An incredible house building/answer to SOOO many prayers trip....

          As many of you know, I (Jay) along with 4 other guys took a trip interior from July 30-August 8th.  This trip was 2 fold. #1-Help a fellow church planter build his house. #2- make contact with a people group that we could possibly move to permanently to plant a church.  The family we were going to help have been there for almost 6 years & have already presented the Gospel & have a group of believers there now.  For the past 5 years they have been living in a home that they built when they first moved to the Wano tribe & it was always just a temporary home.

            This trip had 2 very big unknowns. #1-We had NO idea how difficult is to build a house in the jungle. #2- We had NO idea how God was going to challenge us for Tribal Church Planting!!  I could write a short book on all that happened & experienced in just a span of 9 days interior, but as for this post I am just going to comment on each picture and will email our contact list for of the details of the trip. (If your not on the email list let us know) ENJOY!!

This is their meeting  for believers in this village.  There are no stain glass windows, projectors, or suits here.  Just a small group of people, who 3 years ago had no knowledge of their King that came to die for them.  Truly a group of people who cherish Yahweh above anything else.  AWESOME!!

2 of the head guys greeting us when we got there....

This is where the work crew (the 4 of us) stayed.  It was about 5ft to the peak & maybe 10-12 ft wide. Had a spot for a 'lil fire inside which kept us warm, but extremely smokey. (Oh & yes it was cold there.  It's about 7,2000 ft elevation)

                              
                                

  

                              

Not a bad spot to build a house, eh? This place was GORGEOUS! We took many coffee breaks just staring across the different valleys

Our current house, before and after pictures

Our house before

 

 

 and after...

 

Ruang tamu. aka: room for entertaining guests.

I begged J to keep the horse painting, but he wouldn't let me;))  

 

 

 

Haha! This is how a lot of our lighting was. We saved this one like this for kicks and giggles, I call it our party light.

 Living room and office before (notice all the wires everywhere and sweet colors!)

 

after. Now my favorite space although small.

 

Eden's room before (we had to repair almost all the walls in the house due to water and mold damage/leaks. Unfortunately, it didn't really work and the stains are back on our new paint:( )

 

after:) We had this space saving bed made in Java, but I hate it because when she sleeps, I can barely see or reach her! I want to save it for when she is a teenager, but then she will be too tall to go underneath it, lol 

 

Powder room before, complete w/ a squatty potty!

 

powder room after ( i am going to stop w/ the before and after captions, since I am hoping you can tell which is before and after;))

 

Our room

Taking Nana to the Airport

     Well folks...it’s been over a year since I last blogged!  It has been a great, amazing, busy, crazy life-changing year!  It is hard for me to find time to blog, but I am going to give it another shot.  I am going to try to do a short one here and there...we’ll see how it goes:)  I will try to go back and do some snippets from the last year or so as well.  It also depends on our internet.  It comes and goes all day long, so it can take a long time to do something on the internet and a bit frustrating!

    We just hit our 2 year mark on living in Indonesia.  2 years ago we moved to the island of Java and last March we moved here to the island of Papua.  Java and Papua are both in Indonesia, but they feel like 2 separate countries.  The culture, people, land and language is different.  They still speak Bahasa Indonesia, but it is very different!  We are getting situated here and beginning to call this home.  I will do another post with some pictures of our house...before, in between and after:)

    J’s mom, Sara just came to visit us here and meet Jericho for the 1st time.  It was a great visit at a great time.  We were so glad to have her here to help with the kiddos and encourage us.  We miss family very much and it was a little “family fix”.  It has been hard not having family get to know our little lovebug, Jericho, but glad he has now met one of his grandma’s.  We took her to the airport this morning to go back to the U.S.  I brought my camera and took some shots.  We were sad to see her go and have been praying for her all day with all of the traveling she will be doing for the next 2 days until she gets home.  If you are reading this, please say a prayer for her too!

 

 

One thing that is very common here that was not in Java is Betel Nut.  I don’t have a picture of a stand where it is sold, but they are everywhere here!  I will try to take a pic.  They look like little limes piled up on a table on the side of the road.  A lot of people chew it, I will also try to take a picture of that!  It is a BIG, red lump in their cheek they chew.  It is quite gross.  It is especially hard when they try to have a conversation with you.  It would be like someone speaking to you with a mouth full of food, much less a language that is not your mother tongue!  Anyways, they spit the “juice” out all over the place.  It kind of looks like blood all over the road.  Eden thought that’s what it was when we moved here:)  Kinda looks like a murder scene sometimes! Here is a picture of that in the airport parking lot. 

 

This blogging thing is hard for me!

