What life is like...

December 28, 2010

So many things to say, but so little time to type!  We have been having a great time with the kids here.  Because it is Christmas, they all are on break, which means they are around all the time, and don’t have homework!  Woot!  So we are really enjoying having time to hang out with them, play games, and get to know them as individuals more.  When there are 26 kids it can be hard to get time to figure out their personalities, but we definitely are getting there. But instead of trying to explain everything we have been doing, maybe I’ll give some highlights. 

Yesterday we played telephone with the kids (where you sit in a circle and whisper a message around the circle until it gets back to the start).  These kids have learned some English, and I’m beginning to see their confidence in it grow as we use it with them all the time.  So we played telephone with English words and it was hilarious. Not only do you have the issue of their limited knowledge of English, we also have to contend with Indonesian accents, Slovak accent, Dutch accent, actually only two of us were native English speakers.  And because we had 30% of our circle consisting of teenage boys, they delighted in changing the message on purpose.  Someone was a monkey by the end of one message.  Alex (affectionately called Mr. Bean by the kids) liked coffee instead of it saying that someone else is cute. And they all would yell over top of each other at the end of each round trying to figure out who had changed the message, where it had gotten messed up.   It really was great.

Not only do we have the bigger kids, but there are four little ones as well.  One baby, and three other girls six and under.  And they are precious.  The little English they know is adorable.  They are terrific mimics. I delight in being with any or all of them.  A few days ago, everyone went out for sports in a nearby field and all three of the little girls were with us.  But they needed to go home because their staff member had called for them.  So I had three little Indonesian girls with me as I walked down the street. One was on my hip, and one was holding my hand, and the other was holding her hand. Like that we walked maybe half a block down the street.  But halfway home an Indonesian woman stopped me and was touching their hair and smiling and speaking in Indonesian. I just smiled at her, said good day, and kept walking, but I realized that this lady probably thought they were all mine. Me. With three girls aged 3, 5, 6… yeah right!  And they don’t look like sisters either, so I donno how she accounted for that.  It was a weird experience, especially to have in a different culture and with a language barrier.  Not that you don’t want to take them home, they are that cute.  They just aren’t mine.

Lastly, today we visited a man who owns a church building. His father had built it with his own money, and pastored a church in it, but after his fathers death the church now no longer had a congregation and had fallen into disrepair.  But there is a permit for this building to actually be a church so he wants to make sure that the church is used in that way, because it is so hard to get a permit like that. However, there are major repairs that need to be done.  We asked God what he wants to do with the building, and I really believe that God does have a plan and a use for the building. The problem is that it is unusable in its state.  We asked the man how much it would cost to repair it, thinking how much God would need to provide in order to see the church restored.  We know that God can provide resources to repair it, because we have seen supporters give us huge amounts of money for DTS and we know that it was God’s provision then. I was thinking a couple thousand euro, Alex was thinking maybe 10 or 20 thousand US dollars.  But the true amount is 320 Euro.  That is it. To us that is a tiny amount of money. It is a lot of money in this country.  An iPhone costs more than that in Europe.  And here an entire building can be repaired for God’s use. It blew us away. 

I hate asking for money, but I really think that in this case, there is some legitimacy in asking.   I realize that it is just after Christmas and everyone probably has a big master card bill to pay. But talk to God about it.  See how he wants to use your finances.  See if he will show you something that you don’t need.  See if he wants to use you to repair a church at a fraction of the cost of a church in Canada.  Talk to people in your lives about it.  They know about things like Samaritans purse, but they don’t get to see the before and after pictures of what their money has done in those cases.  I’m so excited because here the money actually has a before and after picture to go with it.  We can hear the testimonies from people who will attend a bible study in this building. We can hear how this builds the ministry that is already happening in this city.  And the money required is so small.  Less than 450 CAD.  It is absolutely crazy to think that God doesn’t want to provide that money, that God wouldn’t want to see his church restored and used again. So I challenge you to pray, and to challenge those around you as well with the story. God can use you to make a huge difference here. (Wow I sound like a World Vision commercial…)

So as you can tell, things are going great here. There are probably 100 more stories I could have written on, but those will have to wait.  Have a great holiday season and Happy New Year!

Christmas!

