Update

My friend's dad lived through the night, and they have upgraded him to slightly more stable than severely critical. Still not sounding too good. As far as I know, he has not regained consciousness at this point, and the doctors have told the family to prepare for the worst.

In the words of one friend, "He could die soon. Or later".

**Urgent**

PLEASE be in prayer for a friend of mine whose dad had a stroke earlier today. She just drove 2.5 hours on a motorbike to be with her family in the hospital. As of now, they're saying her dad is in a coma.

Thank you.

Kejadian

Today as I was walking home from school, I noticed LOTS of black smoke rising above the trees in the general vicinity of.... umm... MY HOUSE! So I started walking more quickly, still about 5 minutes away. As I got closer and closer, I could definitely hear the popping and crackling sounds of something not only burning, but burning DOWN. By the time I was close enough to hear that though, I was also close enough to see that my house was fine - but I still couldn't tell what exactly was burning. Also at about that same time, black stuff started raining down on me.

Here's the story. Behind my apartment is a language school. On the other side of the language school is a very deep and steep ravine that contains a river during rainy season and is surrounded by fairly thick jungle on both sides. A large portion of our campus also borders this ravine. On the other side of the ravine is a recently cleared lot where a housing development is supposed to be going in soon. On the other side of the empty lot is a carpenter. As I got closer and closer to home, my thoughts went in this order.

1) My house is burning down.
2) The language school is burning down.
3) The carpenter's house is burning down.
4) Someone lit that whole empty lot on fire to clear the brush.
5) That fire is not stopping.
6) The carpenter's house is going to burn down.
7) The language school is going to burn down.
8) And then my house is going to burn down.

Well, good news. Only number 5 above is true. And eventually, even that wasn't true.

Here is the true story. Some total idiot (and I don't throw that term around loosely) decided to burn his garbage. Where? In the dry brush at the edge of the jungle leading down to the ravine. Thereby catching THE ENTIRE FREAKING RAVINE on fire. IT HAS NOT RAINED FOR FOUR MONTHS, PEOPLE. The cracks and pops I heard were stands of bamboo exploding and trees/branches falling.

As the fire went further down into the ravine, it seemed that the river - or lack thereof (due to this being the tail end of dry season) - would not be sufficient enough to stop it. It was jumping. So our guards gathered as many hoses as they possibly could and ran them straight from our water tower to the part of campus bordering the ravine, got up on top of the wall, and hosed everything down.

Thank God the fire eventually stopped. It never came up our side of the ravine, and it never went in the direction of the carpenter's house.

Sadly, my house is full of smoke and smells mildly of death. There are bits of blackened foliage sprinkled all over my front lawn. And I expect much of the jungle/river wildlife has now migrated to my side of the ravine.

Saturdaaaaaaay

Of course it's the weekend and the power goes off within 45 minutes of waking up. So I watched The Office until my laptop battery died. Then I made some food. Then I read almost all of Jaycee Dugard's memoir. Then I tried to take a nap. But it was too hot. So when a friend invited me to go to the pool, I thought, "That is a nice idea". But then I had to figure out how to shave my legs with no running water.

Once I did, I paid $2 to hang out at a resort pool 10 minutes from my house (www.kayuarum.com) ALL. DAY. LONG. And I didn't even wear sunscreen.

Like a boss.

Winning

It is a very validating feeling when you explain why a difficult concept in math works the way it does, and stunned and enlightened high school students one by one drop their pencils and begin to pound their fists on their desks as they chant, "NOBEL PRIZE! NOBEL PRIZE!" in unison.

One is tempted to take a bow.

Fasting

In approximately 21 minutes, fasting month will be OVER and the festivities will begin! The men in my kampung (neighborhood) spent today making a miniature kaaba on wheels out of cardboard for the parade tonight, and the kids have been practicing their drums since 2 AM. Yes, I do mean AM and not PM.

Tonight, I'll go to the parade at Pancasila, the town center. Tomorrow, I have church in the morning (NOT skipping that for Idul Fitri prayers), then THREE meals at the homes of three different Muslim families I am close to. I hope I don't explode...

Selamat Idul Fitri
Mohon maaf lahir batin

Blood Donor

Back when I still lived in America, I tried to donate blood three times and was rejected each time. Basically, they hate me. No, but for real, the first time was because my iron level was one point too low. The second time was because I'd been to Thailand (or Kenya, I forget which one was the problem). The third time was because I told them I have heart problems. Like THAT'S a big deal...

