It is a rare sunny Sunday afternoon here in Jakarta. Everyone told us that January and February are the worst months of the rainy season, and we now believe them. This has been a very rainy month – raining nearly every day, sometimes two or three times per day. Often when it rains, Mallory and I go out on our porch and watch the rain. One evening during a thunderstorm, Heidi heard a loud crashing sound coming from the backyard. She looked outside and we saw a huge branch from one of our palm trees had fallen and came crashing down into the pool. The boys thought that was great.
A couple of weeks ago we started to notice a bunch of goats and cows at little stands on the side of the road. We found out that they were for the Muslim holiday Idul Adha, which is associated with “the Haj” and the pilgrimage many Muslims make to Mecca. Apparently on the morning of that holiday (it was a national holiday and I had the day off work), all Muslims who are financially able are supposed to buy one of the cows or goats and then they sacrifice the animals and give the meat to the poor.
Mallory is still the cutest little girl in Jakarta. We had the 12 people from my department over for dinner on Friday night (December ended up being too busy to do a year-end dinner), and Mallory was the entertainment. A bunch of people took pictures with her and she loved smiling at everyone and showing them her toys. Heidi didn’t mind hosting the dinner because we had it catered (we found an American woman who runs a catering business and serves really good and extremely reasonably priced American food).
Mallory is very talkative. Her vocabulary is expanding, and she understands a lot more than she can say (Heidi asked her to go to her room and get a diaper this afternoon – she ran off to her room and came back smiling with a diaper in her hand).
Mallory also has learned to turn on her CD player in her room. One of her favorite things to do is to have someone put her black Sunday shoes on her and then she turns on her CD player and dances all around her room. She seems to have new moves every week.
Every month or so one of the mothers from the boys’ school classes invites all of the other mothers over for a “Coffee Morning” to discuss what’s going on in the class. Heidi had one at our house last week for Grant’s class. Well, Heidi decided not to serve coffee. She had plenty of food to eat and a couple of beverage options – fruit juices and whatnot. Well, when all of the ladies came over and it was about to start, one of the ladies said she wanted to get a cup of coffee before they started the meeting. At that point, Heidi told everyone that she didn’t have any coffee. To say the women were disappointed is an understatement – some of them were on the verge of walking out (I was sick and stayed home from work that day, and I could hear the uproar from the other room). In the end, everything worked out, but I don’t think they will ask Heidi to host “Coffee Morning” again.
Last week Heidi and I were called in to speak with someone from the mission presidency before church, and I received a call to be in the branch presidency (the former 2nd counselor died in December). It’ll be interesting to see how things work in this small of a branch – I don’t know how much busier I’ll be, but we’ll find out.
The church does a lot of charity work here in Indonesia. In addition to the aid they are giving to the people in Aceh (the area hit by the tsunami in Dec 2004). A few months ago the missionary couple in our branch who are here working with all of the church’s humanitarian efforts asked us if we knew anyone who needed a wheelchair. I asked around and found out that one of the drivers at work has a mother-in-law who is ill and needs a wheelchair. So, we were able to get one of the wheelchairs for her (I think they imported about 1,000 wheelchairs and most of them were given out through other charities around Jakarta and in Central Java – there was a photo and short story about it in the Jakarta Post (English-language newspaper) a week ago or so).
Luke lost his first tooth about a week ago. It had been loose for a few weeks. One night all the boys and Heidi were in Luke’s room looking at his tooth. Suddenly, Grant pulled Luke’s head back, opened Luke’s mouth and stuck his hand in and yanked out the tooth. It was quite a sight. Grant tried to pull out the one next to it as well, but Luke wouldn’t let him. We all think Grant is either going to be a dentist or a doctor.
This week people are celebrating the Chinese New Year here – Jakarta has quite a large Chinese community. It has been great to see the decorations around in shops, office buildings, and the mall. The area just north of the city is where most of the Chinese community lives. We have heard that there is quite a celebration up there. Maybe we will go there next year.
Millers in Shanghai
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Photos: January 2006
Here's Luke and Mallory modeling their sarongs.
