Sumatra

Question: 

Where is the only place on earth where elephants, tigers, rhinos and orangutans live together still? 

Answer: 

Sumatra.  

As advertised on my previous post, I went to Sumatra. I hoped to see one of the four above beasts before all the trees are cut down and the animals vanish--a feat that Indonesia (or foreign companies?!) are doing quite well these days.  

Seriously, I had had other motives for going. You'll find out..... 

First, a map for those directionally challenged.  The green marker is where I call "home" here in Indonesia, on the island of Java.  The red marker is where I went in Sumatra.  Between the two markers is 800 km of road and ferry crossing.  Which should mean about 8 hours of driving, right?  Wrong!  Try 28 hours of driving, including some of the better road of Indonesia--in a bus.   

Eventually, the bus ended up in a chocolate (cocoa) forest.  And in that chocolate forest was a church.  We, which is a group of 25 people from my church denomination, went to visit churches in Sumatra, encourage them and help with medical care.  

We visited 3 villages and their churches.   In Tto of the villages the way of life was chocolate farming.  Inside the fruit on the trees are dozens of pits that are then dried out in the front of homes.  Eventually, a powder/paste inside is fermented and, tada--cocoa powder.

Mayang and Gabe, two beautiful rambunctious girls.     

Yes, what you think is happening actually is.  I am giving instructions in Indonesian on how to use a syrup for the child.  Over 200 people came through our team and received medicine.  The teeth were wrecked in most people along with many children being itchy.  Those were symptoms of bad water in all three villages.        

These were women that we met and I took some time to sit down and chat.  The women to my right is pregnant and in predictable fashion she asked me to touch her pregnant stomach.  I declined.  But the reason she asked is because of a Javanese superstition that believes that doing that will influence the looks of the child.  And of all the possible physical attributes I could offer someone, what do Indonesians chose?  My nose.  My long pronounced nose. 

In the course of my wandering around the village.  I bumped into a great little shop that would be the dream location for anyone desiring this trifecta of things.  Playing some FIFA video games (back), buying some smokes (front counter) and swapping for a new motor bike (right).  

Morning fog among the palms and rice paddies.  I find the agriculture situation in Indonesia, probably like many places on earth, quite confusing and frustrating. Those whom farm, weather rice, chocolate or corn, seem stuck in material poverty.  When I say that I mean, for example, the it is rare that farming families have the ability to pay for schooling for their children through elementary to high-school.  And when children get a high school education they flee to the big cities.  It is very clear that I eat off the 'back's' of the poor. The political scientist in me, smells something unjust with political-economic policy.  Frustrating, uncomfortable and unjust.   

Despite asking a embarrassingly large amount of Indonesian's in Sumatra if they live close to elephants, I never saw one.  Instead, my only find was a a praying mantis--and it was not even bright green, but brown.  Lame.

I received news on the last day I have with my host family, community and church.  It is July 12th.  I leave for de-briefing in the USA on July 18th.  I am back home in Canada on July 24th.  

But reading news that July 12th is the day I leave for Indonesian de-briefing gave me a real gut wrenching feeling.  There is still much to do, enjoy and learn.  Still much time to be, reflect and change.  At the same time, it will go by incredibly fast.  For me, something I feel strongly mixed about.  

However, right now its like, "really, July 12th, does it have to be that soon?"      

Thank-you for continued encouragement, prayers and interest in my experience here.  Hopefully will see many of you in 2-3 months from now! 

Lovely Little Things

A Love List:

1. A periodic herd of goats that roams the front of the house. 

2. The sheer density of living here.  It is an endless maze of small paths and streets between homes where I can bike and walk through with endless curiosity.  

3.  Walking down the street and a pedi-cab driver I may have met once, if ever, yells out my name.

4. Little kids will, like all Indonesians, shake your hand when you met and when you depart.  For little kids, they bring your hand to their lips and give it a little kiss.  I'm not the kind of person to say this, but that most be one of the cutest things.

5. Teaching kids to play kick the can in a dense maze like village.  Hands down, I had more fun then the kids.  

6.  The conversations I have at stop lights on my bike.  Sometimes people know my name and things about my life like where I am usually going, and I have no idea who they are.  

7. Sometimes things here can look a lot like home...for example a mall or KFC.  However, driving one night and seeing people doing construction by candle light made me realize things are still a lot different.

8. Seeing 3 guys on the top of 25 ft high scaffolding rolling down a busy road.  

9.  My habitual task of buying juice sirsat (soursop in English).  All I do is show up at the juice stand and say the amount of juice I want, they already know the type. The going rate is 25 cents for a big glass of bliss.

10.  Just a warning my sense of socially acceptable space between myself and you when I get back is going to be awful.  If there is a line of people, you have some body part in contact with the person in front and behind you.  Nearly the same thing goes for traffic.    

11. Within the first 5 questions, it is guaranteed that I will be asked by a stranger if I have a girlfriend and if I am looking for one here.  

12. Cockroach killing time in the bathroom.  Best time: 10-11pm. 

13. Dropping words from the Javanese language (as opposed to Indonesian) in conversation to make instant friends.

14. Laughing.  My supervising pastor has one of those contagious laughs. 

15. Three favorite foods.  

Rice/Tofu and Peanut Sauce 

Rice/ Buffalo kebabs and Peanut Sauce 

Rice/ Vegetables/Tofu/ and Peanut Sauce.

Get the theme?

16. Having lots of friends here from families to elderly people, to kids, to pastors to youth.  Then being able to text them and make a plan to meet, talk or play together.

