-shell-framed Jesus on the wall. I sleep like the sea here; fathoms deep in shades of blue.
In the kitchen there is a table. It is square and lacquer-black and modern but classic and just big enough for the four of us. At night, after planning and journaling and the requisite second shower of the day, we gather for nasi goreng or girl talk or the occasional speaker-phone conversation back to Senopati. In the mornings we meet there for companionship study, and last night SisLily sat across from me to read out loud from this month's Liahona while waiting for 10:30 to send us to sleep. Oh! It is a home, and how I have missed a home! That SisLily is here to live it with me obviously makes the place instant greatness, but there is something to say about the Architecture of Happiness, and our little abode on Jalan Ogan has it in spades.
My new companion is Sister Rianti Simanjuntak, who has a Mandy Moore smile and all the dramatic flair of Katharine Stevens at a YTS casting call. She's from Sumatera's Medan, which means she's Batak—-and fulfills every stereotype of the tribe. Strong-willed and straightforward. Entirely independent and honest to a fault. It's been a whiplash sort of start for me, coming out of four months with Sister Atmi and a mission that, up to this point, has been all Javanese (read: the opposite of everything I just wrote to describe the Batak people), but we get along really well and teach particularly well together. I'm glad for the shock and jump start; I think I'd become far too comfortable culturally here, so this is taking me outside that safe circle again and pushing me further up and further in. Five days isn't much for a full review, but so far, so good.
Our other Indonesian counterpart is Sister Kezzia Bayodo, who is Raani Hippolite to a T. Sometimes I have to stop myself from frog hunter jokes, it's that crazy. She's bright and brave and incorrigibly cheeky; together, the four of us seem to have balanced out into the perfect formula for a freshman year in University dorms. It's been an interesting sphere-switch, at least for me; up until this point my companionships/housemates have been more of a mother/daughter or teacher/student situation, whereas this is all level and decidedly more adult. It feels great, but also strange—-where do I fit in the equation now? If my companion doesn't need me, who does? Good thing mission has taught me to like question marks. This place is full of them, plus a few interrobangs.
So, what else? Oh, the branch. Is beautiful. What isn't, here in Malang? This city is shockingly clean, regulated, shaped and formed. The streets are swept up into tidy gardens and neighboring rice padi; the houses are kept and orderly, newly painted and ornamented with bamboo bird cages in bright reds and vivid blues. The sky is blue, a startling familiarity after seven months in grey-cloud, air-polluted West Java. Even the markets seem to be sanitary, a more organized mess of daily wares and wants that keeps each stall from sprawl and takes every new street corner back in time a few decades, an Indonesia before corporate candy wrappers or sponsored storefronts. In fact, I have a new thought of theory: I am a time traveler. As this move to Malang means I'll likely finish up my mission in Solo, my sixteen months here will have moved me in measured increments back through Indonesia's ages—-the up-to-the-minute 2010 rush of Jakarta, the emerging metropolis of a 1990's Bandung, the careful country life edging into city-hood of 1970's Malang, and (from my eight hours there last week) the bikes and becaks in 1950's Solo, the Spirit of Java. I have so far decreased in population size with every new transfer, which would hold through into Solo, too. This backward sprint has given me so much more appreciation for the underlying cultural ties of Indonesia's city life, for the country soil that holds each citizen to their tanah air despite the modern era's concrete obsession and technological juxtapositions. The way I'm moving through my mission, I fall more deeply and fully in love with this country every new life I live in this service. This past week in Malang has been . . . regenerative. In an old-is-new and I've-always-known-you sort of strength.
