Ministry in Sibolga

Steve and I spent a week this past month in a city called Sibolga. It is right on the ocean, and so as you can imagine, we ate a lot of seafood. We stayed with a pastor friend and his family, and hands down it was the best week of food I have had since I arrived in Indonesia. I can’t wait to go back!!

We were delightfully busy with ministry while we were there (hence- no updates before now). Speaking to various cell groups within the church, preaching at the main Sunday church service… and for the first time we both got to do radio ministry! It was great fun! Steve and I each did our own half hour message. They even recorded mine so that they could play it again at a later date! My voice is quite soothing.

I don’t know why but the picture Steve took of me on the radio did not transfer to the computer. So here is one of him:





Afterwards, they had us each record commercials, so that they could have proof that white people think they are cool. It was a lot of fun. It made me miss work somewhat; if you tune in to Grace TV, you will hear my soothing voice advertising such things as the Grace Prayer Centre, Celebration Bible College, the Grace Israel Biblical Forest… you get the idea. Oh memories. Anyways…

We also did some prison ministry! Again, we each got to preach one service, on separate days. So it was a great experience for us both.

The first day, it was actually supposed to be Steve preaching, but he was not feeling well and couldn’t do it, so I subbed in. At first I was nervous. It would be me speaking to 200+ men—hardened criminals no doubt. It wasn’t until I got there and was actually speaking that I realized –wait a minute- I always prefer talking to men rather than women! If women look bored or whatever I always get really self-conscience (I know how judgmental my gender is), but with men it’s like “Oh please, I’ll charm you yet.” And I pretty much can. And did! … of course, you may be thinking, ‘How hard could it be for a young white woman to capture the attention of a prison full of Indonesian men who never get to leave the prison walls?’. Ummm…. Shut up.

Anyways, I loved it! And as for the hardened criminals… a fair number came in nice pants, collared shirts, and with Bibles in hand. I laughed to myself about that. I was somewhat disappointed that it didn’t seem like I was telling anything new to these people. I mean— was I just another preacher in a long line of preachers? Was I making a difference? I still can’t answer that, but I remember when I was about halfway through my preach thing, I looked out at the crowd. And past the well-dressed Bible carriers, I could see outside. And what I saw were men – lots of them—men who weren’t dressed up nicely, men who really didn’t look like they even owned Bibles, much less carried them around the prison with them. They were outside, lined up close to the windows, being still and quiet, listening to what I was saying.

At the end, I stood at the front of the room with my translator, and we waited while everyone filed by us and shook our hands. Then after I went over to the windows and shook hands with the guys outside. They thought it was funny.

Here are some pictures from when I went:


Indonesia's Most Wanted!



Tee hee. Look at that jolly monk beside me. More on him coming soon.



Riff-raff from outside.

Ok this cute monk man was great. He's not a monk, but a priest. A Catholic evangelical priest is how he described himself. Anyways, two funny things.

1. When he was thanking me at the end (in front of everyone) he said, "Thank you sister Emily, for your very long explanation of God's love for us."

2. Also in his thank you speech, he said "When I see you, and hear of your husband also doing the work of God like this, I am jealous that I can only ever be one." because he can't get married. I almost died laughing.

As we were leaving they asked if Steve would be able to come and speak later on in the week. So he did!

Here are some pictures from that:

So festive for a prison!

Listening with rapt attention. Oh yes, there are 7 or 8 women prisoners as well.

Haven’t You Always Wanted a Monkey Pt. III

Tired of all the monkey posts yet?

Then make your own, monkey-free blog. I can’t get enough of the little guys.

Here are some caged monkeys we saw while we were at the Faith Gardens. They are grooming each other. Monkeys make everything look adorable.

Something I couldn't bring myself to capture on video, but couldn't turn away from, was the little monkey (on the right), had a HUGE frog thrown into his cage by some jerk kids. It tried biting the frog, then threw it away in shock and disgust, but then kept playing with the frog, like he was trying to figure him out. He would try squishing him, try to pull off his legs, and then get mad and throw him around... this went on for a good 10 minutes... and then our ride was leaving so I don't know how it ended... though I have a good guess.

The Ocean!!!

I finally saw the ocean here! It is gorgeous! While we were staying in Sibolga (post coming soon), our pastor friend took us about 20 minutes away to this beautiful beach for a couple hours one afternoon.

Enjoy:

Oh yeah...

Steve says "hi".

A Walk through the Faith Garden

A couple of weeks ago, Steve got the opportunity to preach about 4 hours outside of Medan.

A factory owner in a small village near Berastagi takes all of his workers out for a day of fun for Christmas every year, and he wanted Steve to preach at the little Christmas service he was putting on for his employees.

It was great! This year they travelled two hours from Berastagi on big buses the owner rented. Some of his church put together a service in a church at the park area where we went, and then he provided lunch for everyone. The rest of the day the people could spend relaxing at the park. I don’t know the exact translation of the name, but our translator said the closest he could guess would be called the Faith Garden. It was really pretty. There was a rather large area for Christian-related things, but there were also monuments and buildings for other religions there too.