Our school had a blood drive today. When you live in a third world country, they don't ask you questions like, "Have you been to a third world country recently?" They don't even ask you questions like, "Do you have AIDS?" In fact, they might actually GIVE you AIDS (just kidding, mom - it was the Red Cross. It seemed pretty legit). It's like super easy to give blood here. All they do is prick your finger to check your blood type, take your blood pressure, and ask one or two questions.

1) Are you taking any medicine?
2) Have you gone two weeks menstruation free? (For women only, and yes, that is how they phrased the question.)

So I didn't bother to tell them that I'd been to Africa in the last 5 years or that I have Mitral Valve Prolapse (I did check online first if people who have this should be donating blood, and everything I read said that it's safe but that it could aggravate the symptoms).

They took my blood. Fun side note, the guy who put the needle in and out of my arm had blood on his hands. That seems sanitary. I felt totally fine the whole time, and even watched the blood pump into the little bag. That doesn't bother me in the least. The part that hurt the most was when they put an alcohol soaked cotton ball on the hole after taking the needle out.

I went to see the nice lady at the table to get a band-aid afterwards, and as she was putting it on, I had to rest my head on the table because everyone started to sound very tinny and very far away. One of the guys taking the blood saw me, and yelled to someone else how white I looked - he said even my lips were white. So they had me lay down for awhile. After about 5 minutes, I sat up and chatted with some students who were giving blood. Since I felt fine, I decided to head home. I made it out the door and into our pavilion/lunch area and felt like I needed a break. So I sat down at a table out there. It didn't take me long to realize that I would not be making it home. In fact, I wasn't even sure I could make it back in the doors and onto a cot, but that seemed like my best bet, the alternative being passing out on a picnic table.

By the time I made it in (about 20 feet), I was listing pretty hard to the right, sweating profusely, and couldn't see much through the black fog. I was prepared for that situation though and through sheer force of will (and chanting "FOCUS. CHAIR. FOCUS. CHAIR." to myself repeatedly), I kept myself from passing out and made it into a chair where I promptly stuck my head between my knees. They drug a cot over for me where I laid for the next 30 minutes greeting other students and staff who came in and giving pep talks to the scared ones, not that I was in a very convincing position. A very nice Red Cross worker felt that he would help me by asking me a million questions in Indonesian about myself and where I live and the differences between Indonesian and American school systems. Then he went and made me some hot tea. I sat up and drank that, then I eventually got up and walked around a bit. They gave me a bag of snacks including instant ramen, cookies, a bottle of warm chocolate milk, and vitamins. I gave it to one of the guards on the way home. He seemed pretty stoked about it. Then he smacked me in the arm, and I didn't know why until I realized there was a mosquito there. LIKE I HAVEN'T GIVEN ENOUGH BLOOD TODAY.

So that was a pretty okay first donating blood experience. Now I know what to expect, and I'm pretty sure I would do it again. Also, if you get a chance, YOU SHOULD TOO. But not in America, because they ask way too many questions and then you just get rejected in the end. And then you walk home humming the sad Charlie Brown song.

As I read back over this, I was wondering who on earth would want to read this boring story of me donating blood. Then I remembered - dad does. So that's comforting.

"I'm Sorry We Almost Died, but Dinner was Fun!"

Well, as of tonight, my perfect driving record has been tarnished... Yup, that's right. Got in my first motorcycle accident in four years. The good news is that I think everyone walked away unscathed and it was CLEARLY not my fault.

Let me start from the beginning...

I had just had a wonderful dinner with my darling friend, Liz, and I was driving her back to her boarding house for the night. In order to do this, I have to drive on the main road through town - the only road with stoplights. We were at one such stoplight. The light had turned red shortly before we arrived at it, so our bike and one other motorbike were waiting side by side at the front of the traffic line. We were on the right and the other bike was to our left. On this other bike was a man driving with a woman riding on the back. Behind us was a yellow dump truck. When the light turned green, both of our bikes started going straight in unison. We made it a little ways into the intersection when all of a sudden, the guy to the left of us decided to turn right! So get a picture of that in your mind so you can see clearly what is going on...