A lot of that comes from the branch here, the members and the missionaries. For one, this is Sister Katam's hometown—so my mission trainer was here to meet me at the chapel doors first thing Sunday morning. Her whole family is lovely and good and strong, something that holds true for most every other member here, too. It is a very open, friendly, and functioning branch of the Church here in Indonesia (which is so rare a beauty that just sitting to hear them sing in Sacrament kind of makes me cry). I think, too, I've finally found my footing here as far as language and cultural compatibility go, so I came into Malang without any of the excess anxiety and personal insecurities that had followed me to my former areas. I even made a hundred people laugh-out-loud in my Sacrament introduction—an occasion that, even throughout my entire lifetime, I could probably count up on one hand. I'm not a very funny person. But Indonesian humor never gets old, so the Javanese rondo meaning "widow" was still just as funny this Sunday as it was seven months ago in JakSel. Yeah. We got off on a good foot. Maybe too good—-we have dinner invitations every night this week, and that's more food than we really ever need in a year. The Javanese can't say no and they don't want you to, either—even when you clearly look like you're about to be sick after your third glass of banana juice.
Monday night we were invited to President Iwan's for Family Home Evening, on the condition that we teach his children the First Vision as if they'd never heard it before. It was an interesting challenge—the Iwan's are rock-solid members and their children particularly exemplary—and now one of my most favorite moments of the mission. It is fun to teach with Sister Lily again (we just have a natural rhythm and synchronized thought process that lends itself well to spur-of-the-moment spiritual direction) and, like I said, Simanjuntak and I teach well together, too, so our part of the lesson I think went really well, but it was President Iwan's follow-up that made it all the more real. When we were finished, he added his testimony to ours and then turned to his three girls, who were sitting in order of age about his feet and looking intensely up at their father for further light and knowledge (Liahona photographer, anyone?). They were so trusting and so radiant; their parents were so tangibly steadfast and sacrificing. Pres Iwan talked about how they, as parents, have always taught them, their children, the truth. How they have tried to bring them up in righteousness, in strength. It was a beautiful discourse on the family, on love. But then he said, "This will not be enough. Nila, Kenisa, Jessica? That story the sisters just shared with you is either true, or it is not. If it is true, of course, then it is the single most important message you've ever heard in this life. I have brought you up in the hope that you will be able to recognize the light. But that decision is ultimately up to you." And then he taught something I have been learning lesson after lesson, day after day, these last months: you choose. That's the glory of it after all; God did not give us a flippant wave and a ziploc of trail mix for the road as we left the Garden of Eden for this lone and dreary world but a blueprint for happiness, a road map to return, and the ability to choose. There is only so much influence we are open to, only so many road signs we can study or theater scripts to read before, ultimately, we have to step into the opportunity to live itself. To walk into the wind, take that road less traveled, step out into the spotlight on opening night. Everything we know, everything we do, and (did you see this one coming?) everything we become is up to us. This is incredibly obvious with our investigators, who mostly seem to want us to wave a magic wand and make it all better before they'll even consider stepping into the solution themselves, but it has also rung true on a personal level this last little while, too. And the days I choose God, to love Him and to know Him, have inevitably been the days I have glimpsed heaven here on earth, the days I've felt the strength of angels behind the pathetic movement of my mere mortal struggle. So when Pres Iwan finished again with his testimony of the ability to choose and the importance of taking responsibility for the knowledge we have been given, I could absolutely add my amen. And Sister Bayodo threw in a hallelujah, too.
Now we are out to Sister Maria's for dinner with a referral tonight; she is a particularly pixie-sized sister with an indefatigable excitement and bright countenance that defies all 46 years of her life. When SisLily told me to look for Tinkerbell on Sunday, I knew exactly who she was talking about.
Love it. Love you.
Sister E.
