Road to Indonesia----S.E.W.

 

The high school students had their SEW overnight.  SEW means “spiritual emphasis week”, which is a common event in Christian schools. Only here for the high school it is an overnighter, not a week of meetings.  We feel too old to go and really stay with the kids, but we visited them on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. The kids had asked me if we were going to be there. 

The game they were playing on Friday afternoon, was one of the more unpleasant and culturally dictated games that I can envision.  They taped eggs onto the top of their heads and then took fresh fish and beat each other over the head until the egg broke.  Where in the US would you be able to purchase 20 fresh fish to beat each other with? The kids were rather grossed out with the eggs splattering all over themselves. They weren’t thrilled with handling the fish either, but it was within their realm of possibility?  What youth group in the US would even imagine doing this????

The other meeting I went to Saturday morning was a missionary speaker. Wow, I wish I had been their Friday night when he had been explaining the movement within the tribe they have worked with for 20 years.  Tremendous miracles of sewing back on severed fingers that rejuvenated. And small airplane crashes that he crawled out of the tail of the plane with a national elder within 60 seconds of it hitting down, etc. etc.  Horrible monthly bouts with desperate malaria.  Later the now Christian elders of the church saying that it was his returning every time after being airlifted out  too ill to survive, and yet him returning time after time after time, that convinced the people to finally listen to the gospel message.  His point was “Hallelujah, I have failed again.  I have been weak again. Let’s see how God can use this.”  The Western church is really bad at this.  I am not sure if the lesson was for the kids or for us missionaries who were listening.