Say Hello goodbye

Our last night on Nias was pretty exciting. We headed into Teluk Dalam to Herman’s house to have dinner with his family (lobster – he owns some lobster fishing boats, yum!!). His wife Tety was about 2 weeks off her due date, and despite plenty of pleading on our part, we had resigned ourselves to the fact that baby would be staying put until after we left. When we got to their house though, Tety was in a lot of discomfort and was pacing around and couldn’t sit still. We had to go and run a Cell Leader’s meeting, but at the end of the evening we had some frantic phone call from Herman because he needed the car we were using to take Tety to hospital.

We were still a little unsure as to what was exactly going on, as no-one ever actually said that Tety had gone into labour, and also everyone was fussing around with really worried looks on their faces, completely opposite to the reaction you would expect if a baby was on the way!! Anyway, we eventually got a ride home and went to bed full of anticipation as to what the morning would bring.

I woke up that morning about half an hour before I had intended to get up, with that particular feeling of sicky butterflies that I always get when I have to say goodbye to someone or leave somewhere. We still had a bit of packing to do and a car arrived to take our bags to the airport, but not before a wonderful phone call from Herman telling us that Tety has had her baby and it’s a little boy!! Woooooooooo!! Extra special J So we got to meet baby Jessa (named after Jeremy, who missed the birth by going to his friends wedding in Jakarta) on our way to the airport. It was so amazing to actually see the baby but it also made it so much harder to actually get back in the car and drive away. Leaving Nias was very emotional that morning!!

Presents

Even though Teluk Dalam is not really the poorest area of Nias, our friends don’t have much materially but they still managed to give us endless gifts, usually random bits of jewellery and such. Two presents, however, really stick in my mind…

On our last evening at cell group they gave the three of us matching shirts, the same pattern in different colours. Mine was bright pink with yellow trim and 3 huge yellow flowers on the front with big plastic bling centres. It has to be seen to be believed. Jade’s was white with black trim, possibly the easiest on the eye, and Reba’s was all Christmassy in red and green trim. Not only did we have to look really excited by these, we had to put them on and have about a million pictures taken with various members of cell group. Plus they insisted that we leave a copy of those photos with them so they could always remember them…!! I haven’t worn that shade of fushia pink EVER in my life, despite futile attempts by Tessa at uni. Trust the Indonesians, hey?!

We were in the village on our way to pray for our man with the paralysed legs, and my friend Tipan gave me the most beautiful Cowrie shell I have seen in a long time… it was black freckled and really shiny. I totally wasn’t expecting anything, let alone something so lovely, and was quite taken aback at first. Then I turned it over only to discover that there was still an animal inside!! Ummm, Tip…!!

Confusion ensued as I tried desperately to suss out what Tipan really expected me to do with a live slug in a shell – suggestions from the Indonesians were to eat it (I don’t think so!), to leave it until it smelled (I think that meant to wait until it died), to take it away with me in my pocket, or in a bottle of water… they didn’t really understand the concept of not taking live animals out of the country. All the time I was trying to explain that these options were completely impractical, I was acutely aware that Tipan had given me a gift to remember him and was so unsure as to how any rejection of the shell would cause offence to him. In the end I agreed to clean the shell once the creature had died (despite actually wanting to leave it in the nearest rock pool) but when I looked for it in the hole I buried it in (so as not to stink out our bedroom) it had mysteriously disappeared.

Jungle Family

I feel it’s only right to include a note about our jungle family. They are the family who owned the losmen we stayed in, cooked our food and were generally awesome. Moris and his wife Matiana have 3 ADORABLE children Endi (boy aged 7) Seralin (girl aged 4) and Alfek (boy aged 2). Moris spoke really good English from years of business with the boulehs, and used to come up and hang out with us when we were chilling. He was pretty funny too… it must be said!

It took a while for the rest of the family to warm up to us – I think we were always objects of curiosity for the children but it wasn’t until the end of the trip that they really seemed comfortable with us. Alfek was the cutest thing (cuter than Legato? Hmm… maybe!) and used to run after our car every time we left shouting “Dada dada” (means bye bye) with his plump little legs and toddler excitement. One time he pooped his pants right in front of us. It was a pretty surreal moment, but hilarious as well – a weird look came over his face and all of a sudden there was a little pile of poop by his feet. And he just stood there, obviously not so sure about what to do. Awwwwwww!!

