.someone’s gotta suffer. bling volunteers. :)

It’s 9:00 am and TEAM BLING is directed to a rickety van jammed full with backpacks, eggs, our team (who is NOT travel size) and other meal preparation materials. Surely no one else could squeeze in. Well, we squeezed in another 13 people. An hour later, we think we’re arriving to our location when we turn down, quite possibly, the bumpiest road I have ever seen. A little off-roading Indonesia style if you will…in a mini van. So, we bump merrily along for about 20 minutes and I’m severely motion sick.

At this point, we’ve been driving for about an hour and a half. My whole body glistens with sweat, my skin sticks to the leather seating around me, and the heavy air smells distinctly of live chickens and fish.

Suddenly our contact Rizda turns around and grins. “We’re here!”

 

We unload all of our things from the car and BLING is avoiding eye contact with one another to stifle any lingering questions or laughter.

 

The laughter stops as we think about the story we recently heard of the first Christian missionaries who came to Indonesia. They began to witness to a tribe on another island, and were EATEN by the cannibalistic people. I’m starting to consider that I might be dipped in teriyaki pretty soon.

Just call me dinner…

 

Then, relief floods me as I see a tiny boat bobbing in the small river hidden behind the tree line. This scene probably shouldn’t have been super comforting, but it looked like Iquitos, so I was oddly comforted. We load all of the materials on board, stare at the brown water, hold our breath, and begin the next leg of our journey.

 

BLING piles onto the tiny boat and prepares for the worst. We are surrounded on both sides by thick green trees whose roots are so intertwined that it’s difficult to tell one tree from another. Just looking at them would make you slightly claustrophobic.

 

Then the miracle happened….we break from the brown river and creepy trees. They fold back to unveil the most beautiful crystal blue waters and white sands I’ve ever seen. Sporadically thrown throughout these teal waters are tiny islands full of nothing but palm trees and bungalows. Paradise. I think we had just arrived. We ride across the waters for about twenty minutes until we see a wooden dock that stretches out a few hundred feet from the coastline. There are 4 large huts clinging to the end of the dock, which give way to a huge porch overlooking the water. “There it is…”

 

The next afternoon was full of games and good foods on the aforementioned, ridiculously gorgeous, beaches. We had sand-ball contests (an Indonesian beach game I’m bringing to the states), enjoyed the breeze in hammocks, dove off the deck, and feasted on crab, calamari, and fish.

 

Bottom-line?? We’ve received constant blessing while we’ve been on this journey. We gave up comforts in the States, and the Lord has blessed us by showing us His creation and its beauty in the most amazing ways. This place where we stayed is a retreat center/get-away where Singaporians pay around $200 a night to stay. We paid transportation fees to get there and food costs, enjoying the surroundings free of charge because we were with the church.