Saturday afternoon was the day that Barry, another teacher here, as well as a member of our church, loaded up a van and drove an hour out to a tiny Christian community to deliver soccer balls, cookies, candy and juice for a Christmas party. It was quite an experience, one I will never forget to be sure. It was also one that really opened my eyes to the persecution that Christians face here.
We traveled to the other side of the city from where we are located and then out into the countryside. The roads become progressively worse in condition and you could tell that this was a very impoverished place. Living in a country like this you see levels of poverty and this was by far the least desirable living conditions I had seen so far. Many of the homes were wood shelters with thatched roofs. As you went along you see that the hillsides are being dug away for the dirt and clay that is being used by these people for making bricks, their lot in life.
Just to illustrate what these people struggle is like they must make 10,000 bricks a day, six days a week. All for $3 US a day. Oh, and if they take a break for water or a snack, it comes out of their pay for that day. This particular group of people is a "tribe" that is discriminated against and considered of a lower class. Tack onto that the fact that they are Christian and that is quite a few obstacles they have to deal with. In fact if they were Muslim things would be much easier for them in many regards. Their level of acceptance would be much higher within the larger community.
In fact one of the places you can see the persecution the most is in the picture of the brick structure below. Most things in Indonesia are run with local, neighborhood governments. The church asked for and received permission from the local government to build the brick church which they started and actually finished putting up right next to the shack they use now for their church services. When they were finishing up the building the local government, nervous that this new building could lead to people being converted to Christianity from the predominate religion here, changed their mind and now said that in order for the church to use the new building they needed to have 50 families (with the proper paperwork stating they were Christians) in the community fill out paperwork stating they were part of this church. Well there are only 30 families attending this church now and it will be next to impossible for 20 new families to move into this impoverished area who are Christians in the near future. Now as we have seen prior, nothing is impossible with God so we will pray that either more families come or that the local government softens its stance.
When we got to the to the church Barry and I thought we going to be hanging out at a Christmas party but it was much more than that. About that time we saw 130 or so folks crammed inside this church, which was literally a shack, we were handed a paper with an order of service for a Christmas Program, in Bahasa of course:). I turned to our pastor's wife who had shown us the way and helped organize all of this and said, "I didn't know there was going to be a service?" She apologized for leaving out that little detail. No worries, other than the fact that all of these kids and people were in their best outfits for this special occasion and Barry and I were in Shorts, T-shirts, and hats.
We were all given preferential seating at the front of the Church where we started off our service with Hark the Herald Angels Sing (In Bahasa). Luckily for us the program had the words on it so we could sing along in the proper language. Next was scripture readings, and more songs. Then each of the grade levels from 1st-5th grade came up and had a little speaking part. Later they came up and told the Christmas story complete with Baby Jesus, Mary and the three Wise Men(although to ensure there everyone got a part I counted four Wise Men).
After that Barry and I were brought up to be part of lighting the advent candles. This was a very big honor for us. As you can see in the picture farther down the page, they have no Christmas tree, but instead the best they could do was a wood structure that looks somewhat like a tree with candles on it. When we were standing up there lighting the candles and singing “Silent Night” I got chills. It was a very moving experience for me. Being there celebrating the birth of Christ with these people who clearly are passionate about Him was pretty humbling. Being a Christian in my world is a piece of cake compared to what these people have to endure. Yet here we all were rejoicing in our Savior. I am not sure if “pretty special” is an accurate description.
There was then a sermon and a final song. After that…soccer balls!
Once the service was over Barry and I brought in the bags of soccer balls. You should have seen the smiles and huge eyes on these kid’s faces. They were so excited. As Kathi wrote in the prior post these kids normally get things they need on Christmas from our church, pencils, crayons, notebooks. Things they enjoy but not something with a wow factor. Soccer Balls here in Indonesia, in this community, is a WOW factor. As we handed them out the smiles were priceless. Some of them kept turning them over and over as if they couldn’t believe what they were holding was real. Boys and girls alike were slack jawed at the balls. After the balls were handed out came cookies and then candy and juice.
Once that was over they actually gave us a gift. They handed us a box with water, and some food. The food was handed to all people there. If God had not provided those soccer balls this would have been the only gift they received for Christmas. Can you imagine your Christmas present being water and some rice wrapped in a banana leaf? Kind of puts things in perspective, huh?
We want to thank all of you who were praying about this and we hope you like seeing the pictures. I would also like to thank our Pastor’s wife for taking us there and setting up the logistics. Thanks to Barry for going with me, Wendy for storing our cookies, Shane for helping with the soccer balls, Mrs. M. for helping the PYP kids bake our cookies, the PYP kids for putting all the balls and bags together and our secret Santa who donated money to get those balls. Merry Christmas!
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We are Blessed....Thank you so much for sharing with us.....
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