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.