Now, there are a few confusing things here. First of all, keep in mind that in this country, we drive on the left side of the road. So it's not like he was trying to hang a quick right. He had to cross a whole lane of traffic to get there. And there's definitely no way he didn't see me. We had just sat side by side at the stoplight for 60 seconds. AND by the point he started to turn, I was actually half a motorbike length in front of him. His front tire was even with my body. So it's not like he tried to turn in front of me and I T-boned him or anything.  No, in fact, he turned RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF MY BIKE.

I saw him start to turn towards me, and I tried to swerve out of his way, but I didn't have time to swerve fast enough or far enough. So in the middle of my swerve, the front end of his bike crashed into the left side of mine. The force of it almost knocked my bike (along with Liz and I) to the pavement. It was a bit uncertain and wobbly there for awhile, especially since he'd caught me in the middle of a frantic swerve, but I managed to keep my bike upright and get it stopped. Mr. Blind-o was not so lucky. He, his wife, and his bike all toppled over into the intersection. By the time I got my bike stopped, I was almost exactly in the middle of the intersection, and not knowing how much time I had left before cross traffic started going, I zipped to the other side where I pulled over and waited.

My very first concern was whether or not the dump truck got stopped in time. It is not an uncommon occurrence here for bikes to fall in an intersection and for someone to get run over by a bus or truck that couldn't stop in time. But praise God, it happened so soon after the light turned green that I'm not sure the dump truck had moved forward much at all. It was stopped and waiting with lots of unaware honking traffic behind in.

My next concern was for what my responsibility was in all this. I kept asking Liz, "WHAT SHOULD I DO!" The rule of the road is that the richer person in an accident pays for damages. Being white, I am automatically the richer person. However, I really did NOT want to get sucked into this situation. Because I'm white, damages would more likely than not be exaggerated and someone might even insist that they need to go to the hospital. Liz wasn't really sure what to do either since they were so obviously at fault, so I waited long enough to see that they were OK, and then I just kept going.

My third concern was Liz - when I heard the sound of the other bike falling, I actually thought that she had fallen off the back of my bike due to all the swerving and wobbling and braking. Once I realized she was still behind me, my focus shifted to the other bike. But then I realized that because of where she was sitting, her left leg had probably been hit by the other bike. Sure enough, it had been, but she reassured me that she was fine. Other than being shaken up (and apparently "one small bruise" on her leg), we made it through unscathed.

I am so, so, so thankful that we didn't fall. For all intents, we really should have. With the way we were hit, and with there being two people on the bike, there was not much chance of us staying upright. But we did. Liz kept thanking me for being a good driver and not falling, but I told her I can't take credit for that. Someone held that bike up. I am even more thankful that the dump truck was stopped. I am scared to death of SEEING a fatal accident here (and they happen ALL the time with all the motorbikes and crazy buses on the roads), I can't even imagine being involved in one!

Needless to say, I will be driving like a wary grandmother for an undetermined amount of time...

PS - We were both wearing our helmets, mom.

PPS - Liz, terima kasih kmu ud mengorbankan kakimu utk menjaga cat motorku! : D

Sidney Mohede Concert - Ungaran, 2012

I may live in the largest Muslim nation on earth.

But that doesn't mean we don't know how to have us a good ole worship service.

New Wall

My pictures came back from being laminated and are now hanging gloriously on my wall. So to complete the set of pictures of my 2012-2013 classroom, here is that last lonely (though not so lonely anymore) wall.

A Slight Miscalculation

This morning during first period, a helicopter was circling over campus. Very low. Repeatedly. Given our location, this is somewhat consternating.  Also, it was very difficult to teach as a) the sound was deafening, b) students kept trying to see the helicopter out the windows, and c) several students were convinced that terrorists were attacking.

During second period, I started feeling a general sense of uneasiness on campus, not from students, but from the national staff. And as one student walked in for third period, he said, "Um, there's a guy dressed head to toe in camo walking around campus. Do you know what that is?"

I couldn't take not knowing anymore. I knew something had to be going down. So I said I'd find out and went to visit my friend Mega, the school secretary. Because everyone knows that secretaries know everything.

I asked her what was going on, and her reply started with, "Yes, well, we've had an... incident". Not hopeful. As it turns out, a military base in Semarang had sent some guys out to log flight hours in the helicopter, and they were practicing landing. Usually they land on a soccer field not far from campus. But for whatever reason, they saw our soccer field and decided to use that instead, not realizing that it was located in the middle of a private campus full of foreigners.

