TravelDavid and Therese flew out of Sydney first thing Saturday morning 2nd October, enjoying the great service on the new Singapore airlines A380. We will not mention how many movies David watched but it was 3!
From Singapore it was a quick trip to Surabaya, East Java and a relief when all our resources got through customs without any problem.
From there we were picked up by Pastor Lexy and his wife Lies (pronounced 'A-lis'), were at the airport to pick us up and take us on the 3 hour drive high up in the hill country. They are a lovely couple who run 'Salmat' in Batu – a beautiful children’s ministry training and resource centre high up in the mountains. People travel there from all over the country for training as well as resources.
No road rules it seemed, and people ducking in and out of the traffic begging. Three lanes of traffic, with trucks, and vans and millions of motorbikes, oh my goodness, if you are not used to it, it is best to keep the eyes closed.
The training centre at Batu is lovely. The temperature is pleasant, around 22 or 23 most of the time, much easier to live with than down in the lower parts of the country.
Very quickly we discovered that every mosque has a loud speaker! The chanting starts at 3.30 am and goes for half an hour. It is a good time to have our own worship time.
At 6am a worker arrives at the door with 2 buckets of hot water for us to have a throw-over bath, so that’s a bit different, just like camping.
The people are lovely, they are so helpful. The food is delicious, every meal is lovely, all prepared by a group of beautiful workers who seem to take delight in serving in this way. “Are we really on the Mission Field?” we are tempted to ask.
Monday to TuesdayWe had our opening ceremony Monday afternoon and the first meeting Monday night. Therese was asked to sing at the opening ceremony and will be singing every day at some of the sessions, which is great; she is going to enjoy that.
David is speaking all day every day, on various counselling subjects, which include
• Defining Pastoral Care
• Families under pressure
• Self esteem
• Working with volunteers
• Team building
• Strategies to deal with anger
• Trauma, crisis counselling
• Grief
• Forgiveness
• Connection and attachment
• Burnout
• Kids Keep Safe, helping abused kids, safety and protection policies.
In between times he has had a few counselling appointments as well.
Forty three delegates are registered for the conference plus a few staff and helpers -about 50 in total.
The delegates come from various organisations that specialise in helping children and families, as well as churches. They receive a certificate at the end of the week. Only a few speak any English so all the meetings are through interpreter. We have two interpreters who work very hard. Cecile and Deborah.
Wednesday- ThursdayTherese was asked to take devotions on Wednesday morning and spoke about the woman who broke the alabaster box and poured out the precious perfume over Jesus, and I spoke about our need to pour out our praise and worship to him for all he has done for us.
On Thursday night, David spoke what it really means to forgive. This was after the session on child abuse. We discover the delegates here have come because they desire to help others, but a lot of them are broken and wounded themselves, and as they came forward to forgive, God ministered to them in a very powerful way. There were many, many tears. We asked them to symbolically break a stick – meaning to give up the need for revenge against those that had hurt them.
After this it was camp fire time which included worship and putting their broken sticks on the fire.
Then came an amazing time of fun and celebration. Each province in Indonesia has their own traditional dances. So we sang and danced together!
We were asked to end the segment with a dance, but because we don’t dance together, it was pretty abysmal. Not a good representation of Australia or NZ I am afraid! Therese suggested at one stage that David did the Haka but that wasn’t going to happen!
We improvised and then everyone joined in with whatever it was we were doing. Watch out for the video!
Next, we all sat down around the fire, and prayed for each province represented after a spokesperson from each shared what the needs were. It was a very precious time. We finished off by worshipping the Lord. I could not believe we were where we were, the lights from the town twinkling below us, our hands raised praying for this beautiful country.
FridayFriday morning David spoke on burnout. We had another ministry time with the delegates, and Therese shared a brief testimony with them her own experience of burnout and recovery, which was really the first time she had done it in this kind of situation, and as we prayed for those who had responded, the Holy Spirit ministered. The conference finished on Friday afternoon with everyone receiving their certificates.
SaturdayThis morning, Saturday, we had a meeting for the 15 workers who more or less work full time at Sarfat. They had missed out on all the sessions because they were serving behind the scenes all week.
David spoke about the body of Christ and the gifts that God has given each one of us and asked them to make a hat out of paper and write the particular attribute on it that they felt was the most important contribution to the team. Together we then made a ‘living sculpture’ of where each attribute fitted in the picture of the ministry. Pastor Lexy said everyone was spot on with their own personal attribute and Lies said that it was wonderful for the team to realise those things for themselves and to see how each ones gift contributes to the whole ministry here. It was a wonderful time.
Then it was off to Malang and shopping, the traffic once again causing Therese emotional traumas as we witnessed the seemingly millions of drivers – mainly on motorbikes. Most of them were loaded to the max with anything and everything. One bike we saw had an enormous cage of gas cylinders! What was hard to accept was the bikes with whole families which usually included small children.
In the evening we ministered at a youth night for the children from the orphanage. These children were all rescued from trouble spots several years ago in a nearby province, some of whom saw their own parents killed. They are from between 12 and 18 years of age now. Pastor Lexy built the orphanage which is situated near the Bible College.
David started the evening with a game which ended up quite riotous. They loved it. After worship, Therese sang Amazing grace, and for the second time this trip called upon her fairly dormant guitar skills for accompaniment.
Their singing was amazing, so beautiful.
David shared with them an amazing mission’s story from his Sri Lanka experiences. Through that he shared with them that God gives to each one of his children a call to go and share the Gospel, and that God was also calling them to a mission in life. He asked them if they wanted to say ‘yes’ to Jesus to come forward. They all did, and as we moved around the kids praying for them, many kids cried as God ministered to them.
It is astounding to us the sadness’s children go through. We had relatively happy childhoods with wonderful parents and it is hard to even think about what so many children experience.
Jesus truly is the great healer, the great deliverer and the God of new beginnings. He gives beauty for ashes. The kids left tonight just full of joy
Sunday- MondayMore news to come….
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