Saying goodbye to our jungle family (Moris used to call his kitchen a jungle kitchen in Nias jungle, hence the nickname) was possibly one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in a while. It’s funny how much of a relationship you can really build without even speaking the same language. I really miss them!!

Dwi

Dwi was a 4 year old girl who had malaria. When we first met her, she had already been really sick for about 4 days. The family didn’t have any money to take her to hospital, so she had been running a fever for that time with no medicine. She was wrapped up in blankets, just lying still and gazing off into space, not responsive at all. Pretty much the only thing that showed she was still with us was her awful teeth grinding!! I seriously thought she was going to die right in front of us…

We took her to hospital and organised a prayer vigil through that night with the young people from the church. It was a pretty confusing time for all of us on a personal level, wrestling with a God of compassion and mercy with a healing nature yet seeing this sick little girl not getting any better. Once she was in hospital and they diagnosed malaria and put her on meds, and then she did start getting better – but this meant that her mum took her home and interrupted the course of medication, so she quickly went downhill again. We visited her again in hospital and it was harder because we knew that mum had taken her to see a witchdoctor that afternoon. Apparently according to this guy there was a demon on Dwi’s back that had made her worse, so her mum was in a right state by now! It was so frustrating. I can’t really explain it. Jade and I both felt God asking us to stay the night in the hospital, so we set up camp bedside and prayed through the night. It was still pretty confusing, extremely heart wrenching and completely exhausting but God taught us a lot about not having the answers and still believing in his promises.

It wasn’t resolved while we were on Nias. The next morning the mum still wanted to take her home and even though we paid for a few more nights in hospital, it really didn’t look like she was going to get any better, but all we could do in that situation was pray.

Painting

So for 2 days we set about cleaning up and repainting the concrete banisters surrounding the steeple of the church (which bizarrely was set next to the church and not on top of it). It was a fun time really, although hard work and also lots of sacrificing and submitting to the Indonesian way of doing things! From the colour (blue and yellow) to the neatness (paint drips and smudges everywhere) I was continually reminding myself that it’s their church, not mine, and I have to give up my idea of how it should be done and what it should look like… it was an interesting challenge for someone who is a bit of a control freak and perfectionist!!

It was a really fun time to build relationships though, and I seriously don’t think I laugh as much with anyone than with Indonesians…

Medan

Halfway through the outreach we had an opportunity to travel to Medan, the capital of Sumatra, to serve at a Pastor’s conference that was being held there. I thought it was a pretty sweet idea to begin with, but when it was time to go we had just begun to get to know everyone properly and it seemed like really bad timing to leave Nias then.

The journey was pretty long, lots of driving and an overnight ferry. The roads in Indonesia have no law!! There were a few times I thought we were going to see our Father face to face!! But we survived and got to Medan on schedule. We stopped at Lake Toba on the way up, which is a huge lake in the crater of an extinct volcano… awesomely amazing. We stayed on an island in the middle of the lake and it blew my mind trying to imagine what that place has been through from the beginning of creation to now. It was so huge, and thinking about it full of larva or erupting was insane!!

I didn’t like Medan that much. It was big and dirty after the calm of Nias. We stayed for about 10 days, as after the conference ended 5 of us had to fly out and back to Kuala Lumpur for a visa run as we were on 30 day visas. We slept on the floor of a church on squeaky foam mattresses with one stupid fan (with a timer that switched it off after 3 hours, not what you want in the middle of the night!!) and far too many cockroaches keen to share our beds. It was a bit frustrating because we thought we were going to serve the conference but in reality there wasn’t really anything for us to do except sweep the floor each evening (and truth be told we probably didn’t do this very well!). We sat in on the conference every day and got a lot of sweet teaching on leadership, and we went to the plaza every night and had Starbucks so we could use the internet. I found myself singing back up vocals in worship one morning, in Indonesian. How did that happen…?!

We did quite a bit of travelling that week. As well as getting there and back, Bree, Becaa, Jade, Paul and myself had to make a random trip to KL to get new visas. It was quite annoying but KL airport is one of the best airports in the world, with free wifi and really comfy seats, so I figured that it would be fine – a chance to catch up on major emails and skype my parents at a normal hour, plus a fairly good chance I could find a comfy place for a nap. It turned out though, that we were flying Air Asia, into the Low Cost Carrier Terminal, rather than the international all-singing all-dancing one we were expecting. On arrival we found only MacDonalds and a REALLY expensive coffee shop (which sold me the most disgusting cup of peppermint tea I have ever tasted) open, no seats to sit down on let alone stretch out on and most annoying of all was that the wifi didn’t work on my computer (it seemed to work on other people’s, but not on mine. Typical). I was not a happy camper!

