Mission Blog of Chuck and Cheri Lambson

  All three daughters came to visit us. We spent a couple of days with them in Jakarta and then flew to Bali for 5 days of fun and sightseeing. Brother Sihol helped us arrange the trip. He and his family are in the picture above in front of the Bali branch building. Our daughters from left to right are Kali, Mallory and Sydney. They have been to Bali before when we lived in Hong Kong, but that was about 22 years ago. One of the really fun things we did in Bali was to take  Balinese cooking class. I have to admit that I was not very excited about it but it turned out to be super fun and we made a fantastic lunch for ourselves.  Vegetable curry in a bumbu bali sauce, sate, with  bali style peanut sauce, fish cooked in banana leaf and mie goreng. It was all super delicious. The Balinese are famous for many forms of art. This artist is carving a huge statue of balinese ramayana dancers. He has been working on it for over a month. He has no picture to go by nor any measurement instruments.

  Yesterday was the opening ceremony for the expansion of the Cahaya Hati School in Cijeruk near Bogor, Indonesia. The green and yellow building on the left is the existing school, and the blue and yellow building on the right is the new school expansion which was donated by the Foundation of The Church. This is a small private school with less than 200 students in kindergarten through 6th grade. This school is a vital part of this community. The teachers and staff are dressed in matching uniforms and the children are dressed in white. This event was held on a Saturday when school was not in session but a few students were invited to come and welcome us and sing the national song, Indonesia Raya. Dr. Alwi Shihab is the man who is standing third from the left in the first picture above. His wife, Ashraf Shahab is talking to Sister Lambson in the picture on the right. Dr. Shihab and his wife have been friends of the Church for a long time and he is the one who facilitated this project wi

  I took this video as we walked through the rice padi. It is a device for frightening birds away from the rice. I thought it was genius. I took this photo in an open-air market. This is bulk snack food Indonesia style. They keep them in these big bags and you buy a small amount. Various kinds of seasoned chips and snack foods. We bought some corn from the closest bag. It is just deep fried, salted kernels of corn. In front of a big 4-sided clock from the Dutch colonial era in the town square of Bukit Tinggi in Sumatra Barat. I checked all 4 clocks. They all showed the correct time. I will leave you with this picture of school children in Pasaman because I think it is such a beautiful picture. I did not take it. It was taken by Citra, who is the communications specialist for CARE Indonesia.

  In February of this year the Pasaman district of West Sumatra was hit by an earthquake which destroyed many homes, and schools and also damaged pipelines that supply clean water to the affected communities. We don't have any branches or wards in West Sumatra so our humanitarian missionaries travelled there to ask the community leaders how we could help. It was decided that the Church humanitarian foundation would partner with the Red Cross of Indonesia and CARE Indonesia to repair water systems and provide school uniforms to the children. In this picture you can see two pipelines. The green one is the old pipe that was made of steel. Because of the rigidity of steel pipe it broke in many places during the earthquake. The plastic pipe is part of the water project and it is larger in diameter, to supply more water, and also flexible to withstand earthquakes better.  The pipe in the picture before this one runs into a cement enclosure like the one in the background of this picture.