[Clever and Witty Title]

So we know. It's been a little while since we actually wrote something in here. I would like to formally apologize for that, as Jared wrote the last post and, as it being my turn, I have neglected the responsibility. I am sorry.

"WOAH WOAH WOAH! You just wait a minute there! Is this James typing?? With capital letters and semi-correct punctuation and other grammatical components that I don't know the names of??" You may be asking yourself this extremely important question. Yes, it is I. Please let your beating hearts be at rest. I am turning over a new leaf in my blogging excellence. Atleast for the next few minutes while my coffee high lasts and I am motivated to keep hitting shift at the beginning of each sentence. Enjoy it, and please extend a hand of grace when I lack the perfection you all deserve. I can't promise I will be able to hold out much longer, as I have already broke out into a sweat.

No, it's actually not hot for once. It's just a lot of work hitting the backpace this much. It's 5:08pm and we are enjoying our daily afternoon torrential down pour here at the office/our residence. It is the most optimal napping environment ever. What's that look like James? Where on earth are you typing this from? What are you looking at? Whats it like? Lots of colors? Florescent lights? Rice? Monkeys? Are there monkeys? Guys, seriously chill. I'll show you if you just wait a second. This is it. The monkeys are napping too, sorry.




I know. It's a great picture. I just want you to feel like you're here drinking coffee with me. Jared is taking advantage of the napping environment currently, as he just returned from a 4 hour motorcycle trip outside the city to contact some of the student scholarship recipients that the company supports (there are 1600 students that the company pays for to be educated from elementary school through college, including uniforms and school supplies. It's incredible). Yes, riding motorcycles in the Indonesian countryside is literally, and I mean this with all my heart, a dream come true.
like this.




BUT, with that being said, it is the equivalent of sitting on a skinny stool for 4 hours, and can be a bit painful on the donk, if you feel me. If you don't feel me, feel free to look up "donk" at urbandictionary.com. (derivation: shortened form of badonkadonk). Needless to say, the little fella earned himself a nap. I was doing Medical Mobile today, which is why we were separated.

Ok. I'm calming down now, and will stop all this foolishness. Your time is valuable and I definitely don't want to waste it. Except that I just taught some of you new vocabulary, but whatever.

Jared and I have officially been in Indonesia for over a month now, which I guess now that I say that it's not really that hard for me to believe. I feel like I can speak for both of us when I say that this place is truly growing on us, in many more ways than one. I wouldn't say that we have necessarily hit a "rhythm" since every single week we have been here has looked different from the one before it. And I don't want to make it sound like we didn't like it in the beginning by any means, but we just had no idea what to expect. It was the equivalent of someone putting us on a plane and saying, "Guys, you're going to Indonesia, it's different there, and I don't know where you'll be sleeping or what exactly you're going to be doing, but you'll figure it out..buckle up." I wish they would have also told us to bring legitimate sunscreen too. Oh well. But in our relationships, in the culture, in the food, figuring out the roads and traffic, learning the language, learning what our role here is, and just making this place somewhere that we are not just visiting for a few weeks but actually home, we are finally starting to feel more comfortable here. We went to Pizza Hut with Letto and Supri for our one month celebration...our stomachs both gave us a big ol "thanks for eating that" after. but it tasted so good.




On the other side of food adventures...there's this...If you missed the grasshopper video, it's below. This is us buying about 40 grasshoppers with their heads impaled on sticks. They were still moving. We fried them then put them into our bodies. Cobra, frog, grasshopper, snail, quail egg, dog. Bring it. You can't scare us.




Especially for me, coming to this place at first was definitely difficult, as I thought Jared would be the only human I could speak to face to face (and not through a computer). It has taken a bit for them to warm up to it, but all of the people that we work with and interact with in the company can definitely understand me. I didn't think they could at first, because they would just look at me and smile and I would feel like a freak, but it wasn't because they didn't understand me, it's because they were too afraid to mess up their English. See, Indonesian doesn't have verb tenses like English has, they just say a verb in a sentence and have little indicators through out the sentence that make you understand what they are trying to say, whether it is past, present, or future. English, on the other hand, is a gigantic mess of a language, with the same words meaning different things, 93 different tenses, prepositions being the worst thing ever, and their sentence structure is basically opposite of ours. Needless to say, it makes them all quite timid to try, but now that they know that it's just 'ol Uncle James and Jared, they have all opened up much more. It helps me learn, and they get to practice English. Win/win. It also helps to be able to communicate with people so i don't feel completely isolated.