I don't know why, but somehow everything takes me longer to do than the average person and it doesn't help that I am a procrastinator by nature too! So, I think about updating the blog a lot, or catching up on ALL I need to catch up on on the internet, but somehow, it only gets worse! My mom is right! Life was so much simpler before all this technology! It is a blessing and a curse at the same time. I feel especially since moving overseas the reality of both of these aspects, the pressure and desire of keeping everyone up to date with life, including Grandma's with pictures and all that if I lived in the states wouldn't be necessary. I also am so thankful bc I can email my family and stay informed and see how everyone is doing and easily access anyone I need to! I cannot imagine how missionaries in the old days felt, so far disconnected from friends and family. Weeks, months between information passing, no photos of grandchildren or skype (PTL for skype!!!), etc, etc! So there you have it, I am very grateful for the technology we have, but I am still figuring out how to balance it in my life!:)

These last few months have been especially hard for me in accomplishing much besides language learning because I have been feeling very sick w/ this pregnancy. I am now 4 months along and feeling a little better as of this week. We are working as hard as we can with language and school right now since we will be taking a little over a month off to go to Seth's wedding and to visit J's sister in the tribe in Papua with his mom! We are VERY excited about all of this, so we are pressing on! Lots and lots of homework for me constantly. I am very thankful for my house helper bc I could not do it w/o her! Between being a pregnant mom, tutoring, school and homework, I had next to no free time last month. But it will all be worth it when we can pass our language checks and take sometime to be with family! We are looking forward to seeing our families so much and to be there for Seth and Nicole's big day!!! We are also looking forward to all the delicious food!:) LOL, I am just being honest! Also, we can't even imagine how awesome it will be to fly by helicopter into the Dao tribe and live among a real tribe for a week! We are praising the Lord for all His provisions and blessings!

Counting down the days!!! And one of these days, I just may catch up on all this jazz!:) For now, here are a few photos from the past few months:

Our very good friends, Ibu Yanti, Pak Cabi and Vina along w/ a cousin (at another wedding)

Helping with wedding preparations, making little rice snacks wrapped in banana leaves. Eden just stopped in w/ J to say hi bc I was gone all day, hence the helmet:)

This is us on our Superbowl Monday! Representing the steelers in Indonesia

My precious little Eden

J helped coach basketball at the International School, sorry I didn't get a better shot:/

Daddy and Eden about to leave for one of their errand dates! Eden LOVES going w/ daddy to run errands on the bike:) P.S. do you think she likes pink?!?!!!

"Tetannga/Teman Kami Pernikahan"

For those of you English speakers ;) : "Our Neighbor /Friend's Wedding"

When our good friend's and neighbor's asked us to come take part in their wedding, we were more than happy to! We felt honored when we were invited to a ceremony that was more than 3 hours away and asked to come the day before to participate in all the family events! Usually most guests are invited to just the reception part, the ceremony is for family and very close friend's. So only a few made the trip to the town where the bride's family was from for the wedding itself. We borrowed the mission's van and followed their driver and car to Pekalongan. We also helped transport some of the extended family because they couldn't all fit in the rented car. We were also asked to wear green, the color their side of the family would be wearing at the reception! We were so honored!

We decided to rent traditional dress know as "kebaya" to wear to the wedding and reception, knowing they would all be wearing it and LOVE if we became Javanese for the day too! We even got Eden a little outfit tailored to fit her! If only that were the whole story though:) It ended up being a bit more complicated than it sounded or than we had thought.

First of all, there are some language barriers as you may remember.:) We know enough to communicate on a basic level, but the problem was I don't think they really thought to fill us in on it all, even though we had asked. AND we had never participated in anything like this before, so we had no idea what to expect!! We didn't know there was going to be a fancy ceremony and dinner on the night before, so we only had nice casual clothes, which weren't a problem, but we felt a little embarrassed. Then that went all night, so by the time we got to the hotel and went to bed, it was 12! Including Eden! The hotel we stayed at was a M (the dominant religion here) hotel and there was a mini mosque next to our room!

Then, the next morning, I was supposed to go early to go get my hair and make-up done with the girls. So I got up at 5 and went to their place where they were staying. I waited and they did my make-up last, but unfortunately, no hairstyling until after the ceremony!?! WHAT?! I was told to get up and go w/o make-up or hairdo, so that is what I did! I was dressed and ready to go straight to the wedding ceremony that started at 7 am and now only had a few minutes to do my hair in a strange place as well as help my husband with his outfit! I started to feel even more embarrassed as I thought "I have 10 pounds of make-up on, but bed hair!". Then I made the mistake of looking in the mirror, and I cringed! The make-up was plastered on, I thought I looked like a joke! I wanted so badly to hide, but sucked it up and put a smile on my face, feeling like a fool:)

We managed to pull ourselves together and go only to find everyone was wearing slacks and a batik shirts!!!! We had noo idea people dress down for the wedding part! As if we didn't stand out enough, we were just about the only ones wearing the kebaya besides a few women! Turns out the big-to-do is for the reception only? Still not positive I understand it all. So we ended up staying in that uncomfortable dress in the heat for over 8 HOURS!!!!! Because we couldn't change out of it until 1 pm. I have never been so happy to change and I can speak for J too, he was dying! His shoes were too small, his skirt was too tight and he had had enough:) My only regret though was not capturing him walking on video tape! He had to take tiny steps because we wrapped his sarung too tight! He was such a good sport though! The only reason he did it was to make our neighbors day. I was surprised, if you know my hubby, you know this was huge, monumental actually!

