As some of you know, the Unscripted route originally said for my whole group of 18 people to be in South Africa this whole month of April and that we were supposed to be finished in Asia for the rest of the World Race journey. However, after being on the race for a few months, I got told that the leadership team felt like God was wanting us to continue being in Asia by living in Indonesia. They also said to us that Indonesia was always on their mind and they always wanted to add it to our route and Kylee our squad mentor told us that they prayed for a long time about it and they felt that it was best place for us to be in. Earlier this month, some people also felt that they heard God say to them that we were going to encounter some radical things happening there for the whole squad and they said that we would encounter good things in Indonesia as well, which made me feel excited. By knowing this information, I am now feeling like living there will be one of my favorite months that I’ve had on the World Race so far and also I am excited to share with you the reason why I think that will be the case.
So as you all know, my team stayed in Cameron Highlands for 2 weeks, which was a blast and after that we had about 3 days in Kuala Lumpur until we had to leave for our new location in Bandung, Indonesia, which I hoped was going to be cool. We also had the opportunity to be in the same hostel as team Deep, which was fun and as my team was walking around, we all found Kuala Lumpur to be an interesting place that had a lot of American food options, which was different from any place we had been to. An example of this is because near the hostel, there was a mall that was really big and it had a lot of different fun things in it like a bowling alley, laser tag place, archery and it even had an escape room in it. We ended up doing the escapee room and I found it fun because Sophie the friend that I had made in Cameron Highlands lived in Kuala Lumpur and I was excited to see her because we connected really well in Cameron Highlands. It was an amazing time.
I was also excited to be flying to Bandung because our whole squad of 18 people was having a 4 to 5 day debrief time with the leadership team and I truly thought it would be a good time of listening to each other’s adventures and knowing all of those things was going to be exciting for me. I also loved that we potentially would be able to spend time growing our lives in some new ways and have a time where I could take what I learned from some of the leadership team and apply it to my life. I also was looking forward to the times when I got to talk to my coaches because they help me out a lot and I always love those times with them because they are really good processing times. I’m excited for the future experiences.
After we arrived, my group got into our AirBnbs that we were staying in for that debrief time with all the guys in one house and all the girls in the other and we got adjusted to the new place, which was pretty awesome except there were a lot of hills. We also kind of relaxed and rested until the next day when we were supposed to learn about being on a ministry month long journey called the “WoManistry”. We first read about it through an email from our squad mentor, Kylee maybe a week or so before we were coming to the debrief time and when I read it, it led me many times to thinking, “What in the world is “WoManistry” and who will be in my group?” We then had a debrief session for that, which was when we met up together as a group to understand what the next month was going to be like and after thinking about those questions for hours, Kylee eventually told us what “WoManistry” is. She said that it is “when we are going to be in two separate teams, the first one of them is involved with all 8 of the men in the group who are going to minister together for the whole month and the second one is a group of all of the women on the squad who are supposed to minister together in their group as well. When she mentioned that, it got me pretty excited because I felt like I didn’t really know some of the other guys in my group and I knew that this could help me have a time of being able to grow my friendship with them. It also was exciting to be able to do ministry with all of them.
I’ll now explain to you about what it is like to be living with all of the guys and where we have lived so far:
After my whole group finished the debrief time, we all felt like the Lord was leading us to stay at this small apartment AirBnB place still in Bandung and for me I hoped that we were only going to be staying there for 1 day because the space it had was extremely small for all eight of us. In fact, for that one night, I had to sleep in a bottom pull out mattress where I couldn’t move my body and I only had half of the mattress to lay on, but I was happy that I had the opportunity to spend some time with them and I was grateful for the experience. However, I definitely don’t want to go there ever again unless I have like only 4 people with me.
On the next day, we ended up leaving that AirBnB and decided to move into a new hotel like AirBnB place where we bought 4 rooms to rent with 3 of them having two double beds in them and one room had a queen sized bed, but none of them had any toilet paper in the bathroom, which made things some of the times hard. It was a place that I felt was going to be somewhere where we were just going to stay for a couple of nights while we decided the next step towards what we felt God was calling us to do, which I was okay with doing. As we continued being there for the couple of days we wanted to be there, we decided to have a lot of discussions about where to go and what ministry we wanted to do. We ended up meeting up together on the last night and as we were talking we all felt like our ministry for this month was going to be one of creating relationships with whoever we met in Jakarta. We all wanted it to be a place where they would be able to come by and feel like they could talk to us and one where we could minister to them through showing them hospitality. We also gained another guy to our group, our squad leader, Reece because he joined with us for this month of Manistry too. Having him around is exciting because he is fun to being around and he’s cool to talk to. I’m ready for this month’s journey.
Something that I also found that was cool with our group was that while we were in the second AirBnB we all met up around 9 am and talked about what we all felt that we wanted to do that day. Sometimes I said things to them like, “Hey where do you think we should go to go to get some breakfast today?” They then would say “Daniel lets just walk and see what food there is and we are living the Unscripted lifestyle bro”. In fact as we were walking for some time, some of us noticed that there was a Dunkin Donuts right across the street from where we were and that made me extremely excited because their donuts usually were really good, so we decided to check it out. As we went in it, I noticed a sign that said, “Buy 9 get 3 free” and so I asked the rest of the group if they wanted any and 4 of them wanted 3 donuts, so we bought them and they were really good. That experience made me want to go back there whenever we could do that.
Another cool thing that happened was when we had the opportunity to go back there on the day we were and leaving and we all chose to do a Bible study with each other while we were all there. The Bible study was a time when we read the first chapter of the book of Acts and we talked about it and also ate some donuts for our breakfast. It was a cool way of spending time with each other and connecting with them through the Bible with them was fun too. It also was a good way to say goodbye to Banhung. Then a little later we left for Jakarta.
When we finally arrived to Jakarta after 6 to 7 long hours of being in the bus we decided to take it easy and we wanted to get settled into our new place. It is a place that I must say that is a lot nicer compared to the other two AirBnBs that we were in and I love the fact that it has a pool under in and a basketball court here as well because I know I’ll use it. It also is big enough to be a place where we can invite people to come over and somewhere where we can create some relationships with the people in Jakarta and do the type of ministry that my group is thinking of doing. It is also good that we can have space where God can doing amazing things there as well. I truly believe that our new temporary home is going to be a place where they are welcomed into it and a place where we create a positive atmosphere in all the we do. I also hope to find more Dunkin Donut shops here because their donuts are good and I want more of the Bible studies there too. In the end, I ask that you pray for us and I hope you have great blessings in all that you do.
