Subject: Update from Indonesia

Dear Family and Friends,

I am very thankful for this opportunity to share with you what I have
been up to for the past month. (To warn you, this is pretty long. Hope
you got a few minutes) For this the first week that I was here in
Indonesia I
found myself unintentionally comparing everything I experienced to
when I was in Uganda. Thankfully it began to wear off sometime during
the second week.

Jakarta, the city I have been in for the past month, is the eleventh
largest city in the world. So as one might imagine there is a
ridiculous amount of traffic. And there are more motorcycles than you
can imagine. Motorcycles boldly weave through the gaps of the not so
organized traffic. Just like Kampala, the gap between the economic
classes is very wide, at least much wider than it is in America. The
city is a modern city. I would describe it as being a mix between New
York City and Kampala. The skyline is broken by countless sky
scrapers, most of which have unique architecture that surpasses that
of most American cities. And you can find ANY American fast food
restaurant here; they even have a few Outbacks. The most popular fast
food is KFC. Indonesian love them some fried chicken! They love to fry
anything actually. They also love spicy food. It is difficult to
describe the food in general. But in a word, Delicious. It is
different than American food of course, but no so different to make it
"weird." (Well some fruits here are completely new to me and weird) We
do have rice with every meal, no exceptions. And the typical meal from
a restaurant is only about two or three dollars. It's great. The food
is enough to make me want to come back. Oh I ate cow brain and cow
lung on Friday.

The culture is difficult to nail down being that there hundreds of
different people groups represented in the country. It all depends on
where you are in the country. For the most part the people are very
friendly and gracious. Though, Ugandans have Indonesians beat as farm
as friendliness is concerned. Also, the number of people in Uganda who
spoke English is much higher than the people I have been exposed to
here.

Indonesia is the country with largest Muslim population in the World.
Despite, always being able to hear at least five mosque playing the
call to prayer, I thought things would be much more "Muslim" here. And
there are a lot more churches than I thought there would be. I guess
you could say I was let down. Nonetheless, the country is no doubt a
Muslim country.

As far as my activities are concerned, this program is entirely
different than the program when I was in Uganda. This program,
Discovery, is shaped to give the interns a great amount of exposure to
the organization, what they are doing here, and what it would be like
to work with them. The first half, which has just ended, has been
spent in Jakarta. The nine of us, six gals and two other gentlemen,
were split up into four groups to go live with a "host family." I was
with one of the guys, Ian. We lived an upper-middle-class family of
five. They have a son, is was away at college, two daughters, 12 and
20, and a niece who lives with them, she's 24, and then a house helper
who has lived with them for 20 years. The family was extremely
hospitable, generous, and humorous. On the weekends they took us all
over the place. And they fed us a ridiculous amount of food. Beside
the two daughters, the family did not speak much English, which was
good because it forced to learn Indonesian. I can't tell you how much
I enjoyed the home stay! It was an awesome experience and gave us lots
of exposure to their culture. I found some things to be very similar
to my own family, both parents worked, the kids had people come over
often, always lots of good food, the siblings were really close, and
there was plenty of laughing. But don't get me wrong, there were many
cultural things that made them much different from your standard
American family. They were great though and took Ian and I in as if
were part of their own family.

An interesting side note and story. The father is and Engineer. He
graduated from the MIT of Indonesia. (In 1986, he actually worked in
Seattle for 6 months with Boeing). On the side though he runs a number
of small businesses, on of which is a small chain of "Reflexology
Massage" clinics. Well, one night I got extremely sick. I puked five
time over the span of six hours and couldn't keep anything down.
Around 11 am Pak Edison, the father, decided to have one of his
masseuses come to the house and give me a two hour reflexology
massage. I haven't thrown up since.

When we weren't at the house we were at the office from 8 am till 3
pm. However, there was over an hour of transportation both ways. In
the morning we rode with a girl who works at the office and in the
afternoon we would take an "angkot." An angkot is a small van that
holds ten passengers or more in the back and two up front. They are
all over the place. The come in different colors and numbers. Each
color and number represent the route it goes. Our route took about an
hour and would pay fifty cents a person. It is very economical. And it
was a good cultural experience. Speaking of transportation, besides
when we were at the office I think 50% of our waking time was spent in
a car. Again, the traffic is crazy here.

When were at the office we have "devotions" for an hour,
class/presentations for five hours with an hour for lunch in between.
Lunch was great because we got to hang out with the staff and get to
know them, they are about half expatriates and half nationals. We
either were doing Indonesian classes or someone from the office was
giving us a presentation on a specific aspect of the organization. And
I learned there are many more aspects than I thought there were.

The language learning was fun but exhausting. It was worth it though
because it enabled us to communicate with our host families and get
around alright. I was really surprised by how much language we were
able to learn over these past few weeks. And it has been really neat
to be with people who all love language. Pretty much everyone that
works for the organization loves language. So it has been great
feeding off of them.

There were about five days on both sides of the home stay when we
stayed at the guesthouse which is above the office. My favorite part
of staying at the office is that there are a number of expatriate
translators and language surveyors who stay here for a few days when
they need to be here at the headquarters. I have been able to have a
lot of great conversations with some them. Talking to them has really
helped to give me a more real idea of what life is like being a
translator and for some, what it is like raising a family on the
field. It is really something to hear their stories and to know what
God is doing here. It gets me really excited. The harvest is plenty
but the workers are few, pray then for more workers.

So right now I am staying at the office. On Monday our group is split
in half and we head off to different villages. This second half of the
trip is the climax of the trip. This is were we get out of the office
and go on the field. The group I am in takes an eight hour commercial
flight across the archipelago country where we will head to the jungle
to live with a Dutch family who has been doing a language project
there for six years, and the father actually grew up on the island
when his parents also did a language project. It's the real deal. This
is the part I have been looking forward to since I applied in
November. This when we live with translators and get a glimpse into
their life and their lifestyle.  I am hoping that by the end of it I
will have a much better idea whether or not this is for me. I cannot
wait! And I can't wait, Lord willing, to tell you about it in August.

Being that I will be in the jungle, I will not have e-mail access till
I am in Bali for the last week of the program. So, if you wanted to
drop a line to me do it before Monday morning, otherwise I will get in
August in Bali.

Despite my one instance "sakit perut," stomach sickness that is, I
have been very healthy. I have been enjoying my time here so much and
I am just now starting to feel like I could see myself coming back
here. I like a whole lot. And similar to last year, I am learning
things about myself that can only be learned in such a context. This
experience and the ones to come will no doubt shape me and influence.
I am convinced that long-term overseas living is in my future. Just
like my time in Uganda, I have felt alive in a unique way this summer.
In some strange way there is a homelike feeling for me when I am here.

      To those whom it may concern our team could use some prayer.
The main thing is health and safety. It sounds generic to pray for
health and safety but the other and I really do not want to be sick
the whole time we have this very unique and short experience. So
please do pray for the health of our team. It would be good too to
pray for the family we will be staying with. . . My spiritual life has
been very strong since being here. I am most thankful for that and for
those who have been praying for me. I have continued to grow in my
faith and in my knowledge that God is a living Reality to be
encountered not to merely be spoken about. And this God is a God of
Love. I become more and more firm in my ability to say that. I say
this all as a thanksgiving and to let you know how I have been doing
on a deeper level.
I don't want you to get the idea of thing has been perfect since being
here. There have some small things that set us back and some clashing
of personalities. Some boredom, some exhaustion, and some loneliness.
But none of it is enough to keep me down. There is too much to be
thankful for and too much to enjoy to be down.
Thanks for you support and for sharing in this experience with me.

Love,
_tyler