The journey back was interesting… we first endured an overnight road trip all the way down Sumatra to the port, before getting the “fast ferry” across to Nias. Of course as it’s Indonesia, nothing is really “fast”, and this trip certainly wasn’t speeded up by the guy on the boat who insisted on taking our passports away to photocopy them. After a lengthy argument over whether we need passports for a domestic ferry trip (Kodan didn’t even have his, as he never left the country!!) I refused to let him take any of them away from us, and his superior sorted it out. What a faff!

Praying For The Sick

Part of our time there was spent going into the more traditional villages surrounding Teluk Dalam and praying for sick people. Sometimes we went and it felt a bit weird, like they were more interested in meeting some white people (they call us boulehs (bu-lay) which translated is a reference to our long arm hair, apparently!!) than actually seeing God move in any major way. Sometimes they weren’t interested in God at all, and wanted us to answer questions or sing for us (yep, singing is big out here!).

There was one family in particular, who we visited on the first week. The father had been paralysed for three years – we couldn’t ever work out what exactly caused it but he had lost the use of his legs and with that any hope of supporting his family. They had been to visit the witchdoctor (sadly for a “Christian” island, they still put an amazing amount of faith in the traditional tribal medicines) and the treatment he had administered had burnt a huge scar on this mans right leg, that started in the shape of an S. We prayed for him and God spoke to a couple of us about persistence and we decided to visit him every week to pray for his healing. At the beginning we were all hopeful we would see him walk, and even though that didn’t happen, each time we visited we saw small steps of improvement which were so exciting. First he started getting feelings and pain back into his legs, then they were worried that someone was cursing them, so we prayed for protection over the family and later that week he saw an angel in his house!! About half way through he managed to sit up on his own for the first time and by the time we left he could wiggle toes on his right foot!!!

I felt a peace that this was going to be a gradual healing which we probably wouldn’t witness the end of. I think God wanted it that way so He would get the glory in that village, not us – which is completely absolutely fine with me!! The first time we prayed God told me that the sins had been forgiven and the healing was done, so I have ever confidence that his health will continue to get better and better until he can walk again and support his family.

The most amazing thing was seeing how encouraged and supported the family felt by our commitment to them, and feeling how much closer to God they were by the end of our trip. It’s funny how we have our ideas and agendas about what we want to see happen, and how often God has completely different plans!!

Favourite Indonesian Words Beginning With M

In no particular order:

Mimpi (dream)
Mungkin (maybe)
Monyet (monkey)
Makasih (thanks)

Snorkelling

I was a bit disappointed when I saw the reef. Having had a certain idea in my head about Indonesian coral reefs and what they should look like (from Hoga, not that that helps explain anything if you haven’t been there…) Sorake beach was a bit of a shock!! Since the earthquake, the whole island had lifted up and most of the reef was now dead and sitting above the water line (except at really really high tide) Because of the waves pounding against the reef wall it was pretty hard to swim close to where we were staying BUT further down the beach there was a crack in the coral that created a cleft between the rocks where the water was clam and clear, so we went there a couple of times. It wasn’t really big enough for a good swim but nice to float around in, and sometimes just getting wet was enough to make you feel better!! Not that many fish due to the waves and the deadness of the coral but I guess I have 7 weeks on Hoga to enjoy that later on J

Cell Groups

On the other hand, cell was sweet! Jade and I were lucky, as a lot of the people in our cell were the guys that hung out with us anyway so we could really build up good relationships. Tipan could translate as well, so we were always really involved in what was going on, and every week they asked us to share from the Bible (usually with less than about 5 minutes notice). Kardin, Sayangi, Dara, Meli, Berkat, Jeni, Fanolo, Yasman, all became a really special part of our time in Nias. More than that though, God really put a burden on me for the cell groups as a ministry… it was so cool to see how He brought through my experience in cell at uni and while working for St Johns to benefit the work on Nias. I had been feeling for a couple of weeks that I would like to do some kind of training/envisioning for the Cell Leaders, as they had only been running for about 6 months so everyone was quite new to the idea, and I was getting really excited at the potential for growth there. I spoke to Jeremy, my leader, about this and that night we were at a prayer meeting with the cell leaders and Herman (our contact – the youth leader we were working with) asked Jeremy if the team could do any leadership training for the cell leaders… so God spoke pretty clearly in that moment and I was given the chance later on to run through some training based on the Fusion cell values we had used at university.

