This past month was our 4 month on the field and we were in Indonesia. Stephanie and I were able to work together with a team for the first week. We were in Bandung, on West Java, with Team Kimberlite. We helped with an aerobics outreach, at a mental health home, taught Sunday School, led worship, and did morning prayers. Every morning, at 4am, the next-door mosque would blare the Islamic prayers. It was so loud that we couldn’t sleep through it and decided to pray and worship our God, while all of the Muslims were praying to their God.
There are 221 unreached people groups in Indonesia, only 12.8% are professed Christians, according to the Joshua Project. Our hosts have beautiful hearts for evangelism and they sat us down to share their stories, teach us what they’ve learned, and equip us with understanding of how to reach Muslims. God is doing some awesome stuff in Indonesia, the largest Muslim population in the world, and there seems to be a growing movement of people coming to Christ, so keep them in your prayers!
Besides sleeping on the couch, I was pretty comfortable in Bandung. We were able to have things like oatmeal and French Press coffee in the morning (HALLELUJAH!), which is not common on The World Race. This is very different from what we had later in the month, which I’ll share about later on in this post.
First, a video of our time in Bandung!
After our week with Kimberlite, Stephanie and I got to have a little vacation! The squad just had their first debrief at the end of Vietnam, which is rest for the squad… but intense for the Squad Leaders. In order to give us some rest and down time, we took a couple days and traveled to Lake Toba! The bus ride to Toba was an intense 71 hour, straight ride, on one bus. We barely slept, were stuck by the side of the road for 6 hours when an axle broke, and listened to more Indonesian Club music than I’d care to have ever listened to. See a video my co-leader made about the bus here!
Lake Toba is a large, natural lake on the top of a supervolcano. It is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake in the world. It was a beautiful place to say the least and we had a great weekend. Our mentor and coaches blessed us with some nice lodging in a traditional Batak house and we were able to go kayaking, hiking, swim in waterfalls, drink cat poop coffee (most expensive coffee in the world!), get massages, and eat well. It was perfectly timed, since this is about the half-way point, and we feel rejuvenated to take on the last few months of squad leading!
Here’s a short video about our time there:
After our little vacay, Steph and I traveled to Medan. I stayed with Team Palpable Presence and Stephanie went off to work with Team Cosmopolita, also in Medan. Our first week we drove a few hours outside of the city to work with refugees from a local volcano that had erupted and forced hundreds of families out of their homes. Our contacts helped them set up communal farming to make a living and a refugee camp for them all to live in. We visited the camp, played the children, shared our stories with the families, visited their farms, ate with them, prayed with them, and loved them. One little boy in particular, Freydo, followed me around everywhere and quickly consumed my heart. He would run up to me with open arms every time we arrived (and I mean RUN, at full speed), jump into my arms, and never leave my side. Sometimes he was bathing when we got there and his butt naked self would stand in the doorway to wave at me, making sure I knew he knew I was there, then quickly get dressed so he could be with me. His love was unending and asked nothing of me, it was incredible. I thought every time I would leave he would throw a fit, but he would just give me a hug and wave at us until we were out of eyesight. He was a beautiful example of the motto “love deeply, hold loosely” that has been a theme of mine the past few years.
The story behind that…
While working at the guesthouse in Argentina, I found myself not wanting to open up to people completely, because I knew they would be leaving. It was hard for me to get so close to someone and have them leave 3 days later, so I saw myself building walls of protection. As most of you probably know, I want to own a hostel of my own one day, so this was a challenge the Lord was working on with me early. Love these people deeply, but hold them loosely – let them go.
Anyways, back to Medan, our living conditions were a bit rough. We slept on the floor, used squatty potties and cold, bucket showers, found cockroaches in our beds, the showers, everywhere, ate rice and fish at every meal, etc. The family we lived with was extremely lovely and it was a good break from WiFi, but it was definitely a life I’m not used to and I can’t say I’m completely comfortable with killing or even seeing cockroaches yet. After working in the mountains with the volcano refugees, we came back to Medan for the last week of ministry. We visited refugees from Iran and from Somalia that took refuge in Indonesia. It was heartbreaking hearing there stories, but encouraging that they are now safe and at a place surrounded by Kingdom workers sharing the Gospel with them.
Here is a video from one day in our life, enjoy!
