Wednesday, July 13 - Another early start (and an even earlier one planned for tomorrow since we also need to pack and check out) as we headed out to a drug prison in Bandung. Drug offenses are considered the most serious (even more serious than murder) crime here and we met with about 30 prisoners at the prison, accompanied by Oma Wisa and a young man who it appears she is training (this 75 year old lady seems to be training lots of young people all the time). Our program is quite similar to the other prison, 30 minutes of worship led by the prison team members, our singing and skit and Pastor Ben giving another challenging message but it felt differently here. Today, Marissa and Ronald gave their testimonies. After his message, about 12 people raised their hands to indicate their desire to receive Christ, but only about 8 asked for prayer from our team members. In chatting with the inmates later, we found out one reason might have been the life of the worship leader. although a very gifted singer and guitar player, we found out that he is continuing to do several illegal things in prison, like owning a cell phone (inmates are not allowed cell phones) and taking pictures of the girls in Vision. It showed us again how our life needs to be pure when we serve God or we are only serving in our flesh.
After lunch on the bus, we returned to the church across from our hotel to do our group devotions, do a little practice singing to fix up the little things that make for a good performance, and then headed out to the Salvation Army orphanage. We were surprised when we got there to find an additional 25 or so kids there since we had bought enough food for the smaller number. It turned out where we sang was the girl's home and we were given the number of girls living there but at the last minute, the leaders of the orphanage decided to bus in the boys from the boys' orphanage. For some reason, the Salvation Army folks bought 12 more lunch boxes for us, and after feeding all the children and giving Rian and Ronald their boxes so they could catch the bus back to Jakarta for their school orientation Thursday morning, it left us with 22 lunch boxes for 33 of us. We leaders decided to just share the food between us so we do a partial fast and go to bed a little hungry tonight and appreciate what it feels like for the majority of the people here. But somehow God multiplied the food for we all ate and were satisfied and even had a bit of rice left! We had a great time ministering there. Almost all the 51 elementary kids and 16 of the 17 high schoolers prayed to receive the Lord (although it is likely that for many of them, it was only a re commitment). Tonight, Andrew led the elementary section, after having observed Auntie En doing this for the past 2 days and Brian Chioy and Icha shared at the high school section. The actions of the Indonesian team has been such a blessing to see, as they really stepped forward to teach, share, pray as well as sing. It has been a good day but quite different from yesterday and we could see God working and in full control of everything that happened.
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