Church

Indonesian church was an interesting adventure. Every week we attended cell groups, youth group, prayer and worship meetings and church. Church started at 7.00 on Sunday morning, and was the only thing that wasn’t translated for us. It was a special youth service that was attended by about 500 young people and usually went for about an hour and a half. And I had absolutely no clue what was going on for 97% of the time.

It reminded me quite a lot of Brazil… lots of energy and they love singing in worship! Randomly they took a collection twice every service – I never worked out why. The sermon was always given by a pastor from the church who was generally of the sombre yet shouty variety. Sometimes we were asked to contribute but not always with a lot/any notice. I usually looked forward to the end because it was always hot, and I was always hungry (we didn’t have breakfast until after church!!).

Legato

Legato was our monkey. She wasn’t actually ours, but belonged to a local restaurant owner who let us babysit her for the 7 weeks we were there. She lived on our balcony and there was a rumour that she was bipolar…

Most of the time she was cute as a button. Still a baby and SO affectionate, her name in Nias language meant “leech” – not quite so cute but she did attach herself to you with incredible force for such a wee thing. She responded well when you picked at her fur, going into an almost trance like state which usually ended up in sleepy time for a while. And that was the CUTEST thing (Jade: ”So cute I could punch her in the face” – these Americans are violent!). Until she woke up and peed… I was a particular favourite for toilet time it seemed, but I think it was because only I really held her long enough to go to sleep and thus wake up on!! I caught on to that particular habit quite quickly.

Gradually she got more confident and bit by bit better at climbing around on stuff. After some adventures in the roof chewing through the electrical wiring we restrained her on the lead a bit so she would stay safe. I found it kinda hard having a wild animal tied up and restricted from doing what it would naturally do anyway but it was the sad truth that it was for her protection. Occasionally (when she had been good!) we would take her for a walk on the beach, which was always fun! She got demanding though, and would freak out every meal time because she wasn’t getting any attention. This really high pitched screaming/hissing noise would start and she seriously looked like a toddler having a temper tantrum. She would jolt like she was having an electric shock. The funniest times would be when she threw herself on her back, sprawled out on the ledge and then fall off landing on her head on the floor!!

Nias

Soooooooo… We arrived!! All good things come to those who wait, and Nias would certainly be classed as one of the beautiful places in the world’s great masterpiece. Sorake is a famous surfing beach, with one wave in particular that is world class (apparently!). We are staying right on the beach, in a losmen consisting of 2 rooms with a shared balcony overlooking the reef. There is a large wave right opposite us but since the earthquake in 2005 the island has lifted up and the coral is now exposed above the water – it means this wave breaks too shallow to surf safely, although it’s still pretty cool to sit and watch! Everyone now surfs the next one down the reef, which we could also watch from our balcony.

We will be working with the Lutheran church in a town called Teluk Dalam (the BKPN) where there are a LOT of young people but sadly due to culture they are expected to conform to and respect the traditions of their elders. Obviously this is not resulting in a particularly relevant church environment for the youth to grow closer to Jesus. The problem on Nias is that everyone claims Christianity but hardly anyone knows Jesus (it sounds quite similar to England at some times). Kids grow up going to church but not having a relationship with God and currently the church doesn’t seem too interested in discipling the younger generations into a genuine and transforming walk with Christ. In this context, a guy called Herman who is clearly filled with the Holy Spirit and burning with God’s passion for the young people of Nias has started a youth group, cell groups and working as closely as he can (is allowed to) with the church elders to introduce the kids to Jesus in a meaningful way they can actually engage with and find ways they can express that in worship and fellowship. We are basically going to be supporting this work as much as we can, mainly by building relationships and investing in the kids while we are there, and by sharing what God has done in our lives.