17.  The beach is an hour from my home.  

18. I took the drivers seat of the pedi-cab and drove around a bunch a kids.  No damages....at least physically.  The kids possibly were damaged as they have declined every offer since the first pedi-cab adventure. 

 19. I found a chameleon!  And some kids taught me that the tail functions as a leash when you play with it.  The game is:  avoid it's sporadic lunges.  

20.  Going to the Indonesian island of.......Sumatra.  Right now.  Bye!  

Introspection: Anger and Humility

Six kids and me acting like one around a bowl with a fish and a mirror.  One thing that the kids would do was to put a mirror in front of the Beta fish.  The Beta would become irritated, annoyed, frazzled and eventually angry.  It is angry at what it perceives as another.  In some ways its so difficult to watch the Beta fish.  

You wish to just tell it, “hey, that is you, stop being angry at the face thinking its another one. Your angry at yourself."  

For the fish to realize this….it would be awkward, awakening and agonizing.   Now hold onto this story.  I will come back to it. 

I have had a hard time describing my experience with church and faith.  Like I told my mom the other day, the key to read my blog is to “read” what is not written.  You may have noticed a void.  The void is the specifics about my actual church itself.  It’s a rather complex and, at times, difficult topic that is more suited to a conversation over tea.

One of the closest analogies I can come to about my experience with general life and church here is this. 

For those of you who know the East Hastings area of Vancouver, this will be at lot easier.  Basically, in downtown Vancouver you find posh, affluent life of the downtown.  Then you can walk a couple blocks and enter a world of poverty, drugs, and prostitution.  In a matter of blocks this happens.  It’s a shocking, scary and alarming walk—a walk that you rather forget--but really it is rather unforgettable.  

Now imagine, having a church right in between the posh part and the destitute part of Vancouver.  Say, a church in that block right before Hastings.  And this church draws people from both parts of Vancouver--the rich and the poor.  It has the very very richest people of Vancouver along with those whom are poorest.  They all gather in the same place for singing, hearing God's Word and fellowship. 

One of the choices of the rich looks like this.  You could come to church, do your thing, and leave or you could come to church and be changed and change both Hastings and your world.  The rich have made this church a massive building filled with the latest technology and finest furnishings. Going to church here could be the most comfortable thing ever.     

In this church, sitting next to the poor, against all assumptions that it would change the rich, shows little signs that it does.  The poor are expected to be there, it just the way things are.  Sure, some food and money is given to them.  In fact, some people far away are paying lots to help the poor here.  The poor mothers, stay poor, there is no way out for them.  In short, helping the poor is nothing more than an expected task of the church—it is just protocol.  Some people can not feed there kids well. 

Some people have no toilets.

Some people can not send there kids to school.  

But you can ignore this all, just show up in your SUV, hang out with your cliché, and then head home and live life behind your gated home or your strolling in the mall.  It actually is very possible for you to not be change even if you share the same pew or street with those whom hope to met life's needs, but struggle greatly to do so.  

There is of course another reaction to attending a church like this--suspended between the rich and poor.  The reaction is one of working towards empowering lives and seeing the call to bring justice as a central act of worship.  There are glimpses of this in certain people and at certain times, but as for the church community as a whole, this course of action seems to be the path much less taken.  

A then there is me.  Being apart of this church like I have this year, could also be something that—well, let’s see—wrecks and changes you.  It inflicts damage on your faith.  At times, you doubt the church.  You are troubled by the people that fill it with disregard for empowering the poor and lack of intentional interactions with  Muslims to know each other more deeply.  You lose trust in passionate sermons preaching shalom when the actions that follow are faint.  It looks to you like a race to the top of the economic ladder.  A flight to capitalism and all that it can bring.  It looks like a big jack-pot, some win and other lose—it’s the game.  There is no real way out for the losers, the winners work hard and it some sense have earned it—the losers just need to follow course.

Not a day goes by that I do not stare into this abyss between rich and poor and the abyss between God's Kingdom call and what happens.  Staring into tears me apart.  It’s ugly, lonely and damaging to the soul.  When the church looks like this it makes me not want to be a pastor.  Something is deeply not the way its supposed to be.  It is an awful sight. It can feel devoid of a God of compassion and intimacy.  The church feels like an institution, concerned with money and power.  

Now remember that story about the kids, me and the Beta fish.  Remember what the fish is actually angry at?

I think the part that hurts the most is how I have realized that the "face" that I get angry at, is actually me.  It's actually myself.  The names, attitudes, hearts, priorities, actions and words of those whom fill the church and make me want to leave it are, when it comes down do it, a lot like me.  It's an awful and awesome discovery all at the same time.  It's being angry and then realizing that the one you are angry at is actually your reflection. It's realizing that I am the Pharisee in in the Parable in Luke 18:9-14 who boasts and is angered by the tax collector, only to realize that the tax collector was a reflection of himself.       

It is one thing to go a place where all live relatively the same economically. 

         Live in the affluent part of your city, that makes faith easier.  

         Live in a place where poverty is ubiquitous, it will often make faith harder.

But,

        Live in a place where affluence and poverty tangle, it makes you angry, then introspective.  

Like the Pharisee, I also find the path to humbly look introspectively at the "face" that is the end of pride and condemnation one of struggle and denial.  Denial that at the end of my frustration is really myself.  Faith is humility.  Faith then becomes anguish.  I am moving past denial and trying to bear the cross of humility in terms of my experience in Indonesia.  It is process.  And it is slow.  But Jesus has me convinced that it is worth it.