Hash Browns are Indonesian?

September 11, 2011 Sunday

This morning Amy and the boys made it to church after the sacrament was over. It must have been a bad morning because you could tell Deycan had been crying when they came in. Blake settled in and was really good, but Deycan was “pulling his mom’s chain” non-stop. She went out into the foyer with him; then Blake went out. Pretty soon Blake came in and took his mom’s purse out. When sacrament meeting was over, she was already gone. We worried about her so we called her tonight. She explained that if she hadn’t left she was worried she was going to “flog” them right there in the church. She did say that Michelle Olde called and had her and the boys come over to play for a while this afternoon. That’s good for all of them since boy the husbands work in the mines and are gone two weeks at a time.
This evening we had a dinner appointment with Euce, the Indonesian lady we met at the library. When she invited us, she said she would fix spaghetti for us. When we got there, she had her boyfriend, Eddy Mason, there too. He was quite the talker so we listened while she cooked dinner. She asked us if we liked chicken, fish, or beef. We told her we’d eat anything. (What? No spaghetti?) She then pulled frozen hash brown patties and two kinds of frozen, breaded fish out of the freezer. But when she was done cooking there was all of that plus some Indonesian fish and beef, some fish balls, and some fried cubes she called fish tofu. It was all okay. I really liked the Indonesian beef and Indonesian fish the best. And then she thought we ought to eat seconds. Luckily, we had to leave so we could teach Brett over the phone again or she’d have made us eat more! She’s a sweet lady who is struggling to care for herself and make a go of it here in Australia.
Brett wasn’t feeling good and had gone to bed early, so that lesson didn’t happen. Amy said he is stressing out over being able to quit his coffee and still work the night shifts he has. She said he doesn’t want to be baptized and then only do it half way. We’re going to talk to him and let him know we aren’t going to push him into baptism. We want him to feel good about it when he does it. It would be different if he were home with Amy every night, but working away like he does, he isn’t getting the same kind of support. We will let him take his time to get ready.