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Reflections on a visit to Central Java
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Encouraging, and being encouraged by, Christians in Central Java.A thank you from the Team Leader
Dear Team Thank you for all your time, effort, work, service, creativity, laughter, joy, words, patience, helpfulness, kindness, generosity, care, perseverance (even endurance!) RISK taking spirit, and overall for showing what it really means to be servants of God. It has been such an honour working alongside all of you, and despite unforeseen obstacles, and as Natalie puts it, “it was such a joy to be stranded with such a lovely bunch of people!”
God was certainly showing us He is in control of all circumstances!
As I went to bed last night, thanking God for a safe end to our eventful trip, I couldn’t help but be amazed by His work behind the scenes to achieve His plan. We could have gone( and did go!) different ways in 3 different teams on Sunday: Joy, Cheryl, Terry in their car with the infamous Martin at the wheel; Ian and his team of 9 people on the 2pm flight, and me and 5 others on the 5pm flight, thus ending a short weekend of service together. However, that was not what God had in mind for us! Through a convoluted series of seemingly haphazard and last minute decisions one leading to another, and completely unplanned and unbeknownst to us, He managed to orchestrate a reunion on that bus in Jogja such that we came together as an intact team of 18 people again in Jogja Airport before we all flew home! Isn’t He amazing?
Several of us wondered yesterday why God kept us back another day in Semarang. I really believe He wanted us to feel more connected to one another and work together in a real team. Despite the work we did on Friday night and Saturday, we didn’t really have much time together as a team. Through the flooding of Semarang airport (which last happened one year ago on Feb 2nd, or so my daughter found out on Google!) God put us in a situation to bring us into unity as a team, as we worked together to find solutions to get home! I am sure that other groups would have had a fair amount of complaining, impatience and irritation at the unforeseen and inconvenient delay. However, I am so proud to have been in a group which did not at all complain or get impatient, irritated or angry! Everyone just accepted it and found ways of making things more comfortable and solving the problem! Maybe God really wanted us to experience a glimpse of what a true church with many members with different gifts but all in one body meant! I felt that with all of you and your wonderful gifts on this trip!
Thank you so much everyone for the part you played in the trip.
Thank you Ian for putting up with 3 additional sermons at short notice, and for organizing the dinner with the 3 “D”s- Duncan, Dr Krave and Dr Daniel- and scholarship students! Thanks for being our spiritual leader and holding things together.
Thank you Mega for arranging everything for us in Solo and liaising with Pak Haryono and his team to bring us round, for all your fantastic translations of sermons and prayers and also for remembering to arrange lunch for us on Sat so that we would not go hungry! The trip would not have materialized without you and we are so thankful for the opportunity to see the wonderful work Tell a Village is doing in central Java, and also hearing all the wonderful testimonies of the pastors there and also getting to know you better!
Thank you Maria, for your willingness in translating the hand washing activities with Peter and your infectious enthusiasm with the children at the medical ministry. Thank you for organizing our breakfast and wonderful horse carriage adventure to get to the delicious wedang ronde supper in Salatiga! We won’t forget that experience! Also for all your ongoing prayers for our safety throughout the trip.
Thank you Joy for your very useful patchwork workshop, all the preparations you made beforehand! I am sure the ladies will never forget what you taught them! Thanks for your joyfulness which really lifted our spirits, we remember how happy you sounded on the phone at Rumah Makan Ani – enjoying your opportunity for a nice dinner and being so grateful that the proprietor had a Nokia charger just for you, when in actual fact you were stranded and the car had broken down! We aspire for your inner joy!
Thank you Peter, for steadfastness in ensuring everyone that came along to the medical relief (192 of them I am told!) were taught the 5 important times to wash their hands each day and why it was important and how to do it properly! Thanks for lugging all that soap around! Thanks also for being generally helpful and for your practical help and advice in organizing the tickets home!
Thank you Kayee and Heri, for your wonderful work with the kids in Sunday School and on Saturday morning with the kids in the workshop. I saw how they really enjoyed themselves as you did activities with them which they probably never experienced before! I hope the local leaders there got some useful ideas from you both for Sunday school! You managed to connect with the children so well in just a short time. Thanks also for involving all the children from All Saints in your work! And thank you for organizing the hotel rooms, for your generosity and being our ATMs when we were running low on cash!