The poor campus guards freaked out the first time it landed and men started getting off. Pretty sure they're not trained for aerial attacks... Good thing it wasn't actually an aerial attack.

Many apologies ensued from commanding officers from both Semarang and Salatiga (whose office had no idea this exercise was taking place). Men from the Salatiga base were sent in person to the office of the superintendent to smooth things over with him (which explains the man in camo walking around).

All in all, it was an exciting morning.

Corpse

*explaining step graphs in Pre-Calculus*

Me: So what do you think this kind of graph would be called?
Student 1: A staircase graph?
Me: That's actually really close!
Student 2: A stepping up graph?
Student 3: A climbing graph?
Student 4: A corpse?
*long, awkward silence*
Me: Uhmmmm.....

An Unexpected Update

Regarding the children living in the abusive situation...

There is a young couple at my church, Aldi and Sally, that I have become very close with over the past year. They are quality people, and I love them to pieces. We try to go out for coffee or dinner at least once a week. Last week, I had them over to my house on Thursday, and I was sharing Yoga and Gibta's situation with them, asking if they had any ideas or advice. They go to the same church as me, so they know both kids - their daughter, Dea, is in the same Sunday School class as them - but they never even imagined what was happening in Yoga and Gibta's home.

Once they knew the situation and realized that several people in the church had known what was going on for some time, they began to question why nobody had done anything. This led to a discussion of church and Christian community. I pulled out my Bible and read the verses in Acts describing the early church and how there was nobody needy among them. They looked out for each other. They took care of each other. They lived in true community.

In my church, there are LITERALLY families who bring iPads to church for their kids to play Angry Birds on sitting next to families whose kids don't even go to school because they are too poor to pay the $5/month tuition. There are men who own their own businesses and tithe hundreds of dollars a week and men who work all day every day driving people around town in a bicycle rickshaw to try to feed all 9 people living in their home. There are women with masters degrees and women who can't read or write.

The divide is huge.

The more we talked about it, the more passionate we got about it. We ended the evening without any real answers but with lots of ideas swirling around in our minds.

On Sunday, Sally led worship at church. I was one of the singers as well. At one point, Sally was sharing a testimony. I didn't catch a lot of it because I was standing right in front of a speaker (and Indonesian churches CRANK THEM UP) so most of what I heard sounded like muffled buzzing or like the teacher in Charlie Brown. But what I heard was her talking about how there are people among us in unfortunate situations and how sometimes we don't see or don't want to see what is happening, but that's not what God desires for us. The next song we sang talked about God making our hearts like His, letting our eyes see people the way He sees them, spreading His love, and being more like Him.

What I didn't hear from Sally's testimony (and what someone told me later) was about how her fellow people are hurting and living in abusive situations, but she didn't even realize it until a foreigner told her about it. It took a white person stepping up and saying, "Hey, this is happening and this is WRONG" for her eyes to be opened to the situation. She said that was the slap in the face she needed to be motivated to DO something about it.

And she did.

She is a government worker, so on Friday, she went to someone she knows in the local government and reported the situation. Unfortunately, that's not a guarantee that any action will be taken. So after church yesterday, she and one of the elders from our church who has done a lot of work in that particular neighborhood went to Yoga and Gibta's house to talk with the mom (they invited me to come with, but I was out planing rice all afternoon and didn't have my phone, which I am sad about, because I would have loved to have gone with them).

Basically, they told the mom that the situation had been reported to the local government but that rather than making this a long and drawn out process, it would be easier if she would just stop beating her kids. They asked her why she hits them, and she told them that she has never hit Gibta or the baby, but she confessed that she does hit Yoga a lot. Her reason is that Yoga's dad beat her - once so hard it broke 2 of her teeth - and so every time she hits Yoga, she considers it revenge against his father. They called Yoga into the house, and the mother tearfully apologized to him. They asked Yoga if he wanted to forgive his mother, but he said no. They also told Yoga - in front of his entire family - that if his mother ever hits him again, he is to tell Sally about it at church on Sunday, and Yoga understood that.

