One of our sacred moments was being invited to Kristen's home in Lagaboti and sharing time with her family.
On one of our last days a session was held to explain Batak culture, including a brief demonstration of Batak dancing.
Every afternoon the neighborhood youth played basketball right outside our front door. They also launched a renovation project.
Our friends always made sure we got the freshest pineapples.
Jacob found that music was always a certain way to make a connection.
We shared many precious moments with this grandmother and her beautiful granddaughter.
Many hours were spent with representative from the regional teachers organization. As a farewell we shared a pitcher of tuak.
We forged many close relationships with the college students who attended our workshops. We learned more from them than they did from us.
All these students are studying to be teachers, and will be great witnesses with love and compassion.
M'Reina is head of the English Department and cares for her students as if each was her child.
This mother is preparing her children for a special worship celebrating the 150th anniversary of the missionary Dr. Nommensen coming to Sumatra.
Sunday School is an important event for most children in Batak villages.
Many Sunday School teachers and candidate pastors from the HKI church joined us for workshops, and taught us a new song with great enthusiasm.
Churches were everywhere in the region surrounding Siantar, filled with many beautiful children of God.
We had a great time during several visits to the Christian radio station.
This HKI orphanage is a special place dedicated to raising children in an atmosphere focused on the love of God.
Our friends showed us the glories of God's world, and shared laughter with us often.
Some members needed a framework for our trip, so we began with the Basics.
The country of Indonesia is shown in white. The capital city of Jakarta is located on the island of Java. Sumatra is the big island to the left.
The island of Sumatra lies directly west of Malaysia. We landed in Medan, a city of 4 million. Note Lake Toba, a huge freshwater lake located south of Siantar.
Lake Toba is in the center of this map, which shows different tribes of the Batak people. Though we spent most of our time in the region of the Simalungun, many of the people at the university come from Toba Batak villages.
This road map begins with Pematangsiantar near the top, and includes most of the areas we visited. Students at Nommensen came largely from villages in this region. The red line represents a two lane road while to drive on any of the other roads required strong shock absorbers and an experienced driver. The city of Parapat is the entryway to Lake Toba.
This is the entrance to Nommensen in Siantar. Security guards try to slow down traffic on the busy two lane road to help you cross the street or turn onto the road. Traffic flows in the opposite direction from the US, so crossing the road was even more challenging for us.
This university sign highlights the various academic programs offered. The campus includes many classroom buildings of the university and the senior high school, along with a separate section for the seminary.
This is the main assembly field, often used for football matches on Fridays and the weekends. On Saturday mornings the high school students would gather for their exercises.
Singing was a big joy for us. The Batak people love music, and really enjoy singing. We discovered during our first Sunday School workshop that the students already knew the song "This is the Day" and sang it with great enthusiasm. (Jacob played the ukulele and Nancy led the group in the song.)
Later we discovered that our friends could sing "This is the Day" in their own language. (We sang the song together now in Bahasa Indonesia).
It was only when we visited a Sunday School class that we learned that three and four year old students could sing it in three languages. Batak is the original native language which is often used in the home and between people of Batak heritage, while Bahasa Indonesia is the national language. (We sang "This is the Day" in Batak and we wished that we had more time to rehearse with the entire congregation and sing it again...maybe someday soon!)
We were very busy during our time in Siantar. In addition to discovering how life works there, we also performed many "official" activities...
Many of the college students teach Sunday School classes in their local churches. We held workshops for them. In this scene we are walking them through an ice breaker game of "human bingo". They caught on very quickly. We are in the university library. All the books are kept in the back room and to read one you must submit a request form. The card catalog is to Nancy's right while the librarians sit behind the high counter to her left.
Jacob found it easy to make friends. Here he is explaining another game during our SS teachers workshop.
This scene is from one in a series of workshops we taught for Sunday School teachers from the community. These teachers serve in HKI congregations.
We visited several public schools in the area. Note the uniforms all students wear. Uniforms are worn by all students (and teachers) from kindergarten through senior high. These students are responding to the question of "who has a Facebook account?" Most students in middle and senior high school there have a Facebook account.
We led presentations in four large meetings of teachers coordinated by the teachers organization. At our last presentation in Parapat, we were presented with Simalungun hats, a great honor, and adopted into the family.
It is impossible to describe all the ways that life in Siantar was different than our comfortable, spoiled life in Knoxville. We forgot to mention one of our favorite things about Siantar...the micro-buses. We learned to live without Air Conditioning but it is a joy to have it again.
We didn't want to scare people off by talking about the lizards and spiders too much.We wanted to focus on the treasure of our experience, which is our sharing in Christ.
We explained the phrase "well that's unusual" as our way of remarking on the things we found that contrasted with a US cultural norm or expectation. We mentioned a few examples.
It was explained to us during our HKI Sunday School workshops that there is a long history of Christian missionaries from Europe and America bringing the Gospel to Sumatra. Therefore tall white people are viewed as "holy people". How nice for Indonesians to view strangers in such a positive way. (There is a dark flip side involving several centuries of brutal colonization by the Dutch, but they didn't mention that and we were happy with our holy people status).
We did have to mention that we were a foot taller than anyone in Siantar, so we stood out. We believe many people saw Jacob and because he is tall, young and white, they assumed he was Justin Bieber. Plus he could play his ukulele and sing, so he did take on sort of a rock star image during our visit.
Our last night in Siantar we invited a few students over to our house for a farewell party. Since the school was on break and many students had gone home to their villages, we anticipated that five or ten might show up. We were shocked when our home was jammed with over 40 students, with other friends coming even later to wish us well. Several of the students presented us with a real treasure, the Bible (Bibel) in Batak. We will cherish this forever.
We closed the presentation by emphasizing that anyone can do this. Granted, you must be flexible, but everyone doesn't have to do something as intense as our trip. ELCA Global Missions has a variety of opportunities and is excited to work with you to identify good fits.
Serving the Lord can take many forms, and those that carried us in their prayers, dropped us off at the airport, and covered us in our absence also served the Lord. Thanks to everyone who made our trip possible.