December 26, 2010

Merry Christmas! As far as Christmas goes, this definitely was one for the books.  The night before we had a devotional time and stayed up late watching a movie with the kids. I went to bed at one. Then we got up super early to fill stockings, which was such a hoot.   We had brought chocolate for all the kids at the kids home we are helping with.  And they had stockings from last Christmas, so it even seemed legitimately Christmas-y.  We went back to bed after that, because 5am is a little early for us.  But we went to Catholic mass with Janka at a more reasonable hour.  Then off for breakfast, and back to our “hotel” for some team Christmas time.  It was beautiful, hot and sunny. So we thought we might work on our tans.  Instead we ended up having a water fight in our front yard.  The neighbours probably thought we were nuts, but we really enjoyed ourselves.  We could just let loose and really enjoy the fact that we were in Indonesia and it was hot!  It isn’t your normal Christmas activity, but it put us into more of the Christmas spirit for sure.  Then in the evening we participated in my favourite Christmas activity: dressing up and making the nativity. We had all our actors choose their parts from a hat, and it turned out perfectly.  The shepherds were very convincing, although their sheep were a bit rebellious. The wise men brought cereal, a trophy and a big water jug. And Mary was a guy dressed up in blue tie die. I actually had never seen so much tie die in a nativity before! But it was great. After they had finished, the props became musical instruments as they started singing. It was beautiful. The little girls were dancing, the percussion was intricate, and the singing heartfelt.  It was a beautiful moment, better than we could have planned. And everyone was still in costumes, so the shepherds were banging in one corner and a wise man was blowing through a hollow broom stick. Very cool. And that is what made it Christmas for me. 

Indonesian Food

December 20, 2010

So food here has been amazing. Since I got over the stomach bug or whatever I ate, and got over the resulting fear of all the food here, I’ve enjoyed it so much.  As some people will know, I was essentially eating rice every day last year in university anyway, so I’m loving the rice. And the food to go with it is always great.  Often we have a vegetable, and then some kind of great meet.  Everything from chicken, to fried fish, to battered prawns (those were amazing), pork on a stick, and pirate chicken (meat on a stick that looks like a chicken leg).  And since we are near a mall, we go to the supermarket and get all kinds of great stuff there too. There are these cheap lemon cookies that look a lot like ritz crackers with sugar on them. They are super cheap and great in tea.  Here in the big city they also have lots of American options.  McD’s is obvious, but A&W was more surprising to me (and they sell twist ice cream cones!) and Wendy’s was also surprising.  Pizza hut has a motorcycle delivery guy.  Baskin Robbins and Yogun Fruz both are in the mall, but they are at American prices.

When we went to the first cell group, they served us all kinds of great food. Fried mushrooms, and tofu, and kasava (a potato like starchy root).  And they gave us chilli peppers too. And they took us out for a traditional Indonesian drink.  Essentially, it was milk, egg, ginger and honey.  Ginger Egg Nog. It was warm and it came in chocolate flavour! So good.  Made me feel super healthy but not everyone liked ginger. 

At the village the food was unbelievable.  The chilli sauce… so good. The peanut and chilli sauce… better!  I can’t even explain how good all the food was. And how fresh!  We met one boy who we fell in love with, whose parents have many different things that they grow: cocoa, coffee, papaya, banana, durian, kasava, avacado. (durian is this crazy fruit which I swear isn’t meant to be eaten.  It is spiny with seeds inside that are covered with this funny white creamy stuff. You are supposed to suck the creamy stuff off the seeds, and Indonesians love it… me not so much). . But I went on a walk with six kids from the village and they showed me all the plants. So I’ve seen all these things growing, which kinda looks like they all grow in the jungle naturally because they are all mixed together but someone is harvesting it and probably is in charge of that land.

Oh, and the other thing was that they served us Asian peanuts.  I don’t know what they are actually called, but I swear they are different than peanuts we get in Canada. They make me think of peanuts from the Philippines, which I have had before, so it was kinda like comfort food to have them again.

There are tons more foods, but if I typed about all the funny sweets and chips and puffy cheetos without cheese on them. Everything seems to be a puffed chip or something. Anyways, that is all the food I’ll talk about for now. Tomorrow we change homes again, but it should be good.

