Indonesian Wedding

On Tuesday Steve and I had the privilege of attending the wedding of our friend Ivan’s sister (despite the fact that we had never met her). It was a lot of fun and I took pictures to show you all what it looked like. Indonesian weddings vary a lot based on social status, tribe and religion, but ignoring all the changes those factors would bring, this was a fairly typical wedding.

Here are some pictures!


Stranger, Ivan, Ivan's (not bride) sister, Seeta, Me!


These signs are what florists in Indonesia make... and those aren't real flowers.


Who wouldn't want a happy wedding or a lovely holiday?


The nicest jambur I've ever been in.




Gift/Money Table


Speeches


The Bride and Groom


Traditional Dance

Bali/White Water Rafting

So this post is a month late. I wasn’t going to blog about Bali at all, because I didn’t feel like editing the pictures right away, but I finally got around to that, and decided I would blog after all. At the beginning of March, Steve and I decided to go to Bali!! We had planned on going for our one year anniversary (in May) but we found some really good deals (more on that in a minute) so decided to celebrate a couple months early! So, 39 hours before departure we booked our flights and then went over to a cheap deals website to find a hotel room! I found one that was really nice, and was just reading the “Extra Hotel Info” section when I saw this little blurb:

Special Check-In Instructions · Please note: In accordance with local regulations, all visitors must remain within the hotel property during the Hindu New Year on 5 March 2011 (from midnight 4 March 2011 to early morning 6 March 2011). Check-in and check-out will not be possible on 5 March 2011.Please note: March 5, 2011 is the Balinese "Day of Silence" or Nyepi. On this day, guests must remain within the property's premises in accordance with local regulations.

Yes that’s right. We were travelling to Bali during the Balinese Day of Silence and would not be allowed to leave the hotel property for one whole day!! I couldn’t help but laugh.

Bali was very nice. It wasn’t all “Oh my goodness!! BALI!!!!” like everyone hypes it up to be. I wouldn’t make a trip all the way over here JUST to go to Bali (unlike Penang, which is sooo worth a trip around the world and a 2.5 week stay), but if you are over this side of the world you might as well visit so you can say you did. The day trapped in our hotel wasn’t that bad either thanks to a wonderful pool and room service and our laptop/DVD collection.

Here are some pictures!


Beach


Our Room


We went white water rafting!! It was sooo much fun!

Heroic Missionary Saves Kittens from Certain Death-By-Sewer!!!!

The other day Steve and I were walking to the bus stop and heard the cutest meowing you could ever imagine. “Kittens!!” I gleefully shouted. “Let’s go find them!!” So we walked in the direction the noise was coming from, expecting them to be in someone’s yard. Imagine my shock (and horror!) when we saw the kittens were not in yard, but in the sewer! At this point I should mention the sewers here are just big (in this case, open) concrete ditches that run on either side of the street). They were wet, presumably cold, and could never ever have gotten out. So Steve straddled the sewer (a difficult feat even for his gigantic legs) and pulled them out (using a bag, because they were, after all, in a sewer)! Then we went back home so Steve could wash his hands and I could get the kittens some bread and butter (the only thing we had). Here is a picture of them. Soooo cute!



The story is made more dramatic by the fact that when we came back home hours later, there was a huge rainstorm and the sewers were filled to the brim with rushing water! So if we left the kittens they would have died!!!

Sibeken Festival

Last weekend (March 25-26) we conducted another Gospel festival. This one was about 45 minutes away, in a village called Sibeken. Good turn-out + good crowd response = good festival!!!

Oh and both nights there was drama and suspense!

Night #1 our translator called like 2 hours before to inform us he in fact, could not translate for us that night. This is a huge problem because it is very difficult to get a translator on a week’s notice, much less 2 hours. Luckily our friend John Kingma saved the day and came to our rescue in the nick of time!

Night #2 we are sitting at home, waiting for the bus we rented to come pick us up. Normally it is no more than 10 minutes late, so after half an hour we were pretty worried. We called our friend who rented the bus for us (if we as white people try to rent anything the price goes up to a ridiculous amount) and he called the driver who said, “What?! Haha! NO!! I can’t come tonight! Only last night!!” I guess he had either forgot to let us know or just didn’t think it was necessary to let us know that he could not, in fact, keep the two-night commitment he gave us earlier in the week. Luckily we pay at the end of each night so there was no money lost. But Unluckily we had no bus and were already half an hour behind schedule!! So Steve and our translator for the night, Mr. Conrad, scrambled like mad to find us a random bus off the street. A driver said “Yes! No problem!” but then when we were on the bus and driving for 15 minutes he was like, “I just have to go to the station and ask my boss.” *exasperated sigh*. Thankfully his boss said yes (or at least wasn’t there to say no), and we made it to the festival somewhat fashionably late!

Here are some pictures:


Handing out flyers in the village.


Quite a big jambur.


Preaching the Gospel.


Still Preaching.


Lookin' good in a tie.


Children Singing.


Testimonies!

Steve joining the singers.... kind of.

Oops...

I just want to say, I'm sorry for not posting anything lately, but it's just because I feel like nothing interesting and NEW has happened. We've been doing some new things... and we've been doing some interesting things. But I haven't felt that anything has fallen into both categories. We are doing ministry with children and the orphanage and etc... but I've already given an idea about what that's like so it seems repetative for me to talk about. And I doubt anyone cares about the rat that keeps sneaking into our kitchen (I've named him Roger)...

I thought a few days ago with the Fukashima "problems" I hit the motherload with a blog! There were all these text messages (and actual news coverage) going around about how even in Indonesia we had to avoid being outdoors (especially after a rain) and we were getting really ... frazzeled. And annoyingly helpless. Because we don't have the internet in our house so we can quickly find reliable news coverage- and everyone in Indonesia was saying completely different things about if we actually had to worry or not. We knew the local news wasn't getting everything right- it just sounded.... wrong. But how wrong was it? How over-exaggerated? This wasn't some chain-email I get (repeatedly- haha) from my mom about "the new gang in town who will hunt you down if you flash your lights at them". It would pretty embarassing to do nothing and then, oh I don't know, die of radiation poisening (or lose my hair!!!).

It was quite a frustrating experience. I had to text a darling friend in Canada and ask her to do some smart googling for me (we weren't even close to being at any sort of risk FYI--hence, no dramatic blog *sigh*).

Extra annoying was the fact that even European news channels were reporting flat out WRONG facts. I can understand getting caught up in the hype the day of.... but the day AFTER?!-- there was definitely enough time for them to get the story straight.

In conclusion, if I ever catch you helping to spread confusion and/or mass hysteria among people without first checking if the information you're spreading is correct, I will hit you. Not a Christ-like tap either (sorry Jesus). I will smack you with all the farm-girl strength I can muster.