Saturday, July 17 - Last night, we ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant located just down the street from the Hotel Trio. This was after our prayer walk and free time in which several of us went swimming at the Hotel pool. Because Bandung is at a higher altitude, the weather is quite comfortable and the pool water was in fact cold. Eric, after swimming was experiencing vertigo, probably because he had some water stuck in his ear, stayed behind to rest and we brought him some food back. On the walk back, we stopped at a Circle K convenience food store (like a 7-11) and asked the two store clerks if we could sing for them after explaining who we were. They consented so we stood around and sang The Lord Bless You and Keep You in the store. They were quite appreciative of our singing.
The hotel's rate includes a free breakfast so we met there (including Eric) and then moved to our meeting room at the church at 8 AM to have our morning devotions. Since the missions group we were to meet was late, we spent some time to share what we saw during our prayer walk yesterday. Several were struck by the poverty in the community, for the powerlessness of the people living here and a compassion to minister to them instead of to people who are already Christians. Eugene said when we sang at the Circle K store last night, this is more like we should be doing, more spontaneous and a God-led thing. We prayed yesterday afternoon to ask God to show us what we are doing in Bandung, and it seems He wants us to minister to people we meet, non-church people, so we spent some time praying for divine appointments, even sick people for whom we can pray for healing as Pastor Tom Cheng encouraged us to do in his email to us. At about 10, the people we were to meet came (the organization name is being withheld for obvious reasons which you will understand after you read about their ministry), two leaders from two different campuses with 5 of their student/disciples. They feel God has called to form long term friendships with the Muslims and through their life examples, lead them to find Jesus as their Lord. These friendships, formed during the college years, are expected to last much longer than the 4-5 years of college, and when their friends find Jesus, are expected to remain Muslims who love and follow Jesus. One such young man has so influenced his sister by his changed life, that she now knows he is a believer but not betrayed him to his community. We need to pray that the Lord will soon bring her to Himself too. These students are under surveillance by the Muslim "police" zealots, and they told us that they are willing to die for the Lord, but there is no reason for them to take unnecessary risks, so Vision does not want to expose the connection between this mission organization and their strategy of friendship evangelism. We sang a couple of songs to them and prayed for each of those who came to meet us today.
We then went to the other Hok Im Tong church which focuses more on professionals and students where we are going to sing at 10 AM on Sunday (we are singing at the one next to our hotel at the 7:30 AM service) to do a sound check. This church is the largest in Bandung with a seating capacity of 2000 located in a plush neighborhood. After the sound check, we played tourist and visited the angklung factory where they make the instruments and ship them world-wide. (Angklung reminds me of the orphanage we visited in Jakarta, update #3, where their children played for us and I had incorrectly reported they had a large staff to take care of the kids. Their staff is actually quite small, maybe 5 or 6 total and they teach the older kids to take care of the younger ones and do a lot of the duties like clean, wash and cook, so it is a beautiful example of a large family loving each other.) A lot of the Vision kids bought souvenirs here and we were treated to a two hour concert showing the different instruments they make such as gambang, calung and pedang and of course the angklung, made primarily of bamboo. We the audience also got to learn to play the angklung and since the Poli's have a simple angklung, we will try to figure out how to play one for Home Concert. We ate our sack-lunch dinner on the bus back, debriefed and went to bed early to get ready for Sunday.
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