Thank you Shanti for helping out with Joy and Cheryl in the patchwork team and also for your wonderful contacts and resources when we got stuck in Semarang. Please convey again our deepest gratitude to the indefatigable Teresa and her friend who went way beyond the call of duty and spent many hours shuttling to and from the airport to get us sorted! Also thank you for arranging the indispensable bus for our ride to Jogja!
Thank you Natalie for being our musician (and braving the yucky keyboard!) and for all your wonderful ideas in singlehandedly providing all the equipment needed to entertain the kids in the medical service on Saturday! Your ideas were so creative I have to ask you to go to Maria’s projects to teach the leaders there! Thanks for your cheerfulness and support for everything!
Thank you Leo, without you there would be no medical ministry! Thanks for organizing the doctors and medicines and liaising with Mega to make sure the set up was just right. Thanks for taking care of the doctors expenses first and for being so well organized and efficient that the work was done so fast! Next time we can take in lots more patients than just 200!! Please convey our heartfelt thanks to Dr Edi, Dr Soebroto, Dr Esti (especially for her very effective talk on the dangers of smoking to 2 classes of technical school boys - she managed to command the whole class’s attention! ) and Dr Jenny the dentist for singing with the kids and also teaching them how to brush their teeth ( merah ke putih, merah ke putih!) and giving them free toothbrushes!
Thank you Terry and Cheryl, for being part of our team this weekend and being such good sports and going along with all the activities we had. Thanks Cheryl for helping out with the patchwork and bonding so well with the ladies in Solo, and thanks Terry for helping us out with the hand-washing activities in the school! We hope you had a good trip to java and will come back again!
Thank you to my husband Sugiman, for having the courage to share your testimony with the church on Friday evening, for helping out with registration at the medical team, helping to arrange the air tickets, being the general porter for luggage and for rushing me along when I forgot the time!
Last but definitely not least, thanks to Beth, Leah, Calvin, Carlo and Jiji, for your cheerfulness and fun-loving spirit that was definitely a blessing and salve for the rest of us! Thanks for your enthusiasm in getting engaged with all the village children, for being brave enough to read and speak in Bahasa Indonesia, for making the activities really fun for the kids, for also being God’s little ambassadors in central Java and showing the others that you are never too young to serve God, you just have to be willing! Thank you for not complaining when we had to go through long long car journeys and wait a long time for lunch or dinner, and thanks for braving the cold showers ( this is for Beth!) and for generally lifting our spirits with your singing and playing!
Thank you to all our
friends at All Saints who prayed for us before and
Most of all Thank you GOD, our Father who knows what is best for us and who looks after us no matter what our human minds may think about our situations. He makes all things work for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose!
I know that the weekend was rather unpredictable and some parts of it we had to plan as we went along. I would really love to have your input on ideas to make things better next time round, and how we can organize things better next time! I apologise for the many unplanned events and changes in plans and hope I can learn from this so that we can do future trips which are better organized and more effective!
I pray that we will all take something away from this weekend and grow closer to God and to each other as the body of Christ. If anyone wants to do this again, you can let me know! I would love to have an organizing committee ready for the next trip!
In closing, I believe we have all experienced different aspects of the weekend, and I think it would be wonderful if we could put together a compilation of our reflections on the trip, including what made a real impact on us, what we enjoyed/did not enjoy, what we learned about God and what God is doing in Central Java during the trip, what impact does this have for our own spiritual life with God as a result of our experience this weekend.
Thank you again! In Christ, Pek Swan |
Reflections from:
Kayee: How to... Ian: Three Es...
Sugi:
My wife ha Natalie: How much time Shanti: Thank you for inspiring and encouraging me Leo: Happy or disappointed?
A reflection from Kayee
The ministry trip has provided
insights to many personal searches and issues that have been, and
continue to be, under discussion within All Saints:
A reflection from Ian
3 E’s summarise for me the 4 day trip of 19 people from All Saints Menteng and South Jakarta as we travelled around central Java. The 3 E’s: exciting, energising and encouraging.
Exciting as we saw the gifts that God has given us and how he can use those gifts to help build the church: the church of All Saints and the 5 churches with which we had contact over the weekend. We heard how God had worked in Sugi’s life and Terry (Joy’s brother in law) with no Indonesian speaking shine in communicating as he made a speech at a DVD hand over ceremony...ably assisted by Maria or Mega (from All Saints’ Outreach project group ; tell-a-village) and Cheryl (Joy’s sister) talking to many people in whatever way she could.
