There and back again...

There and back again my little hobbit...that's what my dad said to me at the beginning of this journey. Well dad, we have been there and we are on our way back again. We have had a fantastic journey, but we are ready to see you all again. This will be my final update since we leave for home tomorrow night. We will have lots of stories to tell when we get home...you know, the ones that were too gross or would have scared our mothers half to death. Papua was awesome and we both miss it already. We have been chillin' in Bali the last couple of days. We have tried surfing and have the bruises to show for it. It is actually a lot more violent of a sport than you would think. Mostly we have just been relaxing near our hotel, but we did venture around the island a couple of days ago, and ended up in Uluwatu.

The skirts are not because we thought they were pretty. It is a requirement when you are in a sacred Hindu area. This temple was built in the 11th or the 14th century depending on who you listen to...whatever...it was old and it was cool.
It is built on the edge of these cliffs.

And there are gigantic waves that surfers from around the world come to surf on. Actually...they surf a little bit further down the coast, and we watched them, if you tried to surf in this spot, you would be met with an untimely death. One of the surfers told us the waves were 15 feet high...all I know is they were HUGE!

These are the guys who drove us down to Uluwatu on their motorcycles. My "sopir" Chris, is on the right. He was very impressed with my indonesian and we chatted all the way down there. Actually, I had the opportunity to have some pretty awesome spiritual conversations, so that was a cool way to spend our journey.

And of course, Joerg was makin' friends with members of his own species as well. The monkeys there are quite anxious for treats and if you don't feed them they start pulling on your skirt and stuff.

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Thank you to everyone for your prayers and your comments. We will see you on the flip side in a couple of days. Love in Christ, Jen

Time and distance... (part 2)

Before I switch to pictures of our return travels through Sentani, I have to pause and show you some of the personalities that we have been with these last three months.

The unpictured person under the sarong is Selfi, and peeking out is Helmi. If you're wondering what they're doing, they are hiding from the sun because they might turn black. : ) No lie, that is really what they're doing.

This is Agus...and no, he didn't get dressed up for the picture. He was standing on the beach talking with his friends like this.

And of course, Lazarus. He asked to borrow my camera, and this is what I found later.

Okay...moving on. We flew to Sentani last Monday, leaving our friends behind. We set them up on facebook before we left and we have been keeping up with them that way. I took this picture on our way back from visiting the city of Jayapura, and if you are wondering why I posted it you need to read the yellow sign a little more closely. : )

We spent 2 of our days in Sentani out at the mission training center with Abi. There was a brand new class out there and this is Abi trying to teach them the indonesian alphabet...everyone one of these guys come from tribal villages where indonesian is a second language. It was actually really neat returning to the MTC, because it was awesome to see how far our language had come in the last 3 months.

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We had some good final days with Abi and Edy in Sentani and with some of the white missionaries as well. They had some pretty useful advice for our futures as missionaries, and I was able to start making some future plans, but I will keep you in suspense until I get home on that one.

Time and distance... (part 1)

Sorry y'all, we have traveled a lot of time and distance since I last posted pictures. I have lots of reasons but here's a recap of some of the best moments.

At the end of July we had the opportunity to go back out to SP11 one more time to spend time with our friends and this is us on the beach with Helmi, Nirmala, and Sepi.
We then came back to Manokwari for a quiet week in the house with Edy's family. This is Riama with her new keyboard. She has only had the keyboard a week and she is already planning ways that she can use it to minister.

For our last night before we left Manokwari to return to Sentani they planned to take us to Mansinam beach...but as with all good Papuan plans they didn't think out the timeframe and we ended up hanging out next to this trash heap on what we affectionately call "Pantai Kotor" (which means Dirty Beach).

We did however have a great time with our friends frying up fish on the beach.

Selfi and her fiance, Binet (in the middle) have been our friends since our first days in Manokwari, and Kigan on the far right is the youth leader at the church, also a very good friend of ours.

Packing up and moving on...

We have been packing up our things this evening and getting ready to move on to Sentani tomorrow morning. We spent the weekend with our friends from the church here in Manokwari smoking fish and hanging out on the beach. We are really going to miss some of the friends that we made here, and I know that's mutual for them as well. We have already had a lot of goodbyes out at SP and they have been saying goodbye to us all week at every "ibada" (biblestudy).