Mallory loves parading around the house in her shoes and will often put around her neck either the camera, a towel, an extra shirt, or whatever else she can find. 
Last week the school had a Wacky Clothes dress-up day. They all wore non-matching clothing, including putting on their shorts backwards and shirts inside out.
Luke and Coach Heidi before yesterday's rained-out baseball game.
Photos: January 2006
Nash's primary teacher took this one of him after church last week. It must have been a good lesson in primary that day.
On one Saturday afternoon Luke was determined to go swimming, despite the fact that it was raining.
Mallory often goes into her room and plays in her mosquito netting.
Mallory loves shoes, even if they don't fit her.
Luke lost his first tooth last week - Grant actually helped him by pulling it out for him.
This is the palm branch that fell into our pool after a rain storm.
Sunday, January 8, 2006
Letter: 8 January 2006
New Years in Indonesia
We celebrated the New Year with our friends, the Willis family, at the embassy vacation home up in the mountains south of Jakarta (we went there with them in September, as well). We spent Friday (Dec 30) – Monday (Jan 2) there and had a great time. The air is so much cooler and cleaner up there, and it is great to go and just relax. The kids had a great time wandering around the property, swimming in the frigid pool, and playing games inside and out. We took the boys’ Playstation 2 and everyone ended up playing the dance game quite a bit, too. Nash is the reigning expert in our house – that boy’s got rhythm.
On Saturday we drove a short ways away to a place we had read about so that we could go on a short hike to some waterfalls. It ended up taking longer to get there than anticipated (traffic was rerouted because the President was headed to the presidential vacation house, so we had to take the long way around and it took forever. As soon as we found the correct place to park for the trailhead and got out of the car, it started raining. As we were walking past all of the stalls selling everything from produce to flipflops on the way from the parking lot to the trail (there are little stands with people selling stuff everywhere in Indonesia) we rented some umbrellas from some kids about Grant’s age. They ended up accompanying us on the whole hike and would carry the umbrellas for us if the rain let up and we didn’t need them for a while. I think it was about a 4 mile hike round trip to the waterfalls (there were actually 3 of them). Part of the hike was miserable and we were all soaked and a bit cold by the time we got back to the car, but we were glad we went. On the way back to the house we stopped at a road side stand and bought some avocadoes and bananas.
On Saturday night (New Years Eve) most of the kids tried to stay awake until midnight, but Nash was the only one who made it. Nash and the adults went to bed that night by about 12:30am and like most nights, we slept with the windows open – all of the windows have screens and, more importantly bars on them. The exterior of the house is pretty well lit and there are about 3 or 4 US embassy trained guards there, so we all felt fine about sleeping with the windows open (the bars on the windows are bolted in and are impossible to get open without making a lot of noise). I slept pretty soundly for most of the night so I missed most of the excitement I am about to tell you, but Heidi and our friends Dave & Jenny told me that at about 4:00 am, they all awoke to the sounds of footsteps – people running quickly from the side of the house to the back of the house – and to the sounds of the embassy guards yelling at someone. We found out the next morning that the guards had seen 2 people on the property near the house, probably trying to figure out if there was any way to get into the house and steal anything. We were grateful that the guards were there to patrol the property and to scare off the would-be burglars.
When Monday morning came, none of us were really ready to go back, but we left by about 9:30am to beat the traffic going back to Jakarta. We spent the rest of the day Monday taking care of things around the house, including taking down the Christmas decorations.
Yesterday (Saturday) we went to a place called Mangga Dua,w hich is a huge shopping mall consisting of 2 buildings and about 4 or 5 floors per building. You can buy all sorts of things there. We ended up getting 2 more of the cars (one for Nash and one we’ll save for Mallory when she is older), some birthday presents for the boys (MP3 players), and Heidi got a new purse. On the way back to Pondok Indah, we stopped for lunch at Chili’s (the only Chili’s in Indonesia is in downtown Jakarta, and hadn’t eaten there yet).
Today has been a pretty normal Sunday. Church was back to a normal 3-hour schedule now that most people are back in town. This afternoon Heidi has been making some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with her $12 can of pumpkin (she finally found some canned pumpkin at one of the import grocery stores and they charge a pretty penny for it).
