Yesus Kami Puja

Note: added pics to the last post, so go back and look at them for a laugh...

We had an amazing experience on Sunday. We went to church with my Uncle Dwight at El Shaddai, the Pentecostal church that he attends when he is here in Indonesia. It was fascinating to worship with other believers even though we don’t speak the language at all.

The church has about 50 members, and meets in an upstairs room at a shopping center. There were only about 20 of us this Sunday; one man played the keyboard while Pastor Frankie’s wife did the overhead with the words to the songs. When Pastor Frankie preached, he would read scripture passages in Indonesian first, and then would read them again in English for our benefit, which was very nice. However, he only preached in Indonesian, so we had to imagine what the sermon was about based on the Bible passages.

What we especially meaningful for us, though, was singing along with the words, even though we didn’t understand what we were singing -- we didn’t need to, it was OK to just know that we were worshipping in our spirits with other believers. Kind of reminded me of the passage in Romans where it says that the Spirit intercedes for us beyond words when we don’t know what to pray. I didn’t need to know what exactly I was singing to the Lord, I could just sing and praise him.

Several of the songs were familiar tunes, and I knew what we were singing. One in particular caught me: in Indonesian, the opening words are “Yesus, kami puja.” It is a simple song that we used to sing often at Eastbrook years ago:

YESUS KAMI PUJA, KAMI SEMBAH S'BAGAI RAJA
BERDIRI DI TENGAH KAMI, DITINGGIKAN DAN DIPUJI
SEMBAH DAN PUJI P'NUHI TAHTA-MU
SEMBAH DAN PUJI P'NUHI TAHTA-MU
SEMBAH DAN PUJI P'NUHI TAHTA-MU
YESUS TUHAN ADALAH RAJA

Jesus, we enthrone You, we proclaim you our king
Standing here in the midst of us, we lift you up with our praise
And as we worship, build a throne
And as we worship, build a throne
And as we worship, build a throne
Come, Lord Jesus, and take Your place

We spent three days in Bogor with Dwight, Sam, Alex, Miranda & Jess. Since we had not seen our cousins since they were very young, it was really nice to get to know them better. We were reminded again how important family is -- whether it is our personal family or the church family.

Dwight and Jess, Miranda, and Alex