A week of Contrasts

It has been a week since I blogged last, and I have experienced so much that I don’t know what to actually write about!  This week we spent in one of the larger cities in Indonesia, which had its perks.  Internet availability has been one. Another was the huge shopping mall, with a “hypermarket” that carries all kinds of good things like Tim Tams (we are close enough to Australia I should have guessed) and frosted flakes.  They also have an A&W and McDonalds.  For 25 euro cents I can get a McD’s cone.  That is pretty amazing!   But I digress.  I’ll talk about food in the next post!  So during this week we have experienced some amazing things.  God has done some things that definitely show his love and power.  Our first day of ministry here, Alex actually got really sick.  I have my suspicions to why, but the testimony is that we prayed for him in the morning when he looked like a zombie and by supper he was himself again. Everything we did that first day, we thought was going to be super hard.  Talking to street youth. Teaching English to kids.  Sharing at a cell group.  But God showed up every time.  Every one ended up blessing us more than we felt we blessed them.  I think that God wanted to build our confidence. We absolutely loved the cell group, and they loved us.  We had an amazing time of worship together, and they knew enough English to allow us to carry on a conversation without an interpreter, which is such a blessing since six of us only having one interpreter can make things unnatural.  The rest of the week wasn’t such a walk in the park, but it was really good. We had some late night ministry time, and another cell group meeting. We fed some of the homeless/poor/street community with a pastor, which was a really good experience to see the not so nice part of the society.  And we prayed for healing for a couple people one night too. We had an amazing experience praying for healing for a somewhat young mother with cancer and an older lady with kidney failure.  To see what God is wanting to do and is doing and speaking it out in faith… I for one was changed by the experience. 

But that was only half of our week.  For the weekend, we went from our fairly industrialized and modern city to a mountain village. And although they have power, and running water… I was not prepared.  This is the only home I’ve been in with a dirt floor in the kitchen.  And the bed was made of wooden slats, with spaces between them.  And the mattress was very thin.  I needed to get over the moths and geckos in the bathroom, and the very big (hand size) spiders outside.  But those are the negatives.  Once you get over that, you realize that this is the most amazing experience. I was in the jungle.  There was no doubting that! Banana trees and palm trees and bamboo… I actually couldn’t take it all in.  I didn’t realize it was bamboo outside the window until the last day.  We met the most amazing kids.  We prayed for healing for multiple people in the village, and we asked the kids to pray with us.  And as we prayed for the first man, we asked a 12 year old boy that we had grown to love if he would pray.  And as he was praying, God really touched him.  It was so clear to me as I watched that God has a call on his life, and wants to call out this boy for great things.  And every person that we prayed for had some experience of God, and most if not all had improvement in their conditions. It was really encouraging to see God healing people right there in front of us. We spoke at four services over the weekend, all taking turns.  And it was really cool to see how God even uses us to speak to each other. Often I was taking notes from the “sermons” that they had prepared.  As we were at one church it began to rain (rain in the mountain means ‘flash flood’), and after the service ended we had to run to save our sandals from washing away (you leave your footwear outside a building when you enter, except on Sunday at church, which I haven’t figured out yet).   And the second service we attended on Sunday was at a church that had outgrown its building.  We sat on the patio, under a blue plastic roof, sweltering during the two plus hour service. Thankfully they gave us refreshments (more about that when I talk about food in my next post!)

So now we are back in the big city for a couple more days, before our leader Steve and Ben, his son leave to go home for Christmas. Then it will be “just the four of us” for a week and a half until our other leaders come.  Christmas in 20 degrees. I can’t comprehend that yet…

Church

Church on the 12^th was great.  I really enjoyed it. First great thing: air conditioning.  That made it much better.  But the music was great too.  I think it is easier to pronounce and sing along in Indonesian. Less weird syllables with just consonants and no vowels in between.  The music was really good.  One of the guys we are getting to know led worship, and another girl we know too. And our Alex actually got recruited to play keyboard, which really speaks of his talent, because he didn’t know the songs before their practice session the day before.  And he sounded great with them.  The band was such professionals that even when the power went out (which it did twice) they just kept singing.  No amplification, the piano gone, the guitar turned acoustic, but the congregations voices kept going. Pretty sweet. That would have stopped the service at home!  Ben and Art gave testimonies (which of course were awesome).  But my favorite part was the sermon.  This Indonesian lady was amazing.  She had all the spunk of an African Christian woman who tells it like it is, and the emphasis and interaction with the crowd you expect in a good preacher in a small church (to be fair it was a small church).  Anyways, we didn’t have any translation but about 25% of the time I knew what she was talking about.  The other 75% I was just enjoying her spirit, her attitude, and her speaking style.  Oh, and she spoke beautiful English to us after the service and actually welcomed our team in English before she began her sermon.  Very cool. 

I’m glad we will get to go to this church a lot while we are here.  I really enjoy it and the people. 