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Tomorrow we begin our journey home...first to Sentani for a couple of days to wrap up our time there and then on to Bali, and then home again. You can be praying for our journey home as we say goodbye here and as we travel. I will post a little more when we get to Sentani. Thanks for continuing to stay updated on our happenings.

Life is like a box of chocolates...

Yeah, that's right...you never know what you're gonna get. And that seems to be particularly true here in Papua. For one thing, planning is totally on the fly here. Plans that were made previously are almost for certain going to change. For instance, last week was supposed to be our last week in SP11 so we closed up the house, brought all of our stuff back to the city, said our goodbyes, only to find out that our plans had changed again and we were going back to SP11. And secondly, you never know what you might get, because life here is just plain full of surprises...like ending up in a muslim wedding or an earthquake (both good stories, I'll share later)...but, you never know what might happen next.

These are few more random shots from around SP...and this one in particular is for our mothers. The top bucket is the water that comes from the well and that is what we use for bucket baths and cleaning dishes. The bottom bucket is our drinking water after it has gone through the filter.

This has been our project the last 2 weeks. We have been painting the inside and outside of the school. We have definitely been taking advantage of Joerg's drawing talents.

We also helped clean out a chocolate garden last week. They gave us big machete type things and let us go to town. It was hot, buggy work, but we enjoyed being able to help out. The chocolate garden belongs to Lazarus and Diana, and Lazarus fell out of a truck last week and broke his leg (from what I understand). Lazarus and Diana are both people from the church and they are really cool people. They have a 2 year old and a 3 month old, and Diana is only 16 years old!

This is us with our friend Nirmala before we left SP11. Nirmala is originally from Sumatra but is living out at SP11, serving the people there for the next couple of months. There are several people that we have grown close with during our time here, but for me, my time with Nirmala has been some of the best. She is one friend that I will miss very much.

God must not be done with us...

After eating a lot of rice and top ramen all week we decided it was time to go on a little fishing expedition to see if we couldn't catch us something better to eat. We, along with Lazarus, Agus, and Nirmala fished the ocean and the pond/river nearby and then slept out on the beach under the stars. We didn't catch much, but it was an amazing expedition nonetheless.

First, we tried our hand at fishing the ocean. The boys propelled this log into the water for us to use as a boat out to the coral rocks where we fished from.
As you can see, the ocean was a little rough that day, which made things very interesting, and not very fruitful in the way of fishing.

The little black dots on the right are our heads as we were swimming out to the coral rocks. I will not include the story on my blog, because I don't want to hear the scolding, but I will say that I had an experience with the waves and the coral that would lead me to believe that God is not done with me yet.

Nirmala, Agus, Lazarus, me, and Joerg. We had a great time that night exchanging stories...funny ones, serious ones, testimonies, etc. It was a great night around the campfire.

And I have never in my life seen a sunset like there was that night. God is a brilliant artist. Could you have made anything this surreal?

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I titled this post, God must not be done with us, partly because of a few frightening moments I had in the ocean, but also because we later found out that the pond we were fishing in had crocodiles. Papua is full of all sorts of those kinds of surprises, but oh well...God must not be done with us yet.

Some random shots from SP...

We had a fantastic 2 weeks out at SP11. We worked hard, played hard, and had a great time doing it.

Dinner...need I say more?
Joerg drew this picture the first week we were in Indonesia, and when I filled my plate it was just too perfect.

Okay, so I did actually make to the clinic here this week. We were only there for a couple of hours, but within 30 minutes some guys brought in their friend that a tree had fallen on his head. I was able to jump right in and help, and I was glad to be back in action. I have not done too much in the way of nursing here this time. I do have quite a few pictures of me with the patient, but they are gory beyond reason. I am sure his skull was broken and there was just a little too much blood to post for the faint of heart.

A lot of our work has been on this school. It is right next to our house, and it is where I sleep at night. It is a kindergarten and they teach the kids Indonesian, English, and about God.

You may not be able to see it real well, but yes, Dan, for you, this kid is wearing a batman t-shirt.