Well, the boys have had the last week of school off, so they have spent lots of time at the house swimming and riding on their cars in the house, as well as going to a movie, getting together with the Willis family again one day, etc. I think they will all be glad to head back to school tomorrow (including Heidi).
We celebrated the New Year with our friends, the Willis family, at the embassy vacation home up in the mountains south of Jakarta (we went there with them in September, as well). We spent Friday (Dec 30) – Monday (Jan 2) there and had a great time. The air is so much cooler and cleaner up there, and it is great to go and just relax. The kids had a great time wandering around the property, swimming in the frigid pool, and playing games inside and out. We took the boys’ Playstation 2 and everyone ended up playing the dance game quite a bit, too. Nash is the reigning expert in our house – that boy’s got rhythm.
On Saturday we drove a short ways away to a place we had read about so that we could go on a short hike to some waterfalls. It ended up taking longer to get there than anticipated (traffic was rerouted because the President was headed to the presidential vacation house, so we had to take the long way around and it took forever. As soon as we found the correct place to park for the trailhead and got out of the car, it started raining. As we were walking past all of the stalls selling everything from produce to flipflops on the way from the parking lot to the trail (there are little stands with people selling stuff everywhere in Indonesia) we rented some umbrellas from some kids about Grant’s age. They ended up accompanying us on the whole hike and would carry the umbrellas for us if the rain let up and we didn’t need them for a while. I think it was about a 4 mile hike round trip to the waterfalls (there were actually 3 of them). Part of the hike was miserable and we were all soaked and a bit cold by the time we got back to the car, but we were glad we went. On the way back to the house we stopped at a road side stand and bought some avocadoes and bananas.
On Saturday night (New Years Eve) most of the kids tried to stay awake until midnight, but Nash was the only one who made it. Nash and the adults went to bed that night by about 12:30am and like most nights, we slept with the windows open – all of the windows have screens and, more importantly bars on them. The exterior of the house is pretty well lit and there are about 3 or 4 US embassy trained guards there, so we all felt fine about sleeping with the windows open (the bars on the windows are bolted in and are impossible to get open without making a lot of noise). I slept pretty soundly for most of the night so I missed most of the excitement I am about to tell you, but Heidi and our friends Dave & Jenny told me that at about 4:00 am, they all awoke to the sounds of footsteps – people running quickly from the side of the house to the back of the house – and to the sounds of the embassy guards yelling at someone. We found out the next morning that the guards had seen 2 people on the property near the house, probably trying to figure out if there was any way to get into the house and steal anything. We were grateful that the guards were there to patrol the property and to scare off the would-be burglars.
When Monday morning came, none of us were really ready to go back, but we left by about 9:30am to beat the traffic going back to Jakarta. We spent the rest of the day Monday taking care of things around the house, including taking down the Christmas decorations.
Yesterday (Saturday) we went to a place called Mangga Dua,w hich is a huge shopping mall consisting of 2 buildings and about 4 or 5 floors per building. You can buy all sorts of things there. We ended up getting 2 more of the cars (one for Nash and one we’ll save for Mallory when she is older), some birthday presents for the boys (MP3 players), and Heidi got a new purse. On the way back to Pondok Indah, we stopped for lunch at Chili’s (the only Chili’s in Indonesia is in downtown Jakarta, and hadn’t eaten there yet).
Today has been a pretty normal Sunday. Church was back to a normal 3-hour schedule now that most people are back in town. This afternoon Heidi has been making some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with her $12 can of pumpkin (she finally found some canned pumpkin at one of the import grocery stores and they charge a pretty penny for it).
Well, the boys have had the last week of school off, so they have spent lots of time at the house swimming and riding on their cars in the house, as well as going to a movie, getting together with the Willis family again one day, etc. I think they will all be glad to head back to school tomorrow (including Heidi).
Photos: 7 January
A couple of photos of the cars we got for the boys. They ride these things around our house for hours.
Photos: 30 December - Puncak
Here's a shot of everyone playing along to the Playstation dance game.
Grant climbing a tree and posing next to a Christmas tree looking flower.
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