Indonesia

Sunday, December 12, 2010  11pm  (posted the next day when I got internet)

Wow.  That is all I can say about our first week in Indonesia.  Now that we are here, I’m so glad that we had no idea what we were getting into!  The difference between Canada and Slovakia is nothing compared to the differences in Indonesia.  And I’m really not very well prepared to come on a trip like this, as I’ve never been any farther south than Iowa.  At least if I had gone to Mexico, I’d have more of an idea.  But this is completely different than everything I’ve ever known.  The food, the traffic, the humidity, the smells, the scheduling, the bathrooms… all significantly different. And it made the first couple days super hard.  But it is only day four (Sunday).  The first day it was easy to attribute grumpiness and not being excited about the differences to jetlag.  But we had these funny little fruits the first night, and they pretty much put me out of commission for the entire second day.  So while I was laying in bed feeling sorry for myself, the team was off getting excited about the culture and the people we were with.  Thankfully I’m feeling like myself again (and starting to trust food again) which means I can start enjoying the country again.  But for the second and third day, every strong smell in the street would make me nauseas.   It was really a struggle, because everything smells strongly here!  So I really appreciated your prayers on those two days.  It was nice knowing people at home were praying for me, even though they didn’t know what was going on.

But I guess I should tell you more about what we have seen and done.  I’ve seen the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in the wild.  I’ve already gotten used to the gecko/lizard things on the walls.  The boys had two in their room, and both were named Jamal.  I’ve experienced the “rainy season” otherwise known as “occasional sprinklings of rain during the day, with possible torrential downpours during the afternoon”.  The first day, there was a thunderstorm as we ate lunch, and our front yard was completely flooded!  We also realized then that where we are staying in that town is right next to a river, which I think is a blessing because the noise of the river helps drown out the city noise.  And that city noise includes the Muslim call to prayer during all hours.  Last night it woke me up at 3 in the morning.  Not so cool.  Although, we have learned that Indonesians are super hard workers.  They often get up at 3 or 4 in the morning… and we definitely have seen them up past ten or eleven.  Thankfully, they supplement their sleep with an afternoon nap.  We have been very thankful for that, and I attribute it to why I am mostly over my jet lag already.  Sleeping for two or three hours in the afternoon is really nice when you are in a hot muggy climate!

So we have primarily been helping out in a children’s home for the first four days.  It was long enough to fall in love with their little kids, and really want to get to know the older ones better.  And these kids are learning English as well, which is AWESOME!  I actually was in charge of an English lesson yesterday with Alex, and we played a really fun game of Pictionary with the three kids that were with us that day.  But I think they loved getting more attention with the smaller group.  So really what happened was that I drew things on a white board and the kids would tell us its name.  And Alex helped me when I ran out of ideas, which was often. We actually ran into a few things they didn’t know the name for, which I am taking to mean that I actually got to teach them something! 

We actually are going to get to spend Christmas with those kids, which I’m so excited for.  But for the next week or so, we are going to be in a bigger town helping out some other people.  Sound vague?  Mostly because I have no idea what we are going to be doing.  It should be good though.  Bigger town means we should find internet somewhere (which will allow me to post this blog), and we drove down a street today that looks like California with palm trees on the sides and flowers in the meridian.   A bit more high class than we were used to seeing in the other town.

As for time zone differences, we have figured that I’m 14 hours ahead of Alberta.  When it is midnight here, it is only 10 am the same day in Alberta.  When I wake up at seven am, it is 5pm the day before in Alberta.  CRAZY!  We decided that we could celebrate the New Year three times.  Once on Indonesian time, six hours later on Slovakia time, and then again 8 and/or 9 hours later for Alberta and Oregon. 

There are so many other things I could say, but maybe I’ll leave some things to be explained when I get back. Although, I do have one thing that can’t really wait.  The second day we were here (while I was still out of commission) Steve and Ben went with one of our contacts here to visit some families, and in one house there was a woman who had been stung by a scorpion a couple hours earlier and was in such pain she couldn’t walk.  They prayed for her, and she was completely healed.  She even got up and started serving them food!  God is good! 

Prayer requests:

Please pray for the church here and those people who are seeking God.

Pray for the children’s home. They have 26 kids, many are from broken homes and two thirds are teenagers going through teenage stuff. 

Pray for the staff of the home, who aren’t getting paid (only room and board) to be provided for in all their needs: materially, emotionally, and spiritually. 

Pray for our team to be able to get into a rhythm of life here, with time for us to be together as a team and time for worship, prayer, and our own quiet times. 