FamilyMine,
I live in a house. A real, live, with-a-floor-plan and even-barest-semblance-of-a-front-garden house. And it's a House Beautiful house. A house I would honest-to-goodness like to pack up and slow ship all the way back to America. It is white, and light; there are long open windows on every wall to illuminate soaring ceilings and the feminine step-shadows of crown molding in every room. There's a coffee table in the front room (there's a front room!) with Liahonas and letters to read before heading out the door; there's a chandelier (a chandelier!) above the foyer and a framed batik map of Indonesia above the loveseat. In the courtyard (there's a courtyard!) there's a water pump and geraniums and just enough square space for some six a.m. shuttlecock (did I tell you SisLily bought me a badminton racket for my birthday? Is life the best? Do I love her?) and in the bathroom there is limestone tiling and a shower head (a shower head!) and a western-style toilet. In my bedroom I still sleep on a sunken mattress on the floor—-but it is a sunken mattress on the floor next to a dark-wood armoire and full-length window with decorative metal screening and a sand-and-shell-framed Jesus on the wall. I sleep like the sea here; fathoms deep in shades of blue.
In the kitchen there is a table. It is square and lacquer-black and modern but classic and just big enough for the four of us. At night, after planning and journaling and the requisite second shower of the day, we gather for nasi goreng or girl talk or the occasional speaker-phone conversation back to Senopati. In the mornings we meet there for companionship study, and last night SisLily sat across from me to read out loud from this month's Liahona while waiting for 10:30 to send us to sleep. Oh! It is a home, and how I have missed a home! That SisLily is here to live it with me obviously makes the place instant greatness, but there is something to say about the Architecture of Happiness, and our little abode on Jalan Ogan has it in spades.
My new companion is Sister Rianti Simanjuntak, who has a Mandy Moore smile and all the dramatic flair of Katharine Stevens at a YTS casting call. She's from Sumatera's Medan, which means she's Batak—-and fulfills every stereotype of the tribe. Strong-willed and straightforward. Entirely independent and honest to a fault. It's been a whiplash sort of start for me, coming out of four months with Sister Atmi and a mission that, up to this point, has been all Javanese (read: the opposite of everything I just wrote to describe the Batak people), but we get along really well and teach particularly well together. I'm glad for the shock and jump start; I think I'd become far too comfortable culturally here, so this is taking me outside that safe circle again and pushing me further up and further in. Five days isn't much for a full review, but so far, so good.
Our other Indonesian counterpart is Sister Kezzia Bayodo, who is Raani Hippolite to a T. Sometimes I have to stop myself from frog hunter jokes, it's that crazy. She's bright and brave and incorrigibly cheeky; together, the four of us seem to have balanced out into the perfect formula for a freshman year in University dorms. It's been an interesting sphere-switch, at least for me; up until this point my companionships/housemates have been more of a mother/daughter or teacher/student situation, whereas this is all level and decidedly more adult. It feels great, but also strange—-where do I fit in the equation now? If my companion doesn't need me, who does? Good thing mission has taught me to like question marks. This place is full of them, plus a few interrobangs.
So, what else? Oh, the branch. Is beautiful. What isn't, here in Malang? This city is shockingly clean, regulated, shaped and formed. The streets are swept up into tidy gardens and neighboring rice padi; the houses are kept and orderly, newly painted and ornamented with bamboo bird cages in bright reds and vivid blues. The sky is blue, a startling familiarity after seven months in grey-cloud, air-polluted West Java. Even the markets seem to be sanitary, a more organized mess of daily wares and wants that keeps each stall from sprawl and takes every new street corner back in time a few decades, an Indonesia before corporate candy wrappers or sponsored storefronts. In fact, I have a new thought of theory: I am a time traveler. As this move to Malang means I'll likely finish up my mission in Solo, my sixteen months here will have moved me in measured increments back through Indonesia's ages—-the up-to-the-minute 2010 rush of Jakarta, the emerging metropolis of a 1990's Bandung, the careful country life edging into city-hood of 1970's Malang, and (from my eight hours there last week) the bikes and becaks in 1950's Solo, the Spirit of Java. I have so far decreased in population size with every new transfer, which would hold through into Solo, too. This backward sprint has given me so much more appreciation for the underlying cultural ties of Indonesia's city life, for the country soil that holds each citizen to their tanah air despite the modern era's concrete obsession and technological juxtapositions. The way I'm moving through my mission, I fall more deeply and fully in love with this country every new life I live in this service. This past week in Malang has been . . . regenerative. In an old-is-new and I've-always-known-you sort of strength.