I'm going to give you a snipit on what we have been doing, but then I just want to share really quick a bit that's on my heart. I don't really have many pictures worth putting up at the moment, but thats what videos are for.

So we continue to work with the company, and both Jared and I have taken on different roles with the different strengths we have. I am continuing to work with Medical Mobile each week, going to schools 1-2 hours outside the city in the remote areas to give the students and teachers at the sponsored school a check up and necessary medicine. We seriously have an entire pharmacy we bring us to each school, whether they need meds for flu, colds, antibiotics, high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, stomach viruses, ulcers, vitamins, etc. It's sweet. It's like a mobile medical van. That's why they call it Medical Mobile. I really love it and am building great friendships with those that I work with. I have also been able to tour different hospitals here to see what their healthcare is like. I've been able to visit a few different emergency rooms, operating rooms, and med/surge floors at different facilities, and they have been so gracious and kind to let me explore around. Here's medical mobile today...dispensing the meds.




Jared is beginning to dive into helping the company translate their materials into English. They have a ton of material that they send out to schools, donors, churches, and communities, and Jared is going to help take those materials and translate them so that people in the states and else where will be able to follow along with what the company is doing. This past saturday, we went to do the normal saturday kid's program at a school a couple hours away, but it was something they called Mobile Library. If you put the pieces together from Medical Mobile, it's the same thing, but a library van for kids. Since the kids here don't really have access to books that interest them, whether because there is a lack of decent children's books or the schools can't afford them, the kids don't see reading as fun at all. The company is trying to change that. So they send a van full of kids books to schools every saturday, and the students get to pick their own book out and read it for a few hours.
Here's some of the guys with the van behind them....












The kids aren't really encouraged to use a whole lot of creativity or imagination when it comes to reading and writing, and they have asked Jared if he will help the company develop a strategy to change that. They want him to speak to the kids about writing, how it can be fun, and how you can create anything and any story you want. You just have to write it down. He will also be writing for the company's magazine that they distribute to all of those places I just mentioned. Maybe even write some Indonesian short stories for kids to spark their imaginations.

Ok so I know that this is already pretty long, so if you need to stop for a bit and come later to finish, I understand. Just make sure you close the browser out so it shows up as another page view when you come back, thanks. I'm totally kidding, but also extremely serious about that.

Just a few things that I'm learning and are just on my heart.
So I recently listened to a sermon by David Platt on how a high view of the sovereignty of God is what fuels "death defying devotion to global missions." He broke down Revelation 5:1-14 to show his point. If you read it this will make more sense. It was the best sermon on missions that I have ever heard. What I took away from it (and still am) this is:

Getting to be apart of something like this is truly an honor. I am so grateful for the opportunities that the Lord has given me to be apart of what He is doing in the world. But this message reminded any sort of pride that might rise up in my heart of something that I never want to forget. God is sovereign. He does not need me, He does not need you. I am not doing God a favor by being here, or doing ministry at all for that matter. It is easy for me/Christians to look at the situation of the 2+ billion unreached people in the world and think to themselves..."man...God must really need my help to get Himself out of this terrible situation that He's gotten the world in. Thank goodness someone like me is lending Him a hand." Of course it's not that extreme, but how many people in ministry have been tempted to give themselves a little pat on the back for being so great and doing so many great things for the Kingdom? Let us never forget this truth: our sovereign God holds the destiny of the world in the palm of His hand, and apart from Jesus Christ, man is completely, and utterly hopeless. It is the grace of God that allows us to be apart of what He is doing in the world, and He lets us be used by Him because He loves us. But by no means does He need me. The greatest news in ALL the world is that Jesus Christ, the slaughtered Lamb of God, is ruling sovereign over everything. He is our hope. He is our salvation. He is the one that holds the world in His hand. There are over 2 billion people in the world who have no idea the significance of those statements. If every single church and denomination vanished from the earth right now, He would STILL make a great name for Himself, because He promised it. Every knee will bow, every tongue will confess, and it is absolutely worth giving your life for it.

So yes. There is a lot of work to be done to get the gospel to the people in the world who have never heard the name of Jesus. They have no way of hearing unless someone bring them this good news. God uses us to spread His kingdom to the ends of the earth and will use believers all over the earth to fulfill His plan. But never mistake His allowing us to help as Him needing us.

Sorry if that is a bit deflating. I need that a lot though.

This is long. Sorry. All the extra punctuation adds up I guess.
Love you all. Thank you for praying for us and following us and video chatting with us and loving on us. Please continue to do so. More videos to come.
J^2