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...

Road to Indonesia----"To the Ends of the Earth"

 https://maf.org/ Pull up the Mission Aviation Fellowship website. It can direct you to the closest theater showing of their video, "To the Ends of the Earth", featuring Indonesia.  I have not seen it but heard some of the stories on it....from the real live people. Go watch it!!

Road to Indonesia---Blood Donation

 I have asked around and may not have this story exactly right, but I will share what little I know. In one of the villages last Sunday, the church was attacked by people from another tribal group with bows and arrows and possibly machetes.  People were killed and at least 8 serious injuries.  MAF flew out 6 of the injured people here to Sentani for medical care.  Two of them were too seriously injured, on oxygen, and could not fly out.  We do not know what their condition is.  An emergency call for blood donations went out. A major need is AB+ blood.  I have AB+ blood and responded that I would gladly donate but I had hepatitis 40+ years ago and thought I could not.  They asked the doctor and he said if it was hep A, I could still donate.  There was also a question if I was too old, but the answer was if I was in good health.  So we went up to school today with a group of missionaries to wait for the Red Cross blood donation workers to ...

Road to Indonesia---PON Games

 What a tremendous privilege.  The PON National Sports Week Games are being hosted in Papua, which means things are very, very busy around here for the next 2 weeks. A huge gorgeous new stadium as well as numerous other locations around the area have been built. The games are played every 4 year and were to have been played in 2020, but like so much else was delayed by a year.  That our remote island was chosen to host these activities is really quite something. The airport that must accomodate all this activity is just a few miles down the road from us.  The main stadium is about 20 minutes away.  There has been much speculation about how this might effect we who live here, from internet shut down, to crippling traffic, but so far, so good.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Sports_Week_(Indonesia) https://en.tempo.co/read/1513102/jokowi-3-papuan-boys-play-soccer-at-national-games-opening

Road to Indonesia---Scarlet Letter

 Teaching Scarlet Letter.   I guess I might be assuming too much.  On about the third or fourth day of class, after much discussion even, the students were looking rather blank. I said, "You know that red emblem on her chest." A boy blurted out, "Nipple!"  The class wentRo downhill from there.

Road to Indonesia---Gospel II

 This Sunday in church there was an update on the Pulu tribe that was mentioned in my blog titled "Gospel".  A team had gone into the tribe in the midst of tribal warfare. Some of the people had come from 4 to 6 hours to live in the village as the team storied 6 days a week, telling them the Story from Genesis to Christ.  When the team members finally got to the Gospel message a few weeks ago, 73 people accepted Jesus.  What a wonderful answer to prayers.  We have completed a week of face to face classes.  No one has gotten sick. What a tremendous answer to prayer.  I cannot tell you how incredibly fulfilling this work is: to work daily to mentor these kids.  Yes, I am very, very busy, but the plusses greatly outweigh the hours of work and tiredness.  We also are fully back into our online classes for Peking University.  That adds another whole pile of essays.  Please pray for wisdom and strength. Our money from the bank in China al...