Stories and Tidbits from Batam

Before I move on to posts about Soe and Niki Niki, I want to share a few stories and random tidbits from our time in Batam:

Me and Lilis

Testimony: One of our adult English students was Lilis (Lee -lis), a very kind woman who is actually quite fluent in English. Her son, Kevin, was one of our interpreters at the children's program. As I encouraged her that she raised a wonderful, funny, smart son, she offered to me that Kevin is the reason she is a believer in Jesus Christ. She explained that she had been a Muslim. When Kevin was little, he suffered from severe autism. However, through prayer, Kevin was healed in Jesus' Name. Lilis couldn't help but believe and gave her life to Christ! She now serves the Lord with a kind, sweet spirit!

About the church: At dinner one night, I was able to engage our host, Henok (Hey - Knock), and ask him about the Anglican church here in Indonesia. Currently, the Anglican church in Indonesia is under the authority of the Bishop of Singapore as a member of the Diocese of Singapore. But they are hoping to be able to become their own diocese soon. To do this, they need 6 parishes. To be considered a parish, a congregation must 1. be economically self-sufficient, 2. have an ordained minister, 3. have at least 150 members, 4. OWN its own church building. It is difficult here to meet the requisite number of members and economic status. Even more, it is very difficult for churches to own their own buildings because of the law. For a church to buy a building, the law currently requires it obtain the consent of the neighbors. As you can imagine, this can be difficult, especially when others have an interest in keeping the church at bay. But, as Henok explained, the current Indonesian president is working to repeal this law. He has much opposition, though. Henok is hoping the Anglican church in Indonesia will meet the required 6 parishes within the next 5 to 10 years. Be praying it be so!

Durian

Food: Overall, the food here is wonderful! It can be quite spicy. They eat chiles with every meal. And you haven't had a meal unless you've had rice. But the meat is wonderful and the veggies, if there are any. Mostly, the diet is rice and meat. They have wonderful fruit juices and smoothies! And, of course, coffee and tea.  Durian is also a local custom. It's a fruit. It smells disgusting. It tastes funky. And it has the texture of - what we would guess to be - snot. Nonetheless, they offer it to guests as a delicacy and it is polite to at least try it. It's doable for politeness, but I won't be voluntarily eating it for fun or enjoyment. I will say, though, if you make it to Indonesia and are offered durian, try the most yellow piece you can - the more yellow, the more sweet!

Adult English Sessions: The adults were wonderful to work with. Chris and I taught the intermediate level course. We taught regular and irregular verbs in the simple past and present tenses as well as the past perfect tense. We reviewed subject conjugation and subject-verb agreement. The students wrote a short passage about their families that we corrected to help them individually. They were quite proficient in the language. I was most impressed by their questions. They asked very specific questions. It showed their competency as well as their desire to learn. They really directed our teaching through their questions.