Another travel day, another night bus. My team is currently on board a bus traveling overnight out of the jungle to Makassar. It’s pouring rain outside and the roof is dripping on my face as I type.
C’est la vie.
This month has been a huge shift. We started out with our first team change, it was really hard to say goodbye to the people I’ve been with 24/7 since we started this crazy year. Indonesia has looked really different from our first two countries in Asia. It’s a lot more remote and the island that we’re on is a lot poorer than we’ve experienced in a couple months.
Ministry for my team this month has looked very different. We travelled to a small village 10 hours north of the city, called Masamba. I will say, our bus going there was not nearly as leaky as the one we are currently on.
We chose this ministry site after days of prayer and extending our stay at an air bnb day by day, waiting for God to tell us where to go. When we heard about a work-away program in the village with a man who described himself as a “dreamer,” we knew it was where we were supposed to be.
When we arrived in Masamba at 7am, after traveling the whole night, we realized we were not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Our home was a literal treehouse. Two small “rooms” hovered over a small living area, with a “kitchen” attached to the bottom. The whole setup perched precariously on a few different trees hanging over a river. I can’t say how many times I smacked my head into the short ceilings, mainly because I’m suffering memory loss from the series of concussions. We soon found out that the river we hovered over would be our bathing area, as well as be a sick to wash our dishes, and where you get the water to bucket flush the toilet. Very versatile really.
Our very first night there, mind you- we have been awake for 36 hours at this point, was a little rough. Our host- I’m just gonna call him Dreamer, had alllllll of his friends over to welcome us, aka 20 men we had never met. Coming from an almost all female squad, not really spending any time with men outside of a few here and there for this entire year, we were pretty overwhelmed. And they NEVER LEFT. I slept in my hammock downstairs because the rooms were a little toasty for my taste, and I will say I did not enjoy sleeping in a room where strangers were coming in and out all hours of the night.
Day two. For lack of a better description, we were essentially paraded around town all day, being force fed rice and palm
soup, to take selfies. That evening, exhausted and a little annoyed, we had quick showers in the river. Quick because wherever we go a crowd tends to follow, including when we’re bathing. Learning to die to self and show grace to people who stare and take pictures of you five feet away from where you’re trying to scrub yourself clean is something I’m still working on. (If you’re wondering where the title of the blog becomes relevant, that was it).
We went camping. Dreamer and his pack of friends decided to have us climb one of the mountains to camp one night. Under the impression that it would be just us and our host, we packed our tents and left the treehouse. I should have know that it would still be 20 random men with us. That night we cooked potatoes and cabbage for dinner, my teammate pulled a leach off her leg that we could NOT kill, and it stormed. It poured rain all night, and we had to climb down the muddy mountain the next day, or in my case slide on my butt down a mountain.
At this point all of our stuff smelled like mildew, we had to put on wet clothes all the time because nothing dried. My one pair of pants had palm sugar all over them and had been vigorously licked by a cow. I, for one, was ready to leave. Then we went on a sketchy white water rafting ride and our tailbones and arms got wrecked. So we were all over it.
We had another ministry site lined up. We were supposed to travel to the other side of the island, Mamuju, and meet up with a pastor there. We were all feeling weird because it was REALLY not working out getting there. We felt off because we hadn’t made much connection with our host, and traveling to Mamuju was really difficult. We all felt like God was telling us to stay in Masamba, even though none of us wanted to. We knew that God brought us there for a reason, and that He wanted us to listen to His voice rather than move on to what made more sense in our minds.
Being obedient in that decision was a huge blessing for this month. We were smelly, we were never alone, we took a lot of unsolicited selfies, but it was worth it. We got to know the men we were staying with. We talked about religion, and we compared it with relationship. We talked about God, we talked about allah. We shared meals, played games, sang Wonderwall and Taylor Swift. We made real friendships, and I hope we showed Jesus in the best way- through our love.
Before we left I felt like God wanted me to give a real presentation of the gospel. Dreamer talked about how he was searching for the truth on his own. He wasn’t with us today before we left, so I wrote a note and left it. It said “This is the truth: that God sent Jesus to pay for all of our sins. That all we have to do is believe in faith that Jesus is Lord and we are saved forever. There is nothing you can do to make God love you and more, or any less. He loves you because of who He is, not who you are. You are loved.”
I don’t know what Dreamer, or Tom, or Son, or whoever else reads it will do with that information. But it’s there. I hope it ends his search so that he can start living in truth instead of living his whole life looking for it.
I’ve felt like God was taking me into a new season this month. My first few months of the race God broke so much shame and fear off of me, and those months were me taking my first steps of walking in freedom of grace. Now I live like someone who’s fully known and fully loved. He’s bringing me into something more, something deeper. He’s told me it’s a “pruning” season. I have no idea what that will look like. But He loves me, and everything He brings me through is for my good. That includes a treehouse in a jungle in Indonesia. Month 6 was nothing that I expected, but it was everything I needed, and it’s not over yet.
