susu means milk

so life is busy as ever. break is coming up next week! 10 days of no school! sadly, i'll be babysitting 3 kids 24 hours a day for 6 of those days. and even more sadly, mel and tiff will both be leaving java for good next week. imma miss my white friends. part of me is dreading the change, but part of me is also curious and excited about what's yet to come.

and speaking of coming, remember those south african guys we brought home with us from bali 2 years ago? well, one of them is back to compete in a race on bali (he's a runner), and afterwards, he'll be visiting us here in salatiga! so horray for friends coming!

right now, i'm in yearbook class. i usually dedicate this hour and a half of my life to dominating minesweeper - the only game worth mentioning on any of the 15 year old computers in our lab - and trying to keep warm in one of 4 frigidly air conditioned locations on campus.

but today, there's something i'm excited about. it's more exciting than change. more exciting than people going or people coming. it's even more exciting than minesweeper, which means it's pretty dang exciting.

it's my friend susu. his whole life, he's been muslim. but lately, he's been asking lots of questions. questions about his faith and questions about our faith. he joined a bible study (PA) with some friends of mine which i also recently started attending. and i tell you what, i LOVE being in PA with susu. he sees things from a completely different perspective than i do. he sees God differently than i do. and it's.... refreshing. so very refreshing.

we've been doing bible study with prepared materials and study guides, but this week, we decided to get away from that and start diving into John, simply reading and discussing. we did this partly for the sake of susu who needs to know more about the life of Christ, but also because the guy who was making all the materials for us moved away last week. : )

we weren't too sure how it would go, but we all spent time preparing ahead of time and praying that the Spirit would lead. and it was great! we made it through the first 2 chapters last night, and even the first few verses of the first chapter didn't trip up susu. they made perfect sense to him. "the Word is Jesus. He was God's Message, and He IS God."

su liked the parts about Jesus calling the first disciples and how Jesus wanted to have a relationship with them. datanglah dan lihatlah. come and see.

he liked the story of Jesus' first miracle. he was glad to hear that Christianity isn't about rules and regulations like he always thought (and like islam is). heck, Jesus was at a party. we decided that He might have even danced! and for his first act? - He made wine!

and when Jesus got angry at the people selling things in the temple, susu pointed out that He could have just killed them. it would have been easy for Him. but He controlled Himself. and through that, all at once, He showed mercy AND He showed that there are some things in life we SHOULD get angry about.

it is incredible watching susu's eyes being opened to who God is, and last night was even more fun as i got to see him start to understand who Jesus is. i think the two of them will be good friends someday...

pray with me.