Indonesia

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

Wow. We are in Asia. I can hardly believe it. Feels very odd to be in a continent we've never been to before.

We arrived yesterday in Jakarta after a really long couple of flights: 3 hrs to LA, 13 to Taipei, and 5 to Jakarta. (There will be a post about the Taipei airport coming, but I don't have the pictures here at the internet cafe.) But we made it, as did our bags, and were met at the airport by my cousin Sam, and my uncle Dwight arrived about 45 minutes later. We drove, through some of the hairiest traffic I've ever seen, out to their house in Bogor, in the mountains south of the city. Very nice place.

Sam, incidentally, is about to turn twenty and has stolen from me the honor of Most Successful Actor In The Winkler Family. He's an extremely good-looking young man and got "discovered" when he was asked to be on an Indonesian reality TV show by a friend. That wound up turning into a gig on an Indonesian soap opera in which he plays "Dodi," a rich kid who is the friend of a main character. So he is frequently off filming until 4am, but he was gracious enough to take a little vacation time to spend with his "wannabe" cousin. *snicker*

Bogor Botanical Gardens

Today, after sleeping for about twelve hours straight, Lynn and I visited the very famous (President Bush came here on his last Asian trip) Bogor Botanical Gardens while Dwight took his daughters Alex and Miranda shopping for new clothes. The gardens are incredibly beautiful, but the most interesting thing was the attention that we drew as westerners. I read in my guidebook that the Indonesian people are extremely friendly and warm to visitors, but I wasn't quite prepared.

Our Loyal Fans

Nearly every time we passed someone and smiled, they wanted to stop and talk to us. "Hello!!! How are you!!! Where are you from!!!" It was kind of infectious, and I found myself intentionally smiling at people as we passed just to see if they would talk to us. Sometimes the girls just giggled. We were pretty sure we heard one group taking pictures of us from behind as we walked up the trail. Lynn said, "I hope I don't have something on my butt..."

Lynn the rock star

One young man who was leading a group of tourism industry students wanted to know, "McCain, or Obama?" We smiled and confessed "McCain," and he laughed as he said, "I like Obama! He is from Indonesia!" Another family came up to us as we looked at the lotus pond, and wanted to pose for pictures with us. Seems kind of funny; we can just imagine them showing them... "And here we are with some white people we saw at the botanical gardens!"

We're going to have to learn to deal with the papparrazzi, I guess...