Energising as we worked hard at a church service on Friday, having come straight from work and school and the plane flight. Then the next day on to a medical/health instruction station in a village where over 190 people were treated for free – all courtesy of one of our Outreach Projects – thanks Leo - and All Saints. Peter and Maria taught 190+ people how to wash their hands – with over 200 cakes of soap to give out and wrinkly hands afterwards. Heri, Kayee, Leah, Beth, Calvin, Jiji and Carlo were energetic with the kids at three churches (one more than planned) in games, craft, singing and bible stories while Shanti and Joy taught women patchwork. And after 6 hours of these activities, we visited an orphanage and then drove 2 hours to Salatiga. Yes, we did a lot on Saturday but we had God given strength to serve him and his people.
Encouraging as we met with God’s people in Solo (where there is strong persecution from radicals), churches in Salatiga and theology students in Salatiga who were past and future All Saints scholarships recipients. Each person had a story to tell of God’s exciting and difficult work of serving Him whether that was physical and emotional persecution from other religions or parental pressure to conform to what would bring in more money rather than church work.
Even our 1 ½ days of being stranded in flood bound Semarang was exciting, energising and encouraging. As Natalie remarked: “it was such a joy to be stranded with such a lovely bunch of people!” Thank you God, thank you All Saints and thank you Pek Swan for ALL your work coordinating and being our ‘tour’ guide.
Ian
My wife ha
to write a reflection and
A reflection from Sugi
About a week before we leave for
the mi
For the la
When we go for a mi
It i
Wi Sugiman
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A reflection from Natalie Some of you may have read the little book Freedom from the Tyranny of the Urgent by Charles E Hummel... His main point is: make time to do the important tasks in life. Sometimes things that are really important are not urgent. We keep giving our time to urgent things. But we also need to make time and give good time to do important things. For example, in our family we think it is good to make time to pray as a family in the morning before everyone leaves for the day. There are lots of urgent things in the morning but prayer together is important. Why is it that prayer is so often what gets forgotten in the mad rush of tooth brushes books, hamsters, and soccer boots. In these days of more and more faster and faster, the temptation is to put nearly everything before spending time with God, spending time with other people from church and serving and loving others. We are just busy and a lot of what we do is good. As Christians we need to ask God to give us his priorities as our priorities. Sometimes these do not match up with my ideas of efficiency, good time management or even proper manners! From time to time I have really benefited from doing a stock check of whether I'm really spending my time doing the important things in the light of God's priorities. Or am I just being tyrannised by the urgent. When the Ministry Trip to Central Java was advertised in the church bulletin my first thought was "That would be great to go on." It seemed like an important thing to be a part of in the life of All Saints. My second thought was "But do I have time?" It meant giving up time with the family on the weekend, my husband having to miss two days work; time spent preparing activities and organising the family for the weekend. It was a costly time commitment. But it was worth it. The trip to Central Java was a good thing to go on. In some ways it was rushed but I feel that in general we focussed on the important things. We certainly packed a lot into a weekend. We made good use of our time on Friday night, meeting with Christian brothers and sisters in the church in Solo. I remember the sinking feeling I had walking in to the church. I was listening to their slick 5 piece band and wondering how they could possibly be encouraged by our singing. Maybe it was the fact we'd made time to go. In fact we met late into the evening, hearing their stories and struggles. Is it good to keep listening in these situations or stop the meeting at 9pm even if we haven't finished? We had the time and space to keep listening to them and this was important on this occasion because one of the main reasons for our trip was to encourage these people. I also came away so encouraged to hear testimonies of God healing people from sickness and evil spirits. I came away wondering how we can help these brothers and sisters in ways that are good for them. Sometimes just giving money is not the answer. Saturday was busy. Two teams went in different directions. One went to a local gym to support the doctors in providing free medical services to people from around the town and other flood affected areas. Four doctors , two pharmacists and a dentist were very efficient in seeing people who came through. Others of us taught good hand-washing practices and looked after children. It was so good to be part of the team, each person helping where they could. I was pleased to have the time to sit and play with the children without there being any rush. I had time to observe, to listen and to learn. I was able to appreciate the enormous gifts of others. I also reflected on how we can help these people and others like them in the future and what their real needs are. I had time to pray for the kids as we did colouring and played with balls and balloons. I wondered why I find it so hard to give my own kids focussed attention. God energised us to serve others. He gave us gifts of patience and joy. He gave us love and gentleness for others. We joined up