Wednesday, July 21 - Last night we went to the blind children's school and like much of what has happened so far, it turned out to be a fellowship of college and middle aged sight-impaired people. About 10 showed up when we started but when we finished, there were about 20 in the audience. There was no piano or keyboard at the church so we did our all-acapella program. Since all our skits were mime skits and we could not perform these to the blind, we had our Indonesian team learn an old Vision skit which they improvised and made it theirs. The skit was "Meeting of the Board" where the executive committee of the Jesus movement met to give Jesus suggestions on how to improve his ministry. The Indonesian team changed it to a conversation they had with Jesus while walking along and making such suggestions as performing more miracles like feeding the crowd, walking on water, and turning water into wine while backing off on challenging the crowd to take up their cross. Jesus finally reminds his disciples that He was there not to please men but to do the will of His Father. Brian Kuan and Denise also gave their testimonies; Brian on how God has changed him and Denise on how the death of her Christian schoolmate from cancer earlier this year changed her life. After Pastor Ben gave a short message, we had a chance to pray for most of the audience, another good ministry time of encouragement.
We left at 7:45 this morning to pick up our lady prison contact (who is a spry widowed 70+ senior citizen whose "halftime" ministry is to prisons) to head off for the women's prison. Jeremy seemed to be coming down with a cold last night while Slim is still hobbling around although improved so we left them at the hotel to rest. After clearing security, we started our program at 9:30 to about 25 women prisoners. We again did our acapella program with the heart skit and our new "Suggestions for Jesus" skit with both Kaitlin and Nadia shared their testimonies and Joseph directing the whole concert. Kaitlin shared about asking for forgiveness and Nadia how she learned to love the unlovable. Pastor Ben preached from John 10 about the Good Shepherd and how His sheep hear His voice. During his sermon, many prisoners started to tear and when he gave the invitation, at least 8 raised their hand (it seemed almost all the group) to accept the Lord. There were loud sobs during this time. What was wonderful was that there were many who sat outside the room next to the windows listening intently. Auntie En overheard two of these ladies saying, don't go inside, you will get beat up (by the Muslims) but we can hear them sitting here outside, so we know some Gospel seed was planted (pray for them). After our final songs, we prayed in small groups for many of the prisoners and had a wonderful ministry time. Then six of the prisoners sang to us two songs, Great Is Thy Faithfulness and an Indonesian song. They asked us to come back and it was very tempting to accept.
We returned to the hotel to pick up our box lunches and Andre, who will guide our bus to the Christian village located in West Java about 2 hours from Bandung. This is where we expected to attend church in a former mosque and we were curious to know how a Muslim village turned Christian. Imagine our surprise (our God is full of surprises) when we ended up in a Christian village which has 3 seminaries and 11 churches in the community! We had gone to the wrong village. Both villages have the same name but our plans were for the wrong village. In fact, the church we went to was built by the Dutch in 1902 and is Protestant in every way, from their liturgy down to their architecture (the ceiling is in the shape of a cross and has a cross designed into the ceiling). But we know God does not make mistakes and He brought us to this village for a purpose. We played with their children, attended their liturgical service and sang for about 45 minutes. The pastor carefully selected old hymns with English words for their liturgy that their congregation did not know so well for our sake. Auntie En persuaded the pastor to let her take the children to a separate room so they did not have to sit through the long service. There were 10 or so children and when she asked the kids where were the rest, they told her at home (probably because they did not want to sit through a boring liturgy). Auntie En gave them a few minutes to run home and collect their friends, and about 60 kids came back. En shared the story she told at the cancer home and about half a dozen kids raised their hands to accept Christ. But when she led them in the sinner's prayer, it seemed all the kids responded. Praise God and pray for these children, the future of this church. They cooked dinner for everyone in their congregation and we fellowshipped, As we talked to the pastor and his wife, we realized how discouraged they were with ministry in this village. Joe and Fiona's testimonies tonight seemed to be what they needed, with Fiona sharing about her own growth through her accountability group and Joe about how he learned to serve God and work with children. Auntie Mei, Auntie En and Fiona all got a chance to pray for the pastor's wife and she even invited Fiona to her home to show her pictures of her family. Again we saw how God sent us all the way there to encourage a lonely couple serving God away from their home provinces (really is a cross cultural mission for them) because He loves each person so much. We also felt blessed to be used in this way. We then returned to Bandung arriving about 9 PM, debriefed, prayed for some specific items concerning the churches here and some individuals who requested prayers, and returned to our rooms to pack and get ready to leave for Jakarta tomorrow.
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