July 6, 7, 8 Activities

This description provided by Nancy:

Wednesday July 6

10:00 am – Pastors and Sunday School teachers again in Room 33. We get there at 10… two students are there, we write lyrics on the board, arrange the chairs, more students come, then Hanna (young woman) comes at 10:15 to tell us the class has moved to Mensa (big room). So, we rearrange the chairs and walk 100 yards over to Mensa. There, more students have gathered and continue to come for the next 30 minutes. We had a big crowd with beautiful music (thank you Jacob), group building ideas (thank you WOW), drama of Good Samaritan, and other ideas that have become so second-nature to us from teaching Sunday School for 30-years and doing WOW for 8-years and teaching and being a mom – and doing all this in the United States where opportunities and creativity abounds!

Around 11:30, someone brought in bottled water and big fat breads for us. How sweet! But there were 40 people watching us, so we weren’t going to eat them in front of the class. When class was over at 12:30’ish, we gobbled them down, continued answering a few questions, and finally went home around 1:00. By that point, we were too hot and tired to eat lunch, and began preparing for our 2:00 class.

2:00 we did a workshop on lesson planning. Again, if we had known this in advance, we could have really wowed them! But instead, we did everything from memory, and made it an Indonesian, English-is-our-second-language friendly format. We explained, gave examples, and offered many ideas. Then Dean Tagor assigned them tookas – homework! They had to fill out a lesson plan for their content area. The planning was well-received by the 25+ professors who were in attendance. The tookas was not. We made sure they knew it was Dean Tagor who assigned it. : )

Thursday, July 7^th

Dean Tagor picked us up at 8:00 to visit HKI and have discussion with the pastors at HKI. HKI = the Christian Church of Indonesia. They have 400,000 members and this is the headquarters, where the Bishop lives and the staff for all of Indonesia. These Christian national headquarters are located here, rather than Jakarta or Medan, because this is where the pocket of Christianity lies. After a 15 minute drive we arrive at the HKI (pronounced hah-kay-ee) headquarters – a block-size area with 2-3 story buildings, and a broken concrete, rocky, uneven courtyard in the center. The buildings are white, old, peeling, all windows are open (no screens or glass). We parked, walked up the concrete steps into a room where 12 people were doing a devotion or Bible study in Bahasa Indonesia. A few looked up and stared at us, but didn’t say hello, welcome, join us… just kept going. Which was fine. We sat down at the U-shaped wooden table, covered with an old gold table cloth. There was one oscillating fan mounted on the ceiling. At the end of the devotion we were invited to comment. Luckily we had an English Bible and had noticed they were reading from I Cor 6:12-20. So, we made a few comments, and Dean Tagor translated. They seemed pleased that we had input. Then, we were introduced, and everyone else was introduced – this took 25 minutes as Dean Tagor translated. We asked them what challenges they faced in HKI, and we had a good conversation. (Farmers working, vendors selling – not attending church; similar to our folks golfing or vacationing – not attending church)

Jacob played a few songs and we taught them new songs. He made a few comments. And basically was painfully bored – but hung in there like a trooper! The devotions ended (after 1 ½ hours) and we had a small discussion with five gentlemen about organic farming. Two pastors were actively involved in training HKI members on how to do organic farming so as to save the soil and provide better nutrition for families. This pastor was passionate about his work. We had good discussion, Jim providing lots of marketing tips.

Dean Tagor returned and he began his English discussion with the remaining pastors (per theBishop’s request). He has been doing this for two months, meeting with the staff and helping them practice English. First, each pastor stood up, introduced themselves, and spoke in English. Then they shared information about what they have seen or know about the Sullalh Earthquake disaster zone. The earthquake hit on June 15^th and destroyed many homes and many HKI churches, plus schools and mosques. No one was killed, but it will take years for the area to rebuild. By 1:00 we left HKI to head back to Nommensen and prepare for our 2:00 workshop.

2:00 pm I led a workshop (until 4:30) on Teaching English to Young Children. There were over 80 students in the mensa for this class. It was hot, no breeze, but the beautiful young faces told me this was the place I was meant to be. I had them drawing nametags, sharing favorite foods, turning and talking to a neighbor… they weren’t used to this type of teaching. It was enjoyable for all of us. When the workshop ended, we were all totally wiped out!

