the looooooove doctor

so my friend tiffany, who is studying language here, is moving soon.
that is a bummer, because right now she lives right across the road from me.
but starting monday, she will be living on the other side of town.
she and i spent most of wednesday and thursday painting her new room.
she's moving in with an indonesian family.
the dad is a pastor, and they have five boys ranging in age from 13 to 1.

i have to admit that both days i was kind of dreading going there.
i didn't want to have to think in indonesian.
i didn't want to have to process indonesian.
i didn't want to have to speak indonesian.
but despite all my pessimism, i was very blessed by the tri family.

first of all, i think i was smiling to myself almost the whole time we were painting because in the other rooms, i could hear the family noises.
i didn't realize how much i missed family.
and i don't even mean my family specifically (i mean, of COURSE i miss them), but rather just the feeling of family.
i miss things like smelling mom cooking something in the kitchen.
or the sound of kids running around, laughing and playing. or screaming their head off because someone stole their toy.
or seeing a guest come to the door and dad welcoming them in to sit and talk for awhile.
it made me really happy just to be in the middle of all that.

yesterday, after we finished painting, we sat and talked and drank tea with them for 2 hours straight.
granted, tiffany did most of the talking, given that she is lebih lancar (more fluent) than me.
but i was surprised to find that i understood about 99% of what was said in that 2 hours.

we talked about everything.
we talked about people we all knew.
we talked about the church in indonesia.
we talked about languages.
we talked about cultures of different countries.
we talked about kids.
we talked about math.
we talked about school.
we talked about our families.
we talked about indonesian tv programming.
we talked about kfc.
we talked about hometowns.
we talked about marriage.

somehow, pak tri and his wife decided that i will marry a javanese man.
so then pak gave us a pretty serious talk about marriage.
and it was really good for me to hear.
his biggest advice was to start praying now that God will send someone with whom we can share one vision and one mission for our lives.
and then when we think we've found that person, we have to pray WITH them for the same thing.
he told us about how he and his wife prayed a lot together before they got married and how they have had a very blessed marriage because of it.
this is the most important thing, he says.
if you marry someone who does not have the same heart as you, your life will be very difficult.
he also taught me some javanese.
now i can at least introduce myself to my future husband in his native tongue : )
baha.