Taigei (Part 2)

On the other side of the mountain from Taigei was the village of Tridaga, and this was our greeting when we arrived. A lot of people here have never seen a white person, or very few at best, so we pose for a lot of pictures on their cell phones, shake hands with lots of folks, hear lots of “goodbye misters”, and get lots of folks who just want to touch us.
We went out on the lake in this boat that was totally awesome. They drove us around the lake and at some point I asked Joerg where we were going and he said probably a 3 hour tour. I don’t know how many of you are up to date on your Gilligan’s Island, but their 3 hour tour didn’t work out so well, so I said that I hoped that that wasn’t the case. We did get caught in a storm out on the water and we were all so cold by the time we got back that we were numb…but our “3 hour tour” ended much better than theirs. A quick sit down by the fire and a hike back up over the mountain helped to warm us right up.

We did have another huge rain storm as we were coming down the last of the mountain which made the last of our trek a little treacherous and I have a pretty good scar to show for it. I fell off the last of the fences that we had to climb over…go figure. The rain also made for a really interesting journey out of Taigei the next day. Most of our trail was under at least a foot of water. That’s where this picture of Joerg hiking up his high waters came from.

After hiking to Taigei, over and down the mountain, over and down the mountain again, and hiking out from Taigei, we were unpleasantly surprised to find that our taxi had not come for us, so we started walking back to Manokwari. There aren’t a lot of cars out that way, so we didn’t have a lot of options. We ended up walking a good distance to the next village, where we did eventually meet up with a taxi to return us to town. PRAISE GOD. I was doing a lot of praying on that road. I really didn’t have much desire to walk all the way back to Manokwari…it would have taken a lot of endurance and I’m pretty sure my legs would have fallen off.

But because there aren’t many vehicles out there, as many people as possible piled in. You have to understand that this vehicle is one of those with the 2 front seats, the back seat and one of those squatty truck beds. At one point we counted 21 people on board, 7 inside, and 14 in the back. We were part of the 14. This is a picture of a Papuan seat belt…just hold on to the person in front of you. Seriously, the entire ring of guys that were sitting on the rim of the truck bed were all holding on to the guy on either side of them. It was pretty hilarious.

The missing photos from our time in Taigei...

Well, I know we sort of disappeared for a couple of weeks. We have been out at SP11 these last 2 weeks having a great time. But I have to start with our trip to Taigei. As you might remember, I left my camera in the taxi after our trip, and by a miracle of God, I got it back. So here are some photos from our trip to Taigei.

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Taigei is up in the mountains and it is actually cold there. We left the house here in Manokwari at 3am and took a taxi to the end of the road and then hiked another 2 hours onto Taigei. It was 6am, 52 degrees, and we were barefoot in the mud…it was COLD. There is apparently no middle ground here temperature wise.

First off… I have heard several comments about going barefoot here, but YOU try hiking in this in flip-flops and then we can talk. Believe me, I’m a sissy little white girl with sissy white girl feet, and if I could have kept up with the boys in my flip-flops…I would have, but it was too slippery to do anything but kick off the sandals and suck it up.
This is Joerg, Hengki, Lazarus, and Agus. It was a weekend with the boys. For a girl with no brothers, it has been interesting learning to live with these guys the last few weeks.

Taigei is beautiful. In some ways it reminded me of a little bit of home. All of the mountains, a little drop in temperature, and their main staple food there is potatoes (YEA!!!!). And, to top it off we had piles of pineapples. I loved Taigei. It is a beautiful place with very friendly people.

The second day in Taigei we hiked over the mountain to the lake on the other side. I liked this picture because it gave a little perspective to the incline of the mountain. I was a little slower than the boys, but I did alright for hiking that sucker barefoot.

This is looking back over the village of Taigei from the mountain. It is always awesome to hit the summit of any mountain, but it was awesome reaching the summit of the mountain that day…I think for me it was reaching a summit of my time here in Papua. The start is always hard. But, we are finally hitting a place with our language where we are able to joke around with them and lead them in devotions. It’s still not pretty to listen to for sure, and we are definitely still playing charades with them, but we really are able to talk with them, and that has been huge.

This will be brief...

Thanks to everyone for your prayers. I did get my camera back! I will hopefully be able to post pictures tomorrow, but for now you'll have to settle for the quick update. We have been out at SP11 for the last 2 weeks, and have had a fantastic time. We did a lot of projects there the last 2 weeks...most of which ended up with me wearing a lot of paint. We also went fishing and spent the night on the beach with some of our friends here. Plans have changed since the bombing in Jakarta, and Ron will not be coming, so we are still waiting to hear what the next couple of weeks will hold for us hear. I will post more later. Love, Jen

Taigei

I'm sorry that this post will not include any photos, my camera was a casualty of our trip and I am currently trying to get it back from the taxi it was left in.