We decided to go out for dinner. We asked the security guards (who speak no English) where we should go for makan (eat) – and were directed across the street, four shops down. It was run by two young Muslim women. It was right on the street, of course, with motorbikes, van-cabs, zooming by, the broken concrete sidewalk and open drainage ditch… but looked clean enough. (What would Don Dare say??) We pointed in the window as to what we wanted, and sat down at the plastic table with a sticky checked table cloth. We were served rice, with little fishies (small eyes attached) on the side and some hot red looking sauce. Then came a plate with three hard boiled duck eggs, two pieces of fried chicken (“I’ve never seen that cut of meat before,” Jacob said), and three “patties” of vegetables, deep fat fried. Everything is served at room/street temperature. For me, the rice and egg was good – the vegetables had something hot, Hot, HOT included in them. Wow! Total cost for a night on the town, two Sprites included: $4.

We stopped by our favorite bread shop (the only bread shop we have seen – everything is rice based, not bread), got some nice bread/pastry type things and headed home to take yet another shower.

Friday, July 8^th

We started off with Jim teaching a Powerpoint Presentation. At 10:00 there was no one there… but of course there wasn’t. Class doesn’t start until 10:30 when class starts at 10:00. Got it? It was a great class, with many questions. The head of the local teachers group attended and stayed afterwards to ask many questions. We were home by 12:30.

2:00 we headed over to teach our class on Bilingual teaching. This was a joke, because we didn’t know what we were supposed to be doing. We had asked Dean Tagor and Reina several times, but never quite understood exactly what was wanted. So, using what we know, we created a great power point and learned together. It was quite successful in that I used myself as the example for students who don’t know the second language. I showed them how important it is to say the vocabulary over and over, correctly and clearly. They told me the word for Tree “pohon” at least 10x. I KNOW I repeatd it exactly the same… but apparently did not, because they laughed and laughed. I’d try again, they’d giggle, I’d try again, they’d giggle. It was a great example for them to see how challenging it was to not say a word correctly while teaching bilingually.

When we were finally done at 3:45, I said, “Thank you for coming, if there are no more questions, we’ll see you tomorrow at 9:00 am.” And they all said “Thank you.” And continued to sit there and stare at me, and didn’t get up. Maybe it’s a cultural thing? I don’t know… In America, if the teacher said, “good bye” – everyone would blast out of the class, especially other teachers to take care of the 100’s of other pressing things that needed to get done.

We went to the Ramayana – a big shopping area, with a grocery store on the bottom floor and clothing, etc. on the top two floors. You have to wade through tons of motorbikes to walk up the stairs to get inside. There are no doors, yet there is a bit of air conditioning, just enough to keep it down to 82-84 degrees. Nice! On the grocery floor level, you first check your backpacks, and then you can go in. It has a high ceiling (same as our stores), linoleum floors, crowded aisles, and bright fluorescent lights. There is some radio/announcer guy’s voice BLARING the entire time. I don’t know how the folks who work there can stand it. A man was mopping the floor, and another came behind him with a big piece of cardboard to “fan” the area dry. The funny thing was buying eggs. We needed eggs, but they were in the open (of course not refrigerated) in big flats of 24… what to do? There were no cartons around. We stood there and watched, hoping someone would come and buy eggs so we could see how to do it. No luck. So, I ask (pointing) to the young girl working by the scales to follow me. She just stares at me. I walk over to the eggs and she slowly gets up, grabs a plastic bag and follows me. I don’t even have to act out the fact that I’m an ignorant American and don’t know how to buy eggs… it’s so obvious. I hold up the number of fingers for eggs I wanted, and she picks them up and puts them in the plastic bag – like our fruit/vegetable bags. That easy! Now I know.

At the checkout at the grocery was also interesting. There were maybe 10 cashiers – all beautiful, young women in matching outfits of orange and black, knee-length skirts and heels. There was room by the cash register to set one hand-basket. The cashier would take the items out one at a time, scan it (it worked about half the time) and then put it in a plastic bag, and set the bag on the floor next to her. She’d pick up and scan the next item, and fiddle with the bag on the floor to find a place to put it, and so on. It looked so difficult and uncomfortable and back-breaking. Then, when you paid, she’d pick up the bags, hand them back to you, look around, make sure she had them all, and then off you’d go. Our grocery bill last night was: 328,700 rupiah. It’s such a big number, it scares you. But it was less than $40.