After the ceremony part, a lady pulled me into a house and sat me down to get my hair done w/ all the other ladies, I was excited to be experiencing all these cultural traditions, but wondering what I had gotten myself into...again! It was different, but I had the same hair as all the other ladies who didn't have their head coverings on.
Eden got hers done just in time to go take a break at the hotel..that was tricky to keep a 1 year old's up-do looking nice for a few hours!

The whole trip was a fun experience in which we learned a lot, but were exhausted by the time we got home the next night...2 very long days. Never before have I wished there was a reality tv camera crew following us until that last day! It would have been extremely entertaining watching the "white foreigners" trying so hard and J trying to get in and out of the van and limping by the end of the day, etc, etc, etc! Glad we did it and glad it's done...until the next time;)

Here are some pictures from the weekend:


Pak Sunarno and Adi (Our neighbors, father and son)
Adi is the one who got married.

Siraman, a Javanese ceremony where the family members use special water to "mandi" or bathe the bride and groom. I think the only reason for this is it is just a tradition they believe makes them more beautiful for the big day.



The bride the night before and Adi's sister, Febi.

Pre-Javanese makeover


After...anyone scared of clowns?

I find this picture very amusing!

Picture with the bride and groom, Adi and Angky.

Eden "gettin' her hur did"
After she sat and watched me get mine done, she wanted to get hers done too. All I can say is even if there were pics of the process of me getting my hair did, I am not sure I would put them up here!! I already have big, uncontrollable hair and then they teased my entire head of hair!

Javanese makeover complete. And yes I even have a black hairpiece attached to the back of my head

J was sad to return those shoes

2 of the wonderful ladies I met

Eden taking a little break at the hotel in between the ceremony and reception. It was very hot there and her clothes were uncomfortable and big on her, poor little thing ! The wedding ceremony was at 7 am and the reception wasn't until 11 am.


The whole family! We blend right in, don't we!

Eden was so exhausted by the time we left to go home, she asked for a chip in the car and fell asleep in the middle of eating it! Which if you know Eden, that's crazy!

This picture was taken a week later at the reception here in Salatiga. They had a reception at their house and it overflowed into ours:) We were happy to lend our porch and yard for chairs and guests.

Cultural Excursions: Hospital and Rubber/Coffee Plantation

I am sooo behind...what's new!?! These are from September...

Here it is folks, the nicest hospital in Salatiga

It's called "Rumah Sakit" which literally translates to "sick house"
The next 2 pictures are of their Emergency Room


I just had to take this picture of the washed gloves hanging out back waiting to be reused...so different than America, eh?!




Here is one of the beautiful old buildings on the Rubber Plantation. It used to be owned by the Dutch.

They buried the owners or founders under the building, there are there gravemarkers to the right.


The man is showing us how they scrape the tree to get the rubber
and it starts to drip..
It was so neat to learn about how rubber is collected and made. The workers work really hard, they get up really early and scrape the trees like that and then go back home until the bowls are filled, then they pour them all into these buckets and have to carry them all the way to the room where they make it. I forget all of it, it has been a while since we went, but where the tree is scarred looking right now is the area they collect from for years and then they start in a new area and give that section of the tree a break.

here is one of the men carrying his gatherings back, but most of the workers are older women!!!
washing their bowls after
the rubber room where the process begins...

the collected rubber the people have brought back
the processed rubber mats hanging to dry
in the smokehouse to dry

then they take all those mats and compress them into these squares and paint them w/ lime or something(?), each square is worth approx. 300 U.S. dollars


So...they also are a coffee plantation! Below is 2 phases of the coffee bean fruit drying in the sun, on the right is the fresh, new and on the left is the stuff that has been sitting out in the sun for a few days
The fresh ones are so pretty and colorful
here is some more of the coffee that has been sitting out
Eden and I sitting in either a pile of coffee beans or cloves, they also harvest cloves there.

the coffee roaster
Eden wanted to eat a coffee bean, I told her not to!

They also have this stuff that is like their cotton. They use it for mattresses and such

My 2 favorite people!!