I realize my blogging has been a little lacking lately, friends, so I’m going to attempt to summarize what happened and what we saw while in Indonesia. There was so much, but I’m going to try to give you a brief taste…
So many people willing to stop and converse about anything, so many mosques routinely announcing the 5x/day call to prayer, white hot intensity of the sun and thick humidity, the 5 minutes of feeling clean after a shower before you feel the sweat begin to resurface (literally), diligent teachers who have an abiding passion for their students’ health and growth, rice on rice on rice on fried food on rice, an active-ish volcano and dried-up crater, driving a moped for the first time (I’m posting a blog soon about that), faith-conversation with locals living in a nearby village, walking among rice fields on a foot-wide path, afternoon downpours that leave you either stranded or frantically scurrying for cover because your Kindle is in your backpack and you didn’t bring your rain coat, riding on 4 trains so far – total of 25 hours, fellowship with international and intercultural Christians with whom you instantly feel a bond because of faith-ties, our team coming into deeper knowledge of who we are together and individually, and students who remind me of the intrinsic beauty of child-like faith and sincerity.
The sky after a downpour of rain on our way home from the intercultural school!
Our team out walking among rice fields with very kind locals.
About to have fellowship during team time at our ministry host home. During team times, we all shared summaries of our life stories with each other.
Riding on the train to Bandung (train #1 of 4)
It was an incredible month, but I’m looking forward to next month even more. We just wrapped up our time of debriefing in Bali on the southern tip of the island, and now we have arrived in our next country: Thailand. Please pray for my team and I, that we would enter into God’s courts with Thanksgiving every day and live out of a desperate dependence on the Lord. We are all brimming with energy and determination. Pray that the Lord also gives us focus in the midst of it all.
That being said, I want to make a pact/annoucement with you all going forward: I am going to start blogging about the little things, the menial and ordinary parts of our trip, even if my thoughts/stories don’t have a conclusion yet. Why? I think somewhere during this trip, my notion of what is “worthy of recollection and reiteration” changed for me. I forgot how special and important documenting this whole thing really is! Dude, this is huge!! And I want you to be in the know-how about the big AND little things!
So I’m asking you to hold me accountable to documenting and blogging more than I did the last month, ok? I am going to try to clue you in at least once a week on what is happening…even if that means blogging about small/dumb things…like pancrapes (yes, we ate those recently). I am trying to TRUST God to use my tiny stories to plant little seeds of hope or truth in your heart and mind and to help me better work through what is happening. It’s time for me to learn to trust him in a new way.
Thank you, family member or friend, for reading this!
Also…GREAT JOB, BRONCOS!! (6 of us got up before 7am to watch the game in a Starbucks store by the beach in Bali on a Chrome Book. Such good bonding time…and bone-crushing, ultimate victory…don’t celebrate too hard without me, Colorado!)