Here are some pictures of our day:


This is the church where the service was held!



Here it is up close....



Best tree-topper ever.



I so badly wanted Steve to have to preach way up top....



He didn't.



"haha. I'm so charasmatic."




I can't help but be reminded of the Backstreet Boys....



Look! Noah's ark! So here is it's resting place! Look! Even the dove is there on the bow.



...Rather well-preserved. Maybe this is why it wasn't found really...scientists have been wasting time looking for mere broken pieces of wood. Psh. Didn't they know the ark was designed by God? D'uh!



Here is Steve on Noah's Ark.



Great view from the ark.




Hmm... I'm no expert on the topic... but I seem to recall some sort of ...commandment... about NOT having large bronze graven images....



Ironically enough, the ark is starting to take on water....

Here is Moses, with the Ten Commandments.... again, can't say for sure, but this large, golden statue seems to be on the borderline of acceptable for one of said commandments....

Look! It's Jesus!!

Here is Jesus doing two miracles at once! To the left, you can see the multiplied loaves and fishes. And up front to the right, he is healing a man!

Here is Jesus walking on water.... Steve however, is clearly sinking. He's such a Simon Peter.

Here I am in the Garden of Gethsemane. I would *not* have been so chummy with that hook-handed guard if I knew what was coming next...

Also, given the situation, this happy pose seems somewhat inappropriate.

I was just excited to get my picture taken with Jesus...anyways, He went willingly. 'What's the worst that could happen?' I naively thought....

This doesn't look promising.

(I wanted Steve to pretend to be in the crowd, yelling for Barabbas. He refused, pointing out I would probably put it on the blog.)

I don't like the looks of that.

Oh dear.

At this point I would like to say I'm not even showing you pictures of all the scenes of Jesus' life as depicted through large golden statues. It took forever to walk through this place!

Well. There you have it.

The End?

...not by a long shot. But they don't actually have any good statue scenes of Resurrected Jesus... oh! Just scroll back up to Christmas Tree Topper Jesus higher up. Ascending Jesus.

This 'Golden Statue Life of Jesus' walk was made possible by our friends at Bank Sumut.....

Other religions' carvings are way cooler/more detailed. I'll give them that.

AND more colourful.... (this is a tomb! I don't know who for, but there is a grave in there!)

Amazing detail.

Gateway into other religion zone.

...I still don't completely understand these "Tourism Police"

Santa, Can You Hear Me?

Guess what?! We saw Santa in the mall here! He looked somewhat different. Oh don’t get me wrong, he was still white, but he seemed kind of aloof in a cruel sort of way… you could say he has a heart of stone.

Haha. Get it? He’s cement.

Not only that… his mall-house is made of Egyptian bricks….


Outside the mall are snowmen! Also made of cement:

Man are they tall.

Wheelchair Ramp: No Wheelchairs Allowed?

Now I haven’t actually ever had to use a wheelchair, so I’m not claiming to be an authority on the subject… however to me this ramp seems somewhat counter-productive... and cruel.

The Wheels On The Indonesian Bus Go…Round and Round???

Surprisingly, yes. They generally do.

Though I have seen many large buses in the ditches here, for no other reason than the drivers were taking the very sharp curves much much much too fast. Fortunately, I myself have never been riding on a ditched bus (not to say the drivers I’ve had driving are responsible… probably a better word for them would be… lucky).

The other day (actually it wasn’t the other day, but probably a month ago now, but recent events seem more exciting to me so I say ‘the other day’)… so the other day, Steve and I needed to travel the 2 hourish stretch of road from Berastagi to Medan, and we flagged down a bus. I was somewhat … afraid. But not so much so that I wasn’t thinking of you, my faithful reader (actually, I think there may be two of you now!!), so I took a video. That devilishly handsome man featured in the video is Steve, who you may have vague memories of, though he is too snobby to blog.

Script: Classic Indonesian Bus. Footage shows scuffy, broken seat, destroyed light fixture, cracked ceiling, which is caving in at the back. Broken seats. More broken seats, something indecipherable, broken seats (yes, the one I’m sitting on), and general shabbiness of bus.

Haven’t You Always Wanted a Monkey Pt. II

Steve and I stopped one day on the way back to Medan from Berastagi, because there is a really good spot where you can see monkeys!!! It is this place where a bunch of restaurants there throw their garbage—what’s it called again? Oh yes, a dump.

Here they are:


Soooo cute! This is my favourite.

And Here is a blog first for you…. a video!

Sorry the quality on the video is so sub-par, but you get the idea. Conveniently, there was music playing in a speaker near us, so at least the video has authentic Indonesian music to go along with it. If you listen to the dialogue, you will hear Steve encouraging me to record monkeys having sex, and me telling him I’m not going to record monkeys doing bad things.