Week 59

Dear Storm-ready Family and Friends, (and all others who do not live on the east coast),

Well I'll be darned!   Here we sit 30 miles from a live volcano, living along the ring of fire, with supposed terrorists in our back yard (we have no evidence of this), and there you are fortifying for the "perfect storm"!  I hope you will all be wise, and ready.  Joel fill the big tub with water, (lock the doors so Logan can't get in), and buy some for drinking, then go check out our camping gear.  We have A LOT of camping gear!!!!  We will be fine here in paradise.

THIS was the week that was!  On Monday Sister Knorpp and I made 45 loaves of mini-breads for Zone Conference.  We can get zucchini here (sometimes) and so we made banana, zucchini, and pumpkin bread.  We can't get canned pumpkin but there are tons of whole and pre-sliced small pumpkins.  So you just buy a piece and microwave it, scoop it out and WALLAH!  Yummy pumpkin.  There are around 33 who attended Zone Conference.  This conference was special because we had the Area President and his wife, Elder and Sister Watson.  As a side for my family, he is from Cedar City (as a child) and once lived near our little red brick house.  He remembers a bunch of people we remember, AND he is related to Dr. Rymal Williams, WHO delivered all of you but Emily and Joel.  HE LOOKS LIKE RYMAL WILLIAMS, so we asked if he knew him, and there you go!  We told him how dear Dr. Williams was to us.  Anyway, they were at Zone Conference on Tuesday, and he led us in a study of the Book of Mormon and the importance of that book in the conversion process.  (See Preach My Gospel chapter 5) It was an excellent conference, and the Spirit was very strong.  That evening we got Elder Watson and a couple of the A.Ps to the airport to return to Jakarta.  They'd had a crazy schedule.... Monday they were all (Elder and Sister Watson, President and Sister Groberg, and the A.Ps) in Surabaya, East Java. Monday evening they boarded a train and traveled to Solo, Central Java.  Tuesday a Zone Conference with us, then a plane ride to Jakarta, West Java.  Wednesday, Zone Conference in Jakarta, then Elder and Sister Watson flew back to Hong Kong!

I believe I mentioned last week that this week was the All Indonesia Young Single Adult Conference!  Now, I need to explain two things right here.  1).  Elder and I were part of the initial planning committee for the conference.  At the first meeting we were reminded again that we are "not in Kansas anymore, Dorthy".  They have a set of planning rules that are very different from, well, most of the world. However!, we did manage to get a DANCE on the agenda.  This was not readily agreed upon, but Brother Barita who was over all the activities for the conference also wanted a dance.  He attended BYU-Hawaii, so he knew!  WE HAVE NO IDEA WHEN or IF THEY HAVE EVER HAD A DANCE, however, after much persuasion the dance was IN!.... and we were in charge of it. 2).  The Indonesians call "their" time, Indonesian Rubber Time.  That means that NOTHING starts on time.  (Well, maybe Sacrament Meeting...but that's all!)  So the fact that they had a schedule for the events of the conference was kind of funny.

On Thursday we ran around getting the refreshments and the water for the dance.  There are no chips and mints here, so we had to find some "snacks" in large quantities.  Then we scooted on up to the conference.   It was held in a resort town, kind of the Park City of Indonesia, about an hour east of Solo, way up in the hills.  They booked an entire large motel for about 100 Young Single Adults.  When we got there they were running late, about 2 hours, because the Jakarta bus had not arrived.  They finally had the opening meeting and lunch, and sat around until the bus came, and then they had some "getting to know each other" activities the Knorpps had planned.  These were great ideas, but they only got to play 2 of them and then the chairman said it was enough.  Hmmm............  So we scooted back to Solo.  That night they had a talent show, which is a large part of any youth activity they have.

Friday morning we went to the airport and fetched President and Sister Groberg, those good souls.  They had Just left us 2 days before, but returned because the Conference committee asked him to take 15 minutes!  It was so funny, that morning the President got a call from the Solo Stake President assuring the President that he was scheduled to speak about 11:00 a.m.  That call ended as Sister Groberg received a call from Elder and Sister Seiters (Sr. couple there from Surabaya) who called to let the President know that his talk wasn't even on the agenda, and that all they knew was that their "Speed Dating" Activity at 11:00 a.m.  We laughed all the way up the mountain.  He did speak, and they did do the Speed Dating activity, we did eat lunch, and then the YSAs took a huge hike, all off schedule... but hey!  FINALLY!!!!! at 7:00 p.m. the dance began.  Please remember that these 18 - 35 year old were not familiar with dances or dancing.  THEY WERE SOOO EXCITED!  But...... it was like getting Deacons and Beehives to start moving.   Oh my!!!!!  You have these two 60 some-odd year old missionaries "rocking out"  trying to get people moving.  Brother Barita had agreed to get the music for the dance.  Finally last Monday he just gave us some Back Street Boys, and N'Sync.  So we went to Elder Greenway's "store" on his computer. We then spent a bunch of time recording music, and planning the night, and the music was older but great. (ABBA, Credence Clearwater Revival, Duran Duran, Frank Sinatra, etc)  Sooooooooooooo finally, finally they started to move.  We taught them to slow dance, (1 - 2 - 3 quick, quick); a western line dance (a simple Cowboy Boogie); and the Virginia Reel (amazing)! But the song that got them alllllll up, allllll moving, allllll singing was Y-M-C-A!!!!!!   After about 30 minutes the dance began to resemble any of the about 144 Stake dances I've attended.  We felt like new proud parents!   What a night!  The dance was to go to about 10 p.m., however after the Virginia Reel Marathon, (with their afternoon hike added on) they were bagged!!!!!  So we called it a night about 9:30, with a very happy but exhausted group of youth and a VERY happy and exhausted Elder and Sister Greenway.  We haven't moved that much since college!!!!!!!!!

Today in Church everyone was talking about it.  Now they are even talking about a Christmas dance!!!!  We feel like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  I'm sure that this week will pull us back down to earth, but we sure had a bunch of fun.  We'll be watching the computer to see how the storm goes, and "looking" out for you.  Back in '94, (doesn't that sound like and ol' timer to you) we had about 4 feet of snow in 12 hours.  We had so much fun being stranded, but! we were safe.  So we'll be praying for your safety, and that goes for our westerners, too.  We love you all, and suggest you all get up a dance a bit.  Wow!  Good exercise.........good fun......good kids!

Your nimble, if not graceful,
Elder and Sister Greenway