A lot of that comes from the branch here, the members and the missionaries. For one, this is Sister Katam's hometown—so my mission trainer was here to meet me at the chapel doors first thing Sunday morning. Her whole family is lovely and good and strong, something that holds true for most every other member here, too. It is a very open, friendly, and functioning branch of the Church here in Indonesia (which is so rare a beauty that just sitting to hear them sing in Sacrament kind of makes me cry). I think, too, I've finally found my footing here as far as language and cultural compatibility go, so I came into Malang without any of the excess anxiety and personal insecurities that had followed me to my former areas. I even made a hundred people laugh-out-loud in my Sacrament introduction—an occasion that, even throughout my entire lifetime, I could probably count up on one hand. I'm not a very funny person. But Indonesian humor never gets old, so the Javanese rondo meaning "widow" was still just as funny this Sunday as it was seven months ago in JakSel. Yeah. We got off on a good foot. Maybe too good—-we have dinner invitations every night this week, and that's more food than we really ever need in a year. The Javanese can't say no and they don't want you to, either—even when you clearly look like you're about to be sick after your third glass of banana juice.
Monday night we were invited to President Iwan's for Family Home Evening, on the condition that we teach his children the First Vision as if they'd never heard it before. It was an interesting challenge—the Iwan's are rock-solid members and their children particularly exemplary—and now one of my most favorite moments of the mission. It is fun to teach with Sister Lily again (we just have a natural rhythm and synchronized thought process that lends itself well to spur-of-the-moment spiritual direction) and, like I said, Simanjuntak and I teach well together, too, so our part of the lesson I think went really well, but it was President Iwan's follow-up that made it all the more real. When we were finished, he added his testimony to ours and then turned to his three girls, who were sitting in order of age about his feet and looking intensely up at their father for further light and knowledge (Liahona photographer, anyone?). They were so trusting and so radiant; their parents were so tangibly steadfast and sacrificing. Pres Iwan talked about how they, as parents, have always taught them, their children, the truth. How they have tried to bring them up in righteousness, in strength. It was a beautiful discourse on the family, on love. But then he said, "This will not be enough. Nila, Kenisa, Jessica? That story the sisters just shared with you is either true, or it is not. If it is true, of course, then it is the single most important message you've ever heard in this life. I have brought you up in the hope that you will be able to recognize the light. But that decision is ultimately up to you." And then he taught something I have been learning lesson after lesson, day after day, these last months: you choose. That's the glory of it after all; God did not give us a flippant wave and a ziploc of trail mix for the road as we left the Garden of Eden for this lone and dreary world but a blueprint for happiness, a road map to return, and the ability to choose. There is only so much influence we are open to, only so many road signs we can study or theater scripts to read before, ultimately, we have to step into the opportunity to live itself. To walk into the wind, take that road less traveled, step out into the spotlight on opening night. Everything we know, everything we do, and (did you see this one coming?) everything we become is up to us. This is incredibly obvious with our investigators, who mostly seem to want us to wave a magic wand and make it all better before they'll even consider stepping into the solution themselves, but it has also rung true on a personal level this last little while, too. And the days I choose God, to love Him and to know Him, have inevitably been the days I have glimpsed heaven here on earth, the days I've felt the strength of angels behind the pathetic movement of my mere mortal struggle. So when Pres Iwan finished again with his testimony of the ability to choose and the importance of taking responsibility for the knowledge we have been given, I could absolutely add my amen. And Sister Bayodo threw in a hallelujah, too.
Now we are out to Sister Maria's for dinner with a referral tonight; she is a particularly pixie-sized sister with an indefatigable excitement and bright countenance that defies all 46 years of her life. When SisLily told me to look for Tinkerbell on Sunday, I knew exactly who she was talking about.
Love it. Love you.
Sister E.
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