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Showing posts from September, 2023

Morning Devotional, English at the Catholic School, and Mini Indonesia Park

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  I have pasted above two screen shots from one of our morning devotionals. Tuesday through Saturday we hold a morning devotional with the entire mission. Everyone who is available joins by zoom. The agenda is pretty simple. One companionship shares a spiritual thought, another shares a miracle and then we have a prayer. There is also time for announcements and singing happy birthday whenever someone has a birthday. It is a great way to start our morning and to feel unified even though we are spread across a geographic area that would span from the east coast to the west coast of the US. There is a lot of love among the missionaries. We are all united in common cause, far from our homes and families, and we all face pretty daunting challenges every day. We draw strength from these meetings and from the bonds of love that form among the missionaries. Last week we were invited to visit the nearby catholic school campus to practice English with the students. We really enjoy these experien

Zone Conference Joy and Finding Records in Bandung

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  We had a wonderful time attending zone conference in Bandung this week. It is a time when we all learn more about the work we are doing in Indonesia as missionaries, receive inspiring messages from the Mission Leaders, and spend some time getting to know each other better. This picture was taken between sessions at the Church in Bandung.  We stayed overnight in Bandung with the Furgos and returned to Jakarta on the train the next day. Sister Furgo wanted to visit this Church in Bandung, St. Petrus. She is an american, born in Holland, and she is of mixed Indonesian and Dutch descent. Her Mother and Father were married in this Church in 1941. We went inside and asked if they had records from that time period. Sister Furgo had a picture of the wedding invitation on her phone so we had the exact date, place and names. The man in charge of records happened to be there and within a few minutes he was able to produce the original document where the marriage was recorded with the names of a

Bananas and other stuff

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  Yesterday was Saturday and Cheri and I took the train to Bogor and visited the our friend, Bishop Soewignyo. He took us out to see his farm and we came away with these two bunches of bananas. Over the next few days I will cut them off the stems and give them to the missionaries because this is way too much for us to eat but we will keep a few. There are so many kinds of bananas here. I can't remember the names of all of them. The green ones in my right hand are cavendish bananas, I think. They are the kind we eat in America and they will ripen over the next few days and turn yellow. I don't know what the ones in my left hand are called but Soewignyo told me they are also sweet and good to eat plain. Here is Soewignyo loading the bananas into his vehicle. Thank goodness he drove us back to Jakarta because it would have been pretty tough to bring these home on the train (-: In this part of his farm hs is planting papaya seedlings. It has been very dry so he has to water these b