So while some things are looking up in this situation, there is still a long ways to go. Yoga's little heart needs to heal, and hopefully someday he will be able to forgive his mother. Because of her feelings towards her ex-husband, it isn't easy for her to look on Yoga with love, and it won't be easy for her to stop hitting him when it has become an every day habit. Also, Yoga is still attending the school for handicapped kids, which concerns me. At this point, there is not much we can do about it because the teachers at his old school gave up on him because he couldn't read or write and thus couldn't keep up with the class.

Through this, I'm learning that Sally is a mover and a shaker. Every day, she has been texting me ideas of ways to help in that village and asking what I think. We're going to meet later this week with one of the elders in our church to talk more about it. I've been pushing for a lot of these things for a long time, but I think that people don't take me seriously because I'm a foreigner. Maybe they assume that I don't understand the situation or that I'm just being idealistic. But now, things are happening.

We want to build a relationship with Yoga's family especially so that we can keep track of that situation. We want to mobilize a team of people to help tutor the children so that they can keep up with their schoolwork. A lot of their parents also can't read or write, so they can't get help their children with homework. We want to set up a scholarship fund so that the kids can graduate high school. We want to make sure that these families at the very least have rice and oil every month. We want to help train the parents to raise their kids wisely. As Sally said, "Their parents might be poor, but these kids are NOT allowed to be". We want them to have a future.

But we have no intention of doing it on our own. We want to get people involved. We're bouncing around ideas of how to get the church in on this and how to get the broader community involved.

I realize that we are flawed people and that we can't expect to just swoop in and change an entire village. And we don't want to just give to them - living in true community doesn't mean that the rich people throw money at the poor people. I want people to be actively involved. And I want to find ways in which they can give back. I don't want half my church to be dependent on the other. I want us to live relying on each other to meet our needs.

So don't stop praying. Because this isn't going to be easy.

First Week Funnies

At lunch.
Student: I guess this would not be the time to mention the new knowledge I gained over the summer.
Me: Oh, why not?
Student: Let's just say it involves sanitation in Europe in the Middle Ages.
Me: Oooohhh... Yeah, I've heard that wasn't so good.
Student: Yes. Since we're currently eating, it would probably be inappropriate to mention that they just threw their bodily waste out the window into the street.
Me: Yeah... probably.
Other student: What are you guys talking about?
Me: Europe.
Student: Trust me, you DON'T want to know about bodily waste in the streets of Europe in the Middle Ages.

In class.
Dorm student: My roommate this year is really awkward.
Me: Why is that?
Dorm student: He just stares at me all the time. Until I look at him. Then he closes his eyes.

After class.
Student: I got you some leaves. *hands me a handful of green leaves*
Me: Um... Thanks?
Student: They're like flowers, but from a tree.


During class.
One student to another: Tell me something I don't know about you.
Other student: I poop three times a day.
First student: Is that normal?
Other student: Well, I could probably do it all at once, but I usually get bored and stop, so I have to come back later to finish.

First Day

So I was definitely at school until after midnight last night finishing things that I procrastinated on. I am incredibly thankful for wonderful friends who actually know how to decorate and are willing to stay up with me until midnight doing so. Thanks to Melanie especially – because of her, my class looks more like a place to learn than a place to be incarcerated. Here are some pictures of my room this year!

Classroom 1!

Looking from the back of the room to the front. For the first time ever, each high school classroom has a computer and projector!

I really just love all the corners in this picture. Also, I love my class verse poster that a former student designed for me.

My computer desk. I wish I could hide all those ugly wires and cables. But I did bring a candle and a framed picture to make it look like a homey little desk.

From the front of the room looking back. My corner of the room. And my map that I just had hung today!

The three things hanging on my file cabinet. One is the verse that was my constant reminder for a lot of last school year. The other is my reminder to be happy when the sun is shining AND when it’s raining (which is does for 9 months out of the year, much to my dismay), and the last is just about the cleverest thing a student has ever come up with.

My water bottle always leaves a condensation ring on my desk which papers get laid in, and then said papers get all nasty and wet. So this year, I made myself a coaster out of felt! And I don’t want to brag or anything, but I basically think it’s adorable.

Computer corner again.

Hanging on the wall is a framed 8 x 10 print of this photo:

Aaaaaaand… My favorite part of the classroom which Melanie and I stayed up until after midnight finishing…

This is the first year that I have something other than math themed Far Side cartoons stapled all over my bulletin board. And I kind of love it. All creative credit goes to Melanie though. I just cut out shapes.

