2 Prayer Requests

Wow!  Life is going by at an astonishing pace right now.  Just just over a week until Christmas.      


Christmas in the Indonesian church, at least the church I am serving at, is very different than Christmas at home.


There are 2 upcoming events that will stretch me.  Sometimes, I can't predict what will stretch me, but in this case, I know beforehand.  The built up has already stretched me.


First, I can't think of the last time I was so terrified and so excited for something as I am for tomorrow.  I will visit a gathering of people with HIV/AIDS.  This is a dream come true for me.  I have always wanted to sit and talk with people whom have AIDS.  At the same time, I am uneasy and uncertain going into this.  There will be children and adults.  Prostitutes and homosexuals.  Gathered together in one home.  


Prayers that I may be able to see and hear Jesus within and among the people I will sit beside.  Prayers that I may have the right words and actions that does not reflect any superiority, cheap charity or pride.  Pray that it may be clear that although I am a white North American, I do not come to bring medicine or money. I come to receive the stories and lives of those whom are highly stigmatized.  I pray that I can discover not their poverty and the chains that bind them, but the poverty and chains in my life that limit the full life that Jesus gives.


Secondly, I am leading a 1.5 hour session at the Youth Leadership Camp for middle-high school youth.  It is about living lives of worship--lives that seek justice.  Like everything I do, it will be in Indonesian, which is the first challenge.  The second, is that I have used words like justice so much through university, that it is a challenge for me know how to communicate that  to high school youth.  The third, is that I want to be creative, which always runs the risk of not working well. But with the other possibility that it is awesome.  So I have created different creative ways of communicating what I could say in a speech.  


Pray that I may communicate well and that my time will help create church leaders whom seek lives that love their neighbor--lives of worship.  


Pray that the youth may engage the material and be inspired to become leaders that will worship fully--which will lead other to worship fully as well.   


Thanks for prayers.  I had to deal with an intense morning of homesickness that other day.  But I take that emotion as a good and beautiful thing.  Miss you all!      

Where will you be next year?

This is from my article to the King's University College Newspaper......

“Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy. Be challenged. Learn some things. Teach some things. Spend a year living somewhere that you never dreamed you'd go.” 

This is the tag-line for the SALT program.

Most definitely, all of the above mentioned promises for the SALT program have come true.

They could come true to you as well.

Now is the time for YOU to consider going on SALT program for 2012-2013. 

I never imagined I would be eating exotic fruit and harvesting onions between some rice paddies (like I did today) a year ago. 

Life is not always a picnic here eating some fruit and pulling a few onions.

This is no 2 week missions trip.

This is no vacation.

This is no polished poverty alleviation program.

This is no what you will imagine it will be like.

This is not predictable.

This is not polished.

This is not comfortable.

This is not being effective in the Western sense of that word.

This is not failure free.  It’s failure ridden.

There are positions for those interested and gifted with teaching, pasturing, engineering, farming.  There are positions in the deserts of Jordan, the rice paddies of Indonesia and the Savannah of Kenya. 

No one has the same experience within this same program.  So there are no guarantees for what will happen or how you will change. 

But you will change.

Your world will change.

Your relationship to God will change.

Your relationship to others will change.

But God will not change.  




Oh yah...did I mention your food will change?  Just finished up a plate of fluffy rice and with a  sprinkle of small fish heads.  With the coaching of my fellow pastors.  

Want to go?  Have questions.

check out: salt.mcc.org

email me: Jason_k_horlings@hotmail.com

Picture this.

Outside her home, I am with the mother of the sick child (that child is not in the photo) which I referred to in the previous post.  The mother earns $8 a day rolling cigarettes for a cigarette company.  The co-owners of the company have $11 billion. We talked about that.  

After breaking it down for a while.....I looked around.....and there were people pulled over on the road behind me watching.

Jason's first encounter with cobra went like this.....while the cobra handler looks on unphased.  I guess, it was only hissing and lunging so why not just sit back and have a smoke. 

And then why not kill and then eat the cobra.....i took a pass on the cobra blood mixed with the gall bladder and spinal cartilage.

 Rambutan (a fruit).....how I love you.

Picking some duku fruit with my koran/Arabic teacher.  Forever grateful that I had to learn Indonesian and not Arabic.....and not sure why I would attempt to learn a new language from a man who knows no English.  But it's been a blessing already.  Assalamu alaikum....

I spent a good 10 minutes in pursuit of this lizard....so you better enjoy it!

While this bug, was much more photo friendly.  Guess what plant it is on? Hint: I eat it three times a day.

Door-to-door communion with a pastor and a few other church members was powerful.  It is for those unable to come to church because of health issues.  I have never been in such a small dirty house, maybe 3 meters wide with her bed in front of you when you step through the front door.  We did communion with her on her bed--there is something amazing about doing communion with someone right in the messiness and reality of life.

Walking to another home to do communion, and a fan club started with these school kids.

50 meters from my home, this is the street market.  I declined the attempted sale of a live catfish today.

I journey with the Evangelism group at church ( led by one of my mothers) to a city 5 hours away.  We had a church service with this recently baptized Chinese traditional fortune teller/healer.  

I guess I need a blue shirt, the plaid red shirt just doesn't help me cause in Indonesia.  Here are many of the young adults, celebrating 6 years of there program "Vox Reformata" ( Voice of Reformation).  Mennonite or Christian Reformed?  The lined is very blurred here.