Five Islands in Two Weeks, Part I - Lombok, Java, Sulawesi

 

Lombok Island

Last week we were in Lombok with the Humanitarian missionaries covering two projects, clean water and school rebuilding/rennovation. Although Indonesia generally has quite a lot of rain, there are some places where droughts can occur causing shortages of clean water. In Lombok the Church worked with local government to prioritize 7 locations for drilling deep wells and building water distribution systems to serve the local population. These systems each include a deep well with a pump along with multiple plastic water reservoirs that are filled from from the well. The reservoirs are located in various places around the village where people can bring their containers to get clean water. The people are so grateful for these systems. The residents we interviewed told us that before they had these systems they had to boil all the water and still they would often get sick. This water comes from very deep in the ground, over 100 meters in some cases, and the people can drink it without boiling and not get sick. The water from these deep wells is only used for drinking, cooking and bathing. They use water from other sources for agriculture.

This is Elder Lee, local humanitarian missionary, using one of the reservoirs out in the neighborhood. The gentleman in the blue shirt is the contractor who drilled the wells.

If you look closely at the picture above you can see that the right half of this building is newer than the left half, that is because in 2018 there was a large earthquake here in Lombok and this school was damaged. The left half had to be demolished and rebuilt. The Church Humanitarian funds don't build new schools here but they do restore, rennovate and sometimes expand existing schools. 

This is another of the buildings, at the same school, that was damaged severely by the quake so the humanitarian funds have rebuilt it. It is a prayer room (musholla) that is used by the Islamic students for prayers. 

This picture illustrates one of the things we do to collect information for our articles. I am interviewing this man and recording everything he says with my iphone so that I can extract some quotes later. The interview is all done in Indonesian. The article will also be written and published in Indonesian and then if English readers would like to read it they can easily use the google browser to translate. Google is quite good at doing translations for these articles because we use pure Indonesian without any slang. This man is on the committee of the school and he is talking about the many ways this school has undergone advancements and modernization over the years and how he has been instrumental in working with the community to increase the enrollment and decrease truency.

Many of the schools have a shortage of desks, chairs, whiteboards, computers, etc... The Humanitarian Missionaries see to it that the schools they help to rebuild and rennovate also have the furnishings they need. The chairs and desks above are made locally and purchased by the humanitarian funds of the Church. We spoke to several of the parents and they are very appreciative of the help. In some cases classes have been meeting outside under trees ever since the earthquake back in 2018.

We like to visit with the children and their parents whenever we can. We arrived early to this handover ceremony and these boys were very curious about us so Cheri began practicing her Indonesian with them. The oldest boy on the right also knew a little English. It was quite a remote place and hot so Cheri gave him some money and sent them to fetch a coke zero. I thought they would fail for sure because there were only little warungs around this area so we watched them all go from place to place until eventually they returned with an ice cold coke zero. Cheri then gave them some money and they all went off to buy treats. No school this day because of our dedication ceremony.

Lombok is a beautiful island that lies a few miles to the east of Bali. The National Agency For Disaster Management was our partner for the humanitarian work on Lombok. They took us to this waterfall that was near one of our projects. I will add some other scenic picutures from Lombok to the end of this blog with captions. We appreciate the opportunity we sometimes have to look around at the beauty of Indonesia a bit on these trips.

Java

We were invited to attend the wedding of Ninoy and Devara in Surakarta. We were able to set aside one day between Lombok and Sulawesi to travel to Surakarta to attend the wedding. The bride, Devara, is the granddaughter of Brother and Sister Soeratman whom I taught as a young missionary 45 years ago. First they were married in a simple ceremony at the Church in the morning, then in the afternoon the Javanese traditional wedding was done. In the picture above you see the bride and groom walking down the aisle at the Javanese wedding ceremony. The man in front of them is singing in Javanese accompanied by gamelan music. It was a beautiful ceremony and reception attended by over 1000 guests as near as I can estimate. They will go to a temple in the near future to be sealed. Members of the Church came from all over the Island to attend so we met many people we knew. It was like a big reunion for many of us. 

At one point in the wedding an amazing group of Javanese dancers performed for us. I will try to add a video clip at the end of this blog but blogger does not handle video very well so it may not play for you.

Sulawesi Island

Since 2013 The Church humanitarian funds have supported the work of the Perinasia NGO with a program called HBB (Helping Babies Breath). This program provides training as well as the training dummies and equipment for nurses and midwives in rural areas. They are trained in the latest techniques for resuscitation and stabilization of newborns.

Cheri and Sister Stevens, who is a humanitarian missionary and also a nurse, are talking to a young midwife who came here from a remote hospital on a little island to the north to take this training. She is taking the TOT (Train the Trainer) course and she will train the other nurses and midwives in her hospital when she returns.

We took a small trip one morning while in Tomohon Sulawesi to see the market. All of the produce and meat are local.

Tomatoes, chillies, shallots, bakchoy, limes, garlic...

Very fresh chickens

These are frut bats. They are not cooked yet but they have burned the hair off of them and cut thier wings off. Some people here believe there are special health benefits to eaching such things. We also saw snake and other interesting meats in this market but I will spare the details.

We had a little time between meetings in Lombok so we went to this seaside restaurant for lunch and Cheri asked them to set a chair out on the beach for her.

We are inside the caldera of an extinct volcano on Lombok. This is in a garden amid fields of strawberries. We had strawberry smoothies here. It was quite beautiful. I will add another picture below.

Video of Javanese dancers the wedding in Surakarta