One more display is in the works. I’ve been gathering quotes from around the internet all summer, and earlier this week, I sent them to the printer. I’m having full page photo prints made of each one, and I’m going to make essentially a photo collage wall of the quotes on that blank white part between the windows because, let’s face it, this wall needs some help.

It’s not quite ready yet though, because I decided at the last minute that since I’d sunk money into getting the photos printed, I should get them laminated. Pictures tend to get kind of nasty and smudgy during rainy season. Also, geckos poop on them. So they’re still at the laminator’s. Some of the quotes include these:

I’m hoping that once they’re all ready, I can find some creative way to hang them so that they all look cool together… Maybe Melanie can help me with that.

The Last Day of Summer

School is upon us… As I was preparing my classroom today, I got slightly distracted. And by “slightly”, I mean that I still have nothing hanging on the walls, and I finally decided to just wing it for the first day of school tomorrow, but here’s what I would look like with bangs.

Abuse

It was recently brought to my attention that a little boy from a nearby neighborhood who also happens to go to my church is living in an abusive situation. According to neighbors, he is being used as a punching bag at home almost every single day. He just started second grade and can’t read yet, so his mom, thinking he must be retarded, enrolled him in SLB (Sekolah Luar Biasa – a school for handicapped children). He’s not handicapped. He is abused.

Someone only mentioned this to me in a passing conversation this past weekend. When I heard about it, my first thought was, “What can I do?” But I live in a country rife with injustice. And this kid lives in one of the poorest areas of town. The police don’t care if poor people are beating their kids. Let them do what they want. There is no child protective service here; no foster care system to speak of.

This makes me angry. And then it makes me cry.

I’ve sought out more information about the family situation over the past few days. Here is what I know: The mother is in her 20s and has had 5 children from 5 different men. There is currently no father figure in the picture. The first child got sick and died. The second child was sold for $100. The youngest three still live with mom and some extended family members. Mom is doing the beating, and one of the two younger siblings is also on the receiving end of it. The youngest is only a few months old. The neighbors all know it is happening, but there is nothing anybody can do to stop it.

I hesitated to write this post for a few reasons, one being that maybe it’s not my right to air their dirty laundry in public.

But I don’t want to be quiet. There’s too much of that in this country. Do you know that if an Indonesian girl is raped, she will more than likely never tell anyone, not even her own family? And do you know that if you rape a girl, but your father is in the military, you will never be prosecuted? And if your husband beats you every single day of your life and all the neighbors hear it happening, they will never once breathe a word of it. If you get pregnant out of wedlock, your family will hide you, then pretend the baby belongs to an already married family member. Or they might send the baby to live in an orphanage so nobody ever has to know. Most handicapped kids are sexually assaulted at some point in their life by a family member or teacher. And it’s normal to rape and beat prostitutes – you can even do it in the gas station parking lot, and nobody will stop you. Children are sold, never to be spoken of again, often to brothels where their virginity goes to the highest bidder. Illegal abortions are performed behind closed doors, and if you can’t pay for it, the doctor gets to rape you afterwards.

I’m not making any of this up. Everything I just wrote above comes from real stories of real people.

In my mind the past few days, I keep coming back to the question, “What can I do?” I can’t hear that a child I know is being abused and do nothing. I have to do something.

I talked this morning with a friend of mine who really has a heart to help women and children in troubled situations. Her recommendations to me were as follows:

1. Pray for the kids and for the family.
2. Try to build a relationship with the mother and to love on the kids as much as possible.
3. Get the kid out of the school he’s in now (because the school for handicapped kids is where many handicapped kids are abused or assaulted further).

So that’s where I start. The praying part is easy. I can do that anytime, anywhere. I’m hopefully going to meet the mother on Thursday (she doesn’t come to church with the kids, so I don’t know her). As for the school, I have some information about enrolling him in a better school that will accept kids with special needs in the regular classroom (not many Indonesian schools will), and I already know of 2 people willing to help with the cost for that.

If you’re reading this, please, please, please join me in prayer for this situation. I wish I could just offer the mother $50 and take the kids home with me, but it’s not that easy. Those of us who desire to help need a lot of wisdom, and God needs to soften the heart of the mother. We can’t change her or the way she treats her children. And even if we are somehow able to remove these kids from the situation, developmentally, they are so far behind that I don’t know how long term the affects of the abuse will be in their lives.