with the other team who were finishing up handicraft and children's workshops. They had visited 2 churches to give them a dvd player as part of the tell-a-village project. It was encouraging to see and hear that these dvds do make a difference to real people in real places. After more time in the car we arrived at Chloe's Orphanage. I remember being disappointed at how rushed our time was there. We met with the children and the staff. We prayed together. We handed over some donated goods. I would have loved to have run games and craft and stories for these kids. In fact what I'd prepared to do at the medical service would have worked really well at the orphanage. But we had run out of time. We drove 2 hours to Salatiga. Maria had organised our stay at the Sataya Wacana Guesthouse. It was a beautiful mountain town. Our rooms were comfortable and clean and we had showers before we headed out to dinner at a local restaurant. We had a very encouraging time talking with Duncan and past and present theology students from the university in Salatiga. It was challenging to hear their commitment to God's work despite opposition from even Christian parents who want them to do something that will earn them more money. I admire their tenacity to study theology and to persevere to become preachers and theologians and leaders in the church even when others are telling them it is not as important as earning money. We headed back to the guesthouse and then some of us went in horse carts to a local warung for supper. It was my first taste of delicious hot ginger soup and the singing by the road was so much fun. In the morning we headed off to church at SIF. We arrived in good time for the 10 am service and got there to find a few of the high school students having group bible study in the canteen area. One of the girls told me that the principle of jam karet... applies to this church. Oh it starts about 10.15 or maybe 10 thirty when everyone is here. And as to the finishing time she said... well that depends on how long the singing goes and then how long the preaching goes....... I said we had a plane to catch!!! Some of us were clock watching at this stage as we had an hour and a half drive to Semarang to catch a flight. The times were going to be tight. The singing team had already started as people drifted in after 10 am. I really enjoyed the next hour of singing but I would have enjoyed it more had I not been watching the time! Ian was preaching and he got up to preach at the time we were supposed to be leaving Salatiga. 11:30. Oh no...... I kept wondering if Ian was just going to say "I'm terribly sorry but I can't preach now, we've run out of time!" Ian preached his shortest sermon for a long time and we hopped in the car and made it to Semarang in time to catch the 2pm flight. However we were then faced with all the time in the world as the airport was 1 ½ metres under water. We now entered the unplanned (well more unplanned) phase of the trip. What would God do? How would we work together? Who was going to lose their temper? How were we going to get home? How would we use our time? We didn't know how much time we had? Was the airport about to re-open any time soon? What happened amongst the group was fascinating. What could have turned into a complete fiasco actually served to bring us all closer to God and to each other as we worked together as a team to find solutions to get home. Nobody lost their temper, people were loving and kind and gentle. People were cheerful and resourceful. It was remarkable! I aspire to be as well behaved with my own family. I pray that God will keep giving me the grace to set a good and godly tone even when I am disappointed and angry, late and tired, hungry and hot. It has been good stimulus to re-think how we do family holidays or church camps. I have been challenged to think about how I use my time and to make changes. Beth was so excited to hear all about it that she asked me if she could come too next time. I suggested we might go on a family holiday beach mission and to see who else might like to come. I pray that God will keep giving us all wisdom to focus on the important things and not just be tyrannised by the many seemingly urgent things that crowd our lives. It was a great weekend. We should do it again sometime soon. Anyone want to come on a beach mission? Thanks everyone. Natalie |
Thank you for inspiring and encouraging me
A reflection from Shanti From the minute we arrived at the church in Solo on Friday night I felt humbled. The service had started and in fact had been going on for an hour and a half because our flight was delayed, and yet when we arrived they welcomed us so warmly and asked us to sit up front. They had 5 singers up front with really beautiful voices and yet they were pleased and encouraged that we sang (we hadn't practiced!).
Right after service they put on a big feast in our honour. They wanted us to give them ideas on how to encourage their members. I felt humbled because they were the ones who had not much to begin with but had such strong faith. They face rejection from their families and sometimes persecution and yet they remain faithful. I was humbled and encouraged that God in His Merciful love binds us together as one in His name. I didn't feel I had anything to give but us being with them was important to them, and us being there was so important to us.
A reflection from Leo
I
personally agree that this trip benefits each of us in various way.
Hearing and seeing directly how a small church growing and the
Christian people work to try to win the soul was really beyond my
mind before. It's a real true that if you want to see miracle or how
does God work on His people, just go on Ministry Trip. |
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