Welcome to the Jungle

Shopping with the orphanage kids

All of the school age children at Insan Permata attend school and all of the schools require uniforms. Orphans attending schools is not the norm because there are fees associated with going that make it hard to send them when meeting their food and clothing needs takes precedent. Through donations and the director working out deals with various schools they have each child enrolled in a school. This is a huge bonus for these kids as we all know how important an education is for their future.

Paying for uniforms is a big cost as well, so one fun thing we got to do was take the orphans to Ramayana (think the Indonesian K-Mart) to shop for shoes and a few other goodies for their school uniforms. Each of our team was paired up with a child and then went off with Rp. 200,000. That is about $21. They were tasked with finding black shoes first and then anything else they had left could be used for other items they needed or really wanted. In fact many of our team spent their own spending money getting the orphans things they really wanted. It was beautiful to see the servant hearts of our kids.

Now shopping in Ramayana is an experience in itself. One thing you need to know about Indonesia is that shopping is a full on, all five senses experience. Music blares through the speakers and the smells of food and sweat, and other unidetified smells mix together to make shopping here much more hectic than say, taking in the sale at Nordstrom. Adding to this cacophony of over-stimulation, this particular store rarely, if ever, sees any foreigners. That meant that we were all on display like the baby panda's making their first appearance at the zoo. Pictures and people wanting to practice their English followed them around like fan girls chasing down members of "One Direction."

The paparazzi aside, our team and the orphanage kids had a wonderful time bonding with each other and allowing them to be spoiled. These kids so rarely get anything new from a store as most of what they have is donated. That made this a really special trip because they got to pick out the items they received for themselves. Some of them even cradled the bags as they went home because they were so excited. In showing God's love to these children our team was able to see how many everyday blessings we have in our lives. It was a real eye opener for our group!

S'mores

One of the neat experiences we had was showing the Cendana students how to make an American classic, the S'More. We had scheduled this time as a way to share something of America with them as they had been showing us their culture all week. It was a great chance for the two groups to interact in a less structured way. This lead to some great conversations regarding topics from school to religion to culture which all came about organically. The Cendana kids were truly curious about the U.S. and because they spoke such amazing English the conversations were really fun to listen to.

It was cool to watch all of the kids interact; to see that teenagers are teenagers the world over. They have the same mannerisms and goofiness about them. Our students did an amazing job interacting with their students and they all seemed to really enjoy themselves. It was a unique experience which allowed the kids to create a relationship which would be hard to do any other way. It also hopefully gave them perspective on how people all over the world are basically the same and that it opens their eyes to how small our world really is.

Our driver MNur showing Luba something on his phone. He was so great to us.

Group picture with the Cendana students.

Big Smiles.

Coming up with a group cheer.

Riley explaining the finer points of the American school system.

Emmerson having a good talk.

Teenagers are teenagers no matter where they live.

Great smiles.

Barry and Jimmy protecting the S'mores supplies.

The key to a good S'more: The marshmallow!

Traditional potato and vegetable fried "pocket." These were very tasty!

Logistics

What an amazing trip to be a part of. We are so thankful to our Lord for allowing us to have this experience with such an amazing group of students and leaders. The opportunities that He placed in front of our team were unique, unexpected and definitely faith builders. We could not have asked for a better team, better hosts or better speakers this trip. We want to thank all of you who prayed and supported us during this trip. The Lord was truly exalted during our trip and it is our hope that He remains the focus of those who experienced this trip.

Faith building was a huge part of this trip. One aspect where my faith grew was in regards to logistics. As Jimmy said many times over the course of the trip, the theme of the trip was transportation. From the first flight being delayed even before we left Seatac to the final flight out of San Francisco being delayed the big issue was transportation. Seeing how God provided for us during these stressful situations once again proved to us that He is in control and his provisions are always sufficient.

First there was the flight out of Seatac that has been chronicled previously in the blog. The transportation theme continued when we went arrived in Pekanbaru where we were to have a bus and a van meeting us, a bus for the team and a van for the bags. 48 bags to move is a lot of suitcases! The van did not show up but somehow we fit all of the bags on the van and still fit all of the team. Pretty amazing. I think packers from Ikea would approve.

Even before we hit the bus we saw that the Lord had our back. Last year on our trip I had to open about 20 of our 30 bags in front of customs agents in Pekanbaru and explain the contents to people who did not speak English and who would have liked us to pay taxes on the things inside that were meant for the orphanage. This year we had even more bags and were expecting to have to pay some "extra taxes" upon our arrival. Being that we were sponsored this year by Chevron there was an expediter there who helped us get all of our bags through and I only had to open up two bags. We were through customs in 10 minutes. If you have ever been to Pekanbaru you should know this is a world record time!

Back to transportation. So there were several mix ups regarding pick up times and even whether or not we had buses scheduled especially in the first several days of our arrival. I was pretty frustrated at first thinking that I was the one who needed to be in control and on top of the situation. That was when He reminded me that He was in control and that everything happens for a reason and in His perfect timing. Once that happened things seemed to go much more smoothly. Resting in Him is such a relief. It frees us to look at what blessings we have in our life and how stressing out about the details only take our focus off of His glory.

One of the things we heard from some of the returners was that they thought there was too much down time where we would spend an hour or two a day on camp between activities. Well thanks to a busier schedule and having to use Chevron buses, which needed to use a special bridge for over-sized vehicles that made each trip about 10-15 minutes longer, there was no down time for us. In fact we were burning the midnight oil just to fit it all in. When I asked the returners if they thought we got more in this time they all agreed that we could not have fit anymore in.

We will be updating more in the next several days so please check in regularly over that time to hear about specific activities that stood out to us. Again thank you for all of your support. We really felt it while we were away and it was very much appreciated!