Sunday, November 07, 2010

Update/Culture/Video/Project of the Month! :)


Settling into our new home/area!
 
Dear family & Friends across the world,
Things for us this past month have been crazy & tiring but GOOD! We LOVE our new place but not because of the building but because of so many quality neighbors to enjoy and glean from! Our new house is only 5 houses away from the church and pastor and to share a bit of culture this week the church body here meets often!
Sunday school 7:30am
Sunday Main church service 9:00am
Sunday Evening church service 5:00pm
Sunday Prayer time (normally at someones home) 7:00pm
Monday - Saturday there is 1 IF NOT 2 small groups church meetings at someones home in the evening! 
All of these church meetings have been encouraging to our hearts to see the Indonesian church so active in meeting often. In many ways this is what I imagine it was like for the early church. Although as you might expect after reading through that list of church meeting times that this is a bit OUT of culture for us and can be a bit tiring! Am culturally still trying to figure out if they expect us/me to come to all of these meetings or just come to some or maybe when I can…. I don't yet know! :) Don't be fooled though in thinking a church body is healthy because they are willing to come together and study/worship our Lord. In many developing countries there tends to be a church trend/focus on the "prosperity gospel" or the believe "If things aren't going well or your sick you must not have enough faith!". Is this what we believe? Did not the Apostle Paul have a great focus with his faith and yet go through many trials and hardships? This brings me to my next point of excitement! Now that we live in a tight nit Christian community that meets for a church gatherings ever day and we live 1/2 from the NTM national training center for training national co-workers I have found myself (Thanks to the Lord!) in an amazing environment to not only learn language but then being able to directly apply it in the near future with offers from my Pastor and the National training center to TEACH while we're here! For those of you that know me there are two things that I love to do: work with my hands and teach God's Word. :) I'm always in awe of our God's plans!
Changing the subject real quick we could use some prayer for our girls. Gwen for the past 6 days or so has been experiencing some stomach pains. :( They started slight and then grew in intensity to the point of her not sleeping well (meaning we don't sleep well….) and we got worried enough to take her to 2 doctors yesterday. I felt bad for the doctors though in that Gwen is not experiencing any fever, puking, or diarrhea. Those are the normal signs of a problem. So what the doctors kinda did was gave her a shotgun of meds. to fix just about anything! We looked up all the drugs online at a friends house and picked the ones that we thought were good. With no confidence on our end though Gwen seems to finally be doing better today! :) Chloe and Addie too have been sick off and on but not as bad as Gwen. Some people just say this is a new area with new bugs and germs….


Video! 
 A special request from some friends of ours in AZ requested a 'house tour'. Below you will find the link of just that (14 min. long) below! Also for those of you who might be interested in an extra opportunity to give click the link here ->  'project of the month'.
Grace & Peace,
Ben, Ruth, Chloe, Gwen, Addie, & baby in belly (<-look at the list… pray for a boy!)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the tour of your house, nice! Nice lookin car for such an oldie! Mum J

Mark from Freedom Fellowship said...

Thanks for the video guys. Awesome to see the house and life there. At least the added multi-legged house guests seem to be less than the last one. And a bit less falling ash from what I have heard....

Did you get my other emails? Because I want to make sure that I don't wait too long and get things snared in the holiday rush.

Mamacita said...

Hope the girls are feeling better. Have the Manado doctors considered having blood tests done on the girls? Instead of just giving them a bunch of medications for an illness that they're not sure they have?

Praying for those sweeties & that you all will be feeling great & more adjusted to your new home.

Love, Mom

Melissa said...

So good to see you guys (even via video)...Nehemiah was watching with me and was excited to see his friends! He was really confused about what was happening to Chloe's tooth :) Ruth you look so cute with your belly...we found out we are having another boy... Hope the girls feel better soon. We'll be praying for you!!

labatterie said...

I want to make sure that I don't wait too long and get things snared in the holiday rush.