In their hearts humans plan their course. But the Lord establishes their steps. Proverbs 16:9
Closing in on 7 weeks since leaving home; it’s about time I update all of you on my journey.
In case you don’t make it to the end of this post, I am still on the way to being fully funded. I have one week until my next deadline of $13,000. I’m about &1,100 away! Any small amount you can set aside for my journey supports the Kingdom work we are doing. Thank you all for your love and support, God keeps on blowing me away with the generosity I’ve seen during this fundraising process.
After the 7ish days of madness called Launch, my squad headed to the Atlanta airport at 8:30am on Thursday, January 12th. Bright eyed and bushy tailed we hopped on a short flight to Boston and waited for our 6:30pm departure from the US of A.
We then boarded our 12hr flight to Doha, Qatar! This was the longest flight I’d ever been on, and man was it an experience. We had one short and stressful hour in the Qatar airport, and boarded our 8hr flight to Jakarta, INDONESIA! Eight hours felt like a piece of cake. After our last leg, a 4hr bus ride to Bandung, we were closing in on 35+hours of travel.
A bunch of jet lagged zombies in Jakarta.
We hopped on a bus and headed for Bandung where we stayed for our first four days in Indo. What a relief to be in a real home with such gracious and hospitable hosts, Jay & Karen! I was pretty sick for about our first week in Indo, and they took such good care of me. There we spent our last bit of time together as a whole squad, learning about Indonesian culture from Jay & Karen, exploring Bandung with the whole crew, and recuperating from crazy jet lag-I woke up at 3am for the first week. Saying “see you in a month!” to our squadmates was hard when Monday rolled around, but we were already looking forward to sharing and hearing stories come the end of the month.
Indonesian kiddos in the neighborhood
overlooking Bandung
our last night together as a squad before splitting up for the monh
My team headed to our ministry site, in a new city for World Race, on Monday morning. We were the first team to serve there, and along with our host Jay, we worked to forge relationships in the area with local organizations and believers.
The building we stayed in had recently been rented out by a local church, and plans are in the works to start programs for the local refugee community-people displaced from all over the Middle East. The are calling it House of Hope. We camped out inside this big empty (former restaurant) building, cooked over a propane stove, took bucket showers, used the bathroom for the kitchen and the kitchen for the bathroom, and slept in our tents. Ok that was just me.. one night of buzzing mosquitoes in my ear was enough. Eventually, we settled into a routine and became comfortable in our space. We really enjoyed being able to cook for ourselves this month. Elva and Sam are amazing chefs! I made grilled cheese one time..
What our living space looked like on our first night.
The first night we arrived, we got to meet most of the big players in the creation of House of Hope, and the refugee community as a whole. Some of the people in that room ended up being our closest friends during our stay. We got connected with a few teachers/administrators from one of the schools for the refugee children.
Currently, more than 3,000 refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, and numerous other countries are living in the Bogor area. We reflected all month on the uniqueness of the opportunity we had. God brought these beautiful people to us! Most of them are from countries where Americans cannot travel to. And I suppose they can’t travel to America now either. The task God put in front of us: show these people seeking peace and refuge in a war torn world, what being a Christian is all about; show them where your hope comes from.
Did we have any idea how to do that? Not really. But God knew, and he directed our steps.
That first week in Indo-ghanistan (or Afghanesia?) was slow going (we were in Indo but mostly around Afghani people). “Hurry up and wait” is a common theme on the race, and we were experiencing it for the first time. We had meetings. We waited. We visited the school. We waited some more. We were waiting for direction from the leaders around us and we were waiting for direction from The Holy Spirit. God was teaching us to abide. After feeling overwhelmed by all of the opportunities and people in front of us, we decided to focus on just a few avenues that The Holy Spirit was leading us down. One of these was the Refugee Learning Nest (RLN). RLN is one of a handful of schools in the area, started and run by the local refugees, for refugee children.
The government doesn’t allow refugees work for pay or go to school in Indonesia. These people who have been displaced from their home countries because of the injustices of war, many of them educated and driven individuals, have no way to support themselves. Some rely on family in their home countries for the money they need for basic necessities, some have family members who were accepted into a third country such as a Canada, Australia, or the US, and some have no one. Their families have been torn apart or completely wiped out by the Taliban; some have been refugees their whole lives. The stories we heard last month were heartbreaking.
Despite the atrocities many of the refugees have experienced, their resilience was stunning. RLN was full of these people. Refugees as young as 17(!) teaching the children every subject- from English to Science and even Art, with little to no curriculum. These people are rockstars.
Here we are sharing lunch with the teachers-tradition Afghani bread and hot milk tea! One of the teachers and her mother baked this bread for all of us. These people are beyond hospitable.
The kids during morning assembly
We assisted the teachers with ideas for their classrooms and subjects during our time with RLN. We encouraged them and loved them and just had fun! My favorite day was an impromptu Afghani dance lesson and hangout with the teachers. We had a lot of laughs, that’s for sure. Throughout the month we shared meals with our friends in their homes, and ate the most delicious food. They blessed us beyond words.
We also assisted with a charity clinic put on by the 7th Day Adventist Church at House of Hope. We cleaned and prepared this space we had been living in and turned it into a mini hospital, complete with private consultation rooms (made with plywood partitions and plastic curtains). Doctors and dentists were brought in from the 7th Day Adventist Hospital in Bandung, and free medical and oral examinations were provided for the refugees. We had about 150 people come through our small clinic setup! The coolest part of the whole day was seeing so many members of the refugee community come together to help and volunteer alongside of us. We had many volunteer translators, people working with registration, and even measurement taking. It was a long, and stressful day, but we didn’t need a translator to see the gratitude on people’s faces. Thank you Jesus for their stories and their hearts.
the calm before the storm of the clinic
Another huge blessing during our time in Indonesia, was the team from April Expedition that joined us for our last few weeks in Indo. This squad launched last April, and did almost the same route my squad is doing, only the other direction. So we started out month one in Indonesia and will be working our way across Asia and wind up in Spain, while they started in Spain and have been working their way over to Indonesia. They were on month 11, their final stop on the race, while we were just beginning the journey. Thomas, Charles, Kelsey, Shannon, Bethany and Chelsea were a well of knowledge, experience, and advice about the race. Their testimonies truly inspired me and helped me to begin to conceptualize what this year might actually look like. They encouraged us, served us, and laughed with us. I will be revisiting the words they spoke over us throughout this whole year. If any of ya’ll are reading this thank you for blessing us and showing us how to do this thing! 🙂 you’re amazing.
us with the team from April Expedition
There are quite a few other stories from the month- like the time we crashed an Indonesian wedding, the time I was sick through a 5 hour church service, the time we tried to go see a waterfall, the time Sam and Jordan got (semi) kidnapped, or the time I got roped into playing in a full on football match- but I better save some tall tales for when I got home.
This month the girls and guys have split up for manistry/womanistry and us girls have just arrived in Thailand! The guys have been in Kolcutta, India since last week. They have been seeing some amazing stuff happen, and if you’ve figured out how to get to my squadmates blogs and social media profiles you guys have to go check them out. If not, you can click on the tab in the upper left corner of my blog home screen and click on “meet my squad” to find them.
We (the women) are going to be meeting with a few different organizations this week, and are hoping to get hooked up with some people who do bar ministry in Bangkok, which is a major hub for sex trafficking. Our time planning for this month has already been full of the Holy Spirit’s guidance! My next blog post might be about the details of all of that, so stay tuned. We are excited to see what God had in store for us this month.
I love you all and thanks for reading!!
Special thanks to Cari and Roberta for being on my case about getting this posted 😉