We took the first couple of days to settle in and meet everyone. It’s quite intimidating as in Indonesian culture the girls and boys don’t hang out together in the same way we do, and girls also tend to be a lot more reserved and shy. I got really frustrated early on because it felt like we shouldn’t hang out with the boys because it wasn’t “culturally sensitive” but the girls were never around, so the girls on the team ended up just sitting around talking amongst ourselves. Later on though I could see how it was more just a case of getting to know us, and I made some really good friends with both guys and girls (although it would be fair to say I got to know the guys better because they would come and spend time at the losmen with us). By the time we left I know they had stolen a part of my heart, and I know that I genuinely would miss them. It was such a privilege to even meet them in the first place, and they welcomed us in as part of things so completely and wholeheartedly.

I didn’t think a chronological account of my time there would be so interesting, and as I’m going to be posting all this at once anyway (due to lack of internet access on Nias) I have picked out some highlights in the following blog entries.

Enjoy!!

The Road Goes Ever On And On...

Our flight was due out on Friday 21st March from Brisbane, travelling to Medan in Sumatra, Western Indonesia, via Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. We were due to arrive in Nias from Medan on Sunday. However on arrival at Brisbane airport we soon discovered that due to technical difficulties our flight had been cancelled and we would have to spend the night in a hotel in Brisbane, catching the next flight to KL in the morning. This turned out to be a MASSIVE blessing as one of our team had managed to leave her passport and ticket on the lounge floor at our house on the Sunshine Coast (approx and hour away!!). My goodness me, we would have been stuck if the plane had left on schedule!! As it turned out we had a fantastic treat, sleeping in a 5 star hotel for the night with our own rooms and showers and didn’t have to pay a penny (or cent, I guess – we’re in Australia after all…) Check-in the following morning was a bit hectic just because we had a couple of sticky moments with all the different visas the team were on. It was sorted out ok though, and because it took so long to sort out it meant our huge amounts of excess luggage were waived through without being charged, which was a huge blessing. With the missing passport safely delivered courtesy of the Africa team (who were leaving that morning too) we were finally on our way to Nias!!

Little did we know… As we boarded the plane we noticed that our flights had been routed through Penang inbetween KL and Medan. That was quite annoying as it’s effectively going up just to come back down again, and an extra flight to cope with. But it wasn’t until we got off the plane at KL and started looking for the gate we would board to Penang that we realised that the date of that flight was the next DAY!! Brisbane had omitted to go through the new flight schedule so hadn’t told us we also had a night over in KL. According to the desk there, the transit hotel was full and so we had to get a taxi an hour into the city and stay again in a 5 star hotel for the night. Oh the trails of outreach!! Thankfully this was all courtesy of the airline as well, so we just enjoyed our luck and I got to have roti canai for breakfast J

I think we were all getting slightly weary of airports as we got on some tiny planes first to Penang and then Medan. Arriving at Medan airport was once of the most overwhelming experiences as you are literally enveloped by baggage porters and taxi drivers once you get through security. Thank you Jesus that we had people meeting us who took care of every little detail, as all the travelling and faffage was definitely getting to us!! Jenni and Mulia were our angels!! Because of the re-route through Penang we had missed the afternoon flight to Nias, so we found a hotel (a little on the expensive side but it’s only one night, right?) and then found we couldn’t buy tickets to Nias until Tuesday (it’s Sunday at this point, so no, actually it’s going to be 2 nights) and had to move to a cheaper one on Monday. After spending a couple of days in Medan we arrived early Tues morning to catch the plane to Nias… only to discover that Becaa and I had to wait for the second flight as there wasn’t enough space on the first one. By this point even little things that weren’t a big deal were feeling really stressful…! But eventually we got on the little 30 seater with plastic flowers adorning the stinky toilet (as if they would make it smell better or something?!) and a worrying white mist pouring down from the ceiling the whole way (Becaa: “I thought they were trying to gas us!”) and about an hour later arrived at Nias airport in Gunung Sitoli. This was when we learnt it was a 4 hour drive to Sorake Beach on the south of the island, where we would be staying…!! Hahaha!!!

Here We Go...

Introducing the team…

Jeremy and Reba (fearless leaders/mum & dad)
Jade Anna Banana Lemonhead
Bree (Cali surfer girl)
Becaa Boo (my Canadian roommate)
Kodan (Sunny Coast surfer boy)
Paul aka Foreman (think That 70s Show)

And myself :)

Last Minute Annie

Well, I got most of my outreach fees about 4 hours before we left for the airport. My friend was so matter of fact about it… “oh, well I have $1300 you can have, if it helps!” It was sweet because the difference I can pay nearer the end of outreach once my tax rebate has cleared… what a lesson in how God works!!