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We had a great trip out to Taigei this last weekend. We left Manokwari at 3am (I was not too thrilled ) and from here it is a 4 hour drive up into the mountains to the taxi stopping point. From there it is another 2 hour hike to the village of Taigei. Because the mud is knee deep at times, and because we only had flip-flops (long story) we hiked those 2 hours barefoot. Taigei is up in the mountains so it was only 50 degrees when we were hiking which was refreshing after the heat of Manokwari, but made for some really numb barefoot hiking.

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The next morning we headed out from Taigei to hike over the mountain to the lake and the village of Tridaga. I also scaled this mountain barefooted which was a little less pleasant because it was definitely a little more rocky, but flip flops were way too slippery for the steep incline, so in the long run I went with cut feet over a broken neck and I think it was a good choice. The lake was beautiful and it was a very good time with the Sol people, Hengki, Agus, and Lazarus. We swam in the cold lake and went out on the boat and got rained on...it was just like Idaho.

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It was really a highlight of my time here and I have lots of pictures if we can get my camera back. I hope to be able to share more with you later, but we are leaving for SP11 in about 2 hours so I will have to post more later. In Christ, Jen

And the world spins madly on...

I realize this picture got a little small in adding it to the blog. But, for those of you who are wondering where exactly in Papua we are at I found this poster in Edy's office. Manokwari and SP11 are both in the big yellow spot on the "bird's head" of Papua. (SP11 is on the left of the spot, and Manokwari the far right of it, they are about 2.5 hours apart by bus.)
This is Helmi (another of the bible students from Jakarta) she fell asleep on my shoulder on the bus on the way back from SP11.

Clearly, I am not exciting because the next morning this is Joerg falling over in the car next to me. I cannot believe that he slept through that journey...our taxi driver was crazy. He did comment when he woke up that if we were going to die on this trip that that ride was probably how we we were going to go.

Sunday was not for the faint of heart. We were woken up at 5am to be at the church in Manokwari for a "prayer" service at 6am. The prayer is in quotations because, everything here is so formal that they don't just have a prayer and finish. We had worship, prayer, offering, a condensed sermon, more worhip, and more prayer. From there, we drove out to Wariori, which is another area that YMP3 ministers in (about halfway out to SP11). Every now and again, their churches join together to share a service together, so we went to church a second time. This church has indoor and outdoor seating and we sat in the nosebleed section outside. The service was 3 hours long and there wasn't an ounce of wind. I had a thermometer on my clock and it held at an even 97 degrees for those three hours. Church here is about survival of the fittest.

Actually, Sunday was all sorts of different things for me, from the ridiculousness of riding in a death taxi out to fry in the sun, to some more real moments. There are some truly genuine people here that will be gathered together with us some day in God's presence, and I was really struck by that as I watched believers from Manokwari, together with those from Wariori praising the name of God.

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But a really special moment occurred for me that night back at the house. We often have devotions and Edy asked me if I wanted to share what was on my heart. That night, what was on my heart was Honduras. As you all have probably heard, the Honduran government was overthrown last week and there is a lot of uncertainty and unrest right now. It fell right before the USA celebrated their independence day, and right before presidential elections here in Indonesia. I was reminded of Isaiah 40 when God says that the nations are like a drop in the bucket. We often rely on nations and governments as things that are sure and certain, but ONLY God is sure and certain. It was awesome being able to express something real with them, and of course there was a little victory too in knowing enough Indonesian to really communicate my heart. They have a tradition of praying at the same time out loud at the end of devotions and listening to Indonesians praying for my friends at the clinic in Honduras half a world away was something awesome that I can't even express.

A work in progress...

Well, aside from our hike up the mountain and another journey to the beach, we have also kept ourselves busy this week building a fence at the school next to our house.

Joerg, Agus, and Lazarus went out and brought back big bamboo poles for us to make the fence with. Agus and Lazarus are 2 students from a bibleschool in Jakarta that were with us these last two weeks.
This is Agus and Joerg shaving the outer layer of bamboo off before we added it to the fence.

This is me also shaving the green outer layer off. You cannot tell, but I am using scissors since we ran out of knives.

This is one section of the fence.

And here you can tell a little bit fo the work that we have already finished, but it's still a work in progress.