I’m going to go ahead and post pictures of the two children, Yoga (the boy – 7 yrs) and Gibta (the girl – 4 years). (These pictures were taken in 2010, so if you’re thinking they don’t look 7 and 4, you’re right!) Print them off if you want. Hang them on your fridge to remind yourself to pray for these precious children. Message me and ask how they are doing – keep me accountable. And don’t be afraid to pray for big things. We have a big God.

That Sinking Feeling

Because I live on a walled and guarded campus, I'm not super close with my Indonesian neighbors. I do however know a few of them. And every time my street is closed for a funeral, I wonder if it's someone I know. So far it hasn't been.

Today, as I was driving home from church, the street was blocked off and a black flag was waving - the sign that somebody has died. I stopped at the road blocked sign and looked down the street to try and see which house it was that was having a funeral. The road curves slightly, so it was hard to tell, but it looked like everyone was standing in front of a house at the very far end of the street - the house of someone I know. My heart sank a little bit.

I quick drove to a parallel road so I could come around a back way to the other end of the closed road. Sure enough - it was the house of someone I know. In fact, it was the house of someone I introduced YOU to not so long ago. Remember the story of the guy whose picture I took? If not, click HERE.

Yup, it was his house. I wasn't sure if it was him or his wife who had died though. Knowing Muslim law, they were probably already burying the body, so I drove around the corner to the graveyard. Sure enough, a crowd was there. Several men were standing by the road, so I drove up and quietly asked them if it was Bapak (the man) or Ibu (the woman). One guy said, "yes". Another guy said, "Ibu". The rest just looked at me like I was crazy. So I said thank you and drove away.

It was grandmother. I only met her once. I don't even know her name. But I love how crazy about her husband she was. How she marveled at how handsome he was in every picture I showed her. Even though I'm pretty sure the woman couldn't see a thing. And I'm sad she's gone. And I'm sad that grandfather doesn't have her anymore. And I'm also sad that because of their faith, grandfather doesn't know if he'll ever see her again.



EDIT - Immediately after writing the above post, I had to leave again. On my way to town, I stopped to buy phone minutes from a neighbor that sells them from his house. However, the guy who usually sells them to me was at the funeral, but his wife assured me he would be home soon. So I hung around a minute, and as promised, he was there quickly. As he worked on transferring minutes to my phone, I said, "So grandmother died, huh?" And he replied, "Oh, no, it wasn't her. Grandmother and grandfather are healthy as can be. Their 40 year old daughter died. Their second child." I was SHOCKED. So I asked how she died. The guy started LAUGHING as he told me that she got hit by a vegetable truck last night. LAUGHING. Oh, my...

Sumatra

I love going to Sumatra, but it’s hard to be there. I had thought of moving there full time 2 years ago, but at the time, I felt that God was calling me to stay here. I don’t regret that decision at all. I see how God has used me in my students’ lives and how He has used them in mine, and I’ve built so many wonderful relationships with people here over the past 2 years. But sometimes I wish I was there rather than here. Wistful thinking… One of my closest friends, Yohanes, who used to be my neighbor but now lives on Sumatra asked me what my favorite part about being there is, and my immediate response was, “I feel like I’m home here”. It was a no-brainer. So when it’s time for me to leave and return to my real life on Java, I never want to. My friends, my students, my house, my church, my job are all on Java. But my heart is still on Sumatra.

Here are just a few of the things I love the best.

1. Danau Toba, the largest (and most beautiful, in my opinion) volcanic lake in the world. I have many good memories of days spent by this lake with friends.

2. The farm on the mountaintop. I love love love being out of the city and in a place where I can breathe clean air and where there’s not 7 mosques within 3 blocks and where I can’t see or hear a single neighbor. I love the sunrises and sunsets. I love the stars at night. I love the mountain air. I love working with my hands. I love living off the land. I love being around animals. I love being the only white person working shoulder to shoulder in the fields with the other workers. I love being able to put a lifetime of farming experience to good use. I love taking black and white pictures of the things I find there. : )

3. Seeing how blessed this place is in how it continues to expand and thrive, and seeing the fruit of years of hard work, dedication, prayer, and stepping out in faith.

