I was born in Medan, Indonesia. When I was 10 years old, I moved to Jakarta in 1984 by family relatives because I was orphanage at the age of 3,5. From my childhood up to teenager, I faced challenges as an orphanage. I was abused to my opinion in Jakarta. I tried to solved my own problems, with some failures. As a member of the Church, I learned to force myself to come to my branch president and told him mistakes I had done. I faced some mocking from a senior member of the Church who told me why I came back to the Church. I also missed school and church because I choose to be scavenger, to avoid bad treatment from my relatives. I decided again to come back to church and repented and got testimony about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith and decided going on missionary calling. After finishing my missionary July, 1998, I worked for LDS Charities where the momentum of my life change. Being with talented, educated, and humble missionary couples, I learned how they treated their spouse respectly with deep love. They encouraged me to get education. On the other hand, the Educational Director at the Church administration office told that I would not be able to attend BYUH because of my limitations. Again the missionary couples told me to ignore that, and silently they help me prepared and took TOEFL.
As I attended BYUH, I tried to applied what I have learned and trained from the missionaries. As an employee of PCC, I tried to work accordingly, then go beyond what was required. I loved working among people and helping visitor to get best experience for some of them maybe have saved money for several years to go on vacation to Hawaii. For extra steps I had done for visitors, I also was choosen to assist a royal family of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In 2007, we choose to go back to our country to be an example for future and on going students of Indonesia to obey the policies of BYUH about IWES (Internasional Work Experience Students). As a result of obeying the policies, in 2008 a local Hawaiian friend the Owner of Hawaiian Hut LLC in Indiana invited me and my family to work for his restaurant. He said he saw me on his vision as attending priesthood meeting on Sunday that I served customers at his restaurant with "Aloha". He said I need a person with an integrity, so we were there in 2009.
In 2010, we decided to go back to Indonesia by request of my mother in law. Culturaly in Java the youngest child of a family will have opportunity to take care of parent(s), and my wife Sukma is the youngest of ten. So we decided to leave our dream in the US and told my wife to get the chance to dedicated love toward her mother. I told my wife not every children get this opportunity. I told my wife our future in Indonesia will be alright.
I started a small food stand in Ubud, Bali in 2011. It survived until 2014. I also running a cell phone business by importing used phones, and working it out with the Indonesian Custom Departement. In 2012, I started a small street drink business and run well untill the Covid 19 done in 2022. I also have food and drink business that is operating until now, and it runs occationally at shopping malls such as holiday.
Now, I am serving in the Primary as a vocal trainer to help the children have confidence in singing.
I hope this story about me help you to know about me closer. Thank you and mahalo nui loa
