Hello again family!
We have officially landed in Manila and have completed our first day of amazing ministry with our new hosts. There will be plenty of stories from this coming soon and I am sure if you want more regular snapshots into our lives you can follow us on Instagram, adventureisus16 is the name, but before all that gets shared I (Matt) feel like I would not be giving you the opportunity to give God the due praise if I did not share one final story with you from our time in Indonesia. It is so simple but so powerful about the mighty and powerful plan of God.
Many of you may or may not know but this completes my (Matt’s) third time staying and serving the Lord in the country of Indonesia. Two times were with Kalyn and one was without her but with the church we were attending last summer in Raleigh, NC. I really love the country of Indonesia but in order for the story I am going to share to make sense, I must first share why Indonesia of all places!?!?
I will never forget when I was a sophomore in college (20 years old) I was dating a very special girl named Kalyn 🙂 and her dad founded and ran a Christian summer camp for kids in the Pittsburgh, PA area. The camp meant a lot to her, and camp in NC was were I devoted my life to Christ in 2010 so it seemed like a great fit to go and work for a summer. I woke up on morning in the middle of the summer with a questioning spirit. I had a dream that was so clearly from God and so powerful but I was not sure what to do with it. The dream lasted for the entire night but the dream itself was maybe 3 seconds of a single scene. I was standing and looking at a city scape with mosques all through it, and I heard a voice speak while I was looking at the city. It said, “Pack your bags, you are going to Kaimer.” Then I was awake.
I never saw the word Kaimer but I knew when I woke up that it was spelled specifically this way. K-A-I-M-E-R. I was in college at the time and was on the tennis team which was predominantly German so I thought, “Yes, this sounds super German and God knows my heart for Germany so I must be going there.” I looked deeper into “Kaimer” and found far opposite from Germany. The only place in the world spelled like this is a tiny (and I mean tiny) island on the east end of Indonesia. So it began.
Kalyn and I got married 2 years later and 3 months after we said “I do” we found ourselves starting a 5 month stint in Indonesia. We were on the far West Island of Indonesia called Sumatra in the city of Palembang. We came back to the States and then a year and a half later I returned to Indonesia for 2 weeks to the largest suburb of the capital city Jakarta. This city was called Tangerang and it is a little more east of were we were previously. And finally, we just completed our time on the island of Sulawesi in a place called Toraja. Still this was east of both places I have been before. So why am I telling you this? Because something amazing happened in Toraja that puts God’s plan all in perspective.
When I say we were in this middle of nowhere in Toraja, I mean it. We were about 7 miles from the nearest city. No clean water, no internet, and little transportation. So about a week into our time there we decided to take trip into town to get WiFi and we stopped at a really cool coffee shop. We sat down and the staff may have been a little intimidated by us at first since there is not a large population of white people that come through, but they were so friendly. Meme, our teammate who you met in our last blog post, started up a conversation with a young man and they were standing behind me talking. I overheard the man say the word “Hillsong” so I turned around and began to talk with him as well. He then sat down and we began to discuss Jesus and found out he was the owner of the coffee shop and he was ON FIRE for the Lord. So, we shared stories about Jesus and then God did something so unexpected. You ever have those moments where it feels like God shows you how the dots connect? Well it happened for me with this young man name Dret!
I shared with him how I lived in Palembang. He got kind of excited when I shared this and went on the tell me how he was a designer of LRT (Light Rail Train) systems. See, when we lived in Palembang, that city was undergoing massive construction for a new LRT system because the Southeast Asia Games was announced to be held there. Guess who designed it and was there at the same time making sure it was built properly? YEP! Then I share about how I visited Tangerang for a few weeks about one year ago. Dret replied by telling me that Tangerang is where he lives currently and is only back into his hometown of Toraja for a few days to be with his family. So, there I am in a coffee shop in the mountains sitting with a man who in some way shape or form has been a part of my entire journey through Indonesia. He was only in Toraja for a few days and I happen to be there to meet him at his new business venture coffee shop that had not been open for long. People are one of God’s greatest tools for connection. I have not reached Kaimer yet, but God has moved me closer and closer (see the map picture below). And all along the way from my best brother in Palembang named George who I have been able to see each time I have returned (Also pictured below) to my new brother Dret who is such a powerful reminder of God’s plan in my life, I have been blessed to see God connect the dots. I feel that God is assembling a team to go and love on the people of that island and I cannot wait to see how God uses more and more people to connect and bring about His love and plan! When we submit our dreams and are obedient to go, God makes all the connections! ALL praise and glory to Jesus!
This is Dret the owner of the coffee shop!
The view from the second story of Dret’s coffee shop called Okinawa
Dret and I getting to pray together over the coffee shop and God’s direction in our lives!
Our friend George who we met 3 years ago in Palembang and has been such a great brother in the Lord since. We love getting to see him when we visit. Such a great man of God!
This is the map of the journey God has take me on so far to one day visit and see what God wants to do in Kaimer.
Continue to pray for us now in the Philippines and what God is doing here and if you have a chance to pray for us and the journey God is taking us on the reach this remote and unreached island please do! Love you guys so much!