When I was there two years ago, the cattle were fresh off the boat from Australia, and all but one heifer was extremely wild. Part of my work there was to tame them. This was the littlest calf I tamed two years ago, and this time, as I walked through the fields, she chased after me and rubbed on me wherever I went. I love that feeling of accomplishment. It may not be much, but I did something to help that had a long lasting affect.

This is me two years ago with the calves I tamed. The one in the photo above is the calf on the right in the photo below.

New barn! Yohanes learned to weld, and this barn was largely built by him. I’m so impressed with the design and quality of work! The barn they had two years ago was small, crowded, and was only some poles with a roof. Now there are troughs for food and water, separate stalls, a stanchion, and lots of other fancy features!

There’s also a new house on the farm. Last time I was there, I was living in a room underneath a church halfway up the mountain and having to drive up and down every morning and night. There are now also many new plants – several imported – that they are introducing to the area and teaching other farmers to cultivate as well.

4. Ferns. I don’t know why, but every single time I go there, I end up taking about 100 pictures of the ferns that grow wild and rampant everywhere you look. They may only be annoying weeds, but every single fern speaks of the glory of its Creator as it unfurls its leaves toward Heaven.

5. The people. I’m not much of a people picture taker, but here’s a few of some of the awesome people I got to spend time with there!

Stephen really liked taking pictures with my camera. When I got home, I found about 120 pictures on my camera of various things, mostly blurry, that he had taken. Here’s one of his... His father passed away about a year ago, and he, his mom, and his little sister, Filia, just moved to join the work here only a day before I arrived! We quickly became great friends – in fact Stephen and I were just about joined at the hip for most of my time there! Both Stephen and Filia have the same passion for animals that their dad, a vet, had.

Yohanes has been my friend for 4 years, but we haven’t talked as much since he moved to Sumatra two years ago, so it was great to get to catch up with him and to help him out with his welding work in the barn.

Rosemary is the closest neighbor up on the farm. I spent a lot of time working in the fields with her last time I was there, and even though she’s no longer working for the farm, we picked up right where we left off! Awesome, awesome lady. She came to the house one day with a feed sack, and when I asked her what was inside, she opened it up to show me one of her new puppies! After I cooed and rubbed its nose and took lots of pictures of it, she told me that she needed me to deliver it to someone for her on my way down to town that night. She went on to tell me that the husband of one of the ladies in the closest mountaintop village had recently walked out on her and their 4 young children, so she wanted them to have the puppy to eat!! Rosemary hoped that none of the other neighbors would be jealous, because lots of people apparently want to eat her fat little puppies.

Then she asked me to take a picture of her and I with Kim so I can send it to her as a remembrance of our time together.

6. Some people just really love flying. I was that person 10 years ago on my first flight ever. For about 5 minutes. Then I got bored. And I’ve been bored ever since. I’m to the point now where I just really dread flying anywhere. However, there is one flight that I absolutely love. It’s the flight from nearby the ranch up to Medan, the fourth biggest city in Indonesia. From Medan, you can catch a flight back to Jakarta, and from there, back to Central Java. But that first little flight is always a highlight of my trip there. It’s about a 45 minute flight (but takes the place of a 7 – 9 hour drive) on a 12 seater plane that takes off from the most ghetto little airport you’ve ever seen. In fact, I think it’s someone’s house. Basically, the plane flies in from Medan, lands on the one tiny little airstrip, lets off a few passengers, picks up the new ones, turns around, and takes off again right away. It’s the kind of flight where you really wonder if the plane will even make it off the ground before the asphalt runs out and the jungle starts, and then once you’re in the air, it bounces around so much, you basically just expect to die. But I love that flight! The plane never gets very high, so you can see the lake and the mountains and the villages from above, and it all looks so beautiful from that perspective! Sadly, we were flying through the clouds of a rainstorm this trip, so everything was hazy for most of the flight. The only good shots I got were when we were coming in over Medan.

The only other part of the flying portion of the trip I like is when I see my volcanoes, Merbabu and Merapi, peeking through above the clouds. That’s how I know I’m home.

7. There are so many, many other things that I love about Sumatra that I can neither capture with pictures nor express with words. It just holds that sense of “home” for me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to live and work there, but for now, I’ll just call it my vacation home. I always thought it would be cool to have one of those.