18th March 2009

Upon Jervin's request, I'm here to share about my Indonesia trip.  Haha... Yeah, I was back in Ipoh for a week by now.  I was too lazy to share it here again because I shared many times already.  Haha...

18th March

 

When we reached Indonesia's Airport, we were received by the fellow brethren from Abba Love.  Abba Love is a huge church with many branches.  It's a church like City Harvest in Singapore.  Then we were sent to a village called Sehwan.  We gathered at a kindergarten.  The first stop was at the "Mental Health Rehab Center".  We had fellowship with some of the mentally ill people.  One of them played the guitar and sang us two songs.  We sang two songs for them too.  Then we were served butter cookies.  After that we were told to break ourselves into 3 groups because each group will be going into different villages.  My group went to a Ex- lepers village, another group went to a rubbish dump village and another group to a village with a lot of kids(?).  We did not know the conditions of the 3 villages and we did not know what to expect.  So off we went to the respective villages.  

When I reached the village, it wasn't as bad as I expected.  We did not get to bath in the river.  Hehe... I did not know that that is an ex- lepers village also.  I got to know when I found that most of the uncles and aunties do not have fingers, or their fingers and toes are crooked.  Then only I asked Km.  Once we reached the host's house, we were served soft drinks, then we were served Chocolate Ice- blended and then bubur kacang hitam, which we thought it was our dinner.  By now you can see how hospitable are they.  They were so warmth.  

After we bathed, we went home visits.  We went to a few houses.  We were treated Eskrim in one of the houses we visited.  They run a business and they said it was from God.  It's a kedai runcit.  The first thing that the people said when they saw us was Puji Tuhan.  They were ex- lepers.  Because of their sickness, they lost their fingers, toes and legs.  They are poor and yet they praised God.  I can hardly do that, I blamed God for the things that I've to go through.  When my center has visitors, I never said praise God.  I have never said that.  To them, God's people are Luar Biasa, yet I felt that I am just as ordinary as other people.  I did not seriously think that having God is a Luar Biasa thing.  I was slapped twice once I was there. 

Would I praise God when I lose a leg? Fingers? Toes? They are so simple and they place their trust fully on God.  I felt and still feeling so ashamed for trying to run away from God like Adam and Eve.  Shame on me!   :(

We joined their young adult meeting too.  I had language barrier plus I wasn't really alert, I couldn't understand what they were talking about.  They were fun and cheerful.  Their worship was superb and their prayer meeting was so different from us.  They are planning to go on a mission soon, if I'm not mistaken, they will be going in May.  I must remember to pray for them.  Hmm... I took the initiative to talk to them.  I got them to write something in my journal too :)

After that we went back home, we had our dinner.  I swallowed a piece of pig skin.  I thought it was sotong or something.  I had never ever seen pig skin in this form.  I did not want to know what it was too.  But Erwin, he told us.  I was not in time to stop him.  sigh...

We were told that the next morning they have dawn prayer.  It was at 5am, Malaysian time will be 4am.  Ok it was our first night ok?  But we managed to wake up in time.