Pray for our team to continue to have unity and openness with each other.

Pray for us to be sensitive to what God is trying to do in every situation, and for us to be willing to cooperate with him.  

Dubai

Right now it is 2:30am in the Dubai Airport, on Dec 8.  We have had such an adventure already, and we have only been on half our flight to Indonesia!  

First, we got up very early to get to Prague for our flight.  It was five or something crazy like that.  And the weather wasn't bad, but it was kinda snowing when we arrived in Prague. After going to a couple different airport terminals, and then returning to the first one, we had some lunch, and I had my last Starbucks for Christmas (peppermint mocha, yum).  So we got to our flight and everything, and sat.  We needed to wait to be de-iced, and ended up at the end of the queue somehow.  So we ended up sitting on the plane for a long time. Finally we got de-iced, and taxied out, but the pilot was concerned that we had too much ice on our wings by the time it was our turn to take off.  So essentially they brought us back, got more fuel, planned to de-ice again... but then called it all off. We had sat on the plane for four hours, and gone no where.  

Thankfully, we were flying Emirates.  So they set us all up in a nice hotel in Prague. We got supper, slept in really nice beds, woke up with still not enough sleep (five hours isn't sufficient), and had a nice breakfast.  And there was alot of snow this morning on our way to the airport and it was still snowing actually, but we prayed that there would be a break in the weather so we could get off the ground.  And today our plane took off!  We sat for a while waiting for de-icing, and there has been a bit of drama trying to get connecting flights to Jakarta, but all in all it has been really good.

The food is amazing on Emirates. Honestly, there is good reason that they are a top ten airline in the world.  The stewardesses are so nice too. The blankets are super comfy.  The entertainment system could use some help (I think Air Canada and West Jet both outdo them in that regard).  But really, this is flying in style, and can you imagine they were the cheapest option for our trip?  

But now we are in Dubai!  We were really excited because it looked like we were going to have to stay here for 20 hours including an overnight hotel stay.  So I was stoked. That means that I would get a passport stamp!  But because of our leader's great abilities, and the grace of the people working tonight... we are getting on a flight in an hour or two.  That means no stamp, and no tour of Dubai, and no fresh 20 degree Celsius air either, but it works way better with getting to our final destination.  And as an added blessing.... four of us are going to be flying business class.  (Don't tell them, because Steve is keeping it for a surprise when we get on the plane and hand out our boarding passes... but that is totally a blessing because those seats are SWEET). 

God has obviously been taking care of us on our trip, and we have really experienced how God just wants to bless us with cool things.  Janka keeps saying "Can you imagine we are just poor missionaries and all this is happening to us!"  And then the rest of us will say, "But God has unlimited resources." We really are having God's riches poured out on us on this trip. I'm really excited to see what the rest of the trip will bring. Its amazing to think that we actually are only half done, it seems like we have been traveling forever. (which we kinda have been)  But by this time tomorrow I expect we will be asleep in humid Indonesia, instead of sitting in the middle of a busy airport terminal (actually it is amazing how busy this airport is for the middle of the night, it is difficult to get a seat in some places!)

We appreciate all your prayers and I will try to keep you up to date... hopefully we will have regular access to internet after we leave the airports.  

Our Family Dinner

Last night we had a beautiful family dinner, with our YWAM family.  We leave for Indonesia on Monday, so it was pretty much our last chance to be together with all these people who we have grown to love so much, at least for the next three months.

So it was up to us as students to prepare the dinner, and we have a very little kitchen.  So we had a bit of help from the staff, but I'm happy to say that we had a beautiful family dinner with 20 people.  We had turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, perogies (pirohy is the correct spelling and pronunciation here), pasta salad, my grandma's salad, vegetables, shepherds pie, an amazing slovak dessert, and pumpkin pie (courtesy of one very inventive and amazing lady!)

It was great to get to have a dinner that was reminiscent of Thanksgiving or Christmas at home before we left.  Because everything is going to be very different for Christmas.  And that isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we definitely will miss being with family. Especially as it is beginning to look alot like Christmas here with the snow and a huge Christmas tree in the square, we are realizing what we are going to miss.  But as substitutes for our "real" family goes, and for "actual" Christmas,  this was pretty great.

We even got help with the dishes afterwards!

Snow

I just realized that I haven't shared my excitement about the snow in picture form!

So this is Banska Bystrica at Christmas!

 Day after the first snow

And one evening while it was snowing:

YES SNOW!!

but I leave the snow in three days. eek.