What is Bhinneka?

Over the past year or so, I've focused mainly on telling you about the P-town learning center. This is where I've spent the majority of my time helping teach English and develop the staff.

What I haven't done much of, and thus haven't mentioned a whole lot, is teach at Bhinneka. This is the school that I actually have my visa through and the learning center is a branch of the school.

There are four part time teachers and three other staff members that run the school. They mainly teach Indonesian to expatriates. It's the place where Kim and I spent our first two years in country learning the language. That program has been the bread and butter of the school.

But there are not always expats coming into town, which means business can get slow. Since July, I've been working with the teachers and staff helping them develop a new English program for children. It will look similar to the learning center, but will focus on just teaching English (P-town does lots of other stuff: creativity, tutoring, Indo literature). The hope is that we can make this into a real, full-time business because it's in a more affluent part of town. The income will be enough to support our staff full time and potentially bring in funds to off-set expenses at the P-town learning center, which is supported 95% through donations right now.

We're in the middle of planning, with the target of opening some time in the first half of next year. I'll keep you posted on the developments. Please keep us all in your prayers.

Sleepin' better

Thanks for continuing to pray for Ethan. He seems to be doing much better, though he did lose a tad bit of weight last week. However, we had a complete blood test done on him (traumatic, yes, but this little guy did a great job, and so did the lab worker) and it came back everything normal. We're continuing to monitor him, but it appears that whatever he had is gone or almost gone.




With all the fuss over him, he completely got out of a sleeping routine. He started waking up in the middle of the night and not going back to sleep for hours. We were all a bit sleep deprived. Kim caught Ethan and me snoozin' together on Tuesday. After that, he's had three straight nights of sleepin' through the night. Maybe we've turned a corner.

Why do we suffer?

Over at the DG blog, John Piper writes about five R's that will help comfort us in times of sudden suffering. we may not always know the micro reasons for the suffering, but Scripture gives us several macro reasons. The fifth R caught my attention:

Reminder

Suffering reminds us that God sent his Son into the world to suffer so that our suffering would not be God’s condemnation but his purification.

Philippians 3:10 - ...that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings.

Mark 10:45 - The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

What a double blessing. We can be sure that our suffering is NOT God's
condemnation. That is freeing. But even more, we can be filled with joy and
excitement that we are actually growing and maturing through the suffering.

Read about the other four R's.

Out of this world

I stumbled across this blog post about our truly amazing God of wonders beyond our galaxy. We watched it this morning for our family Bible time. We are studying the promises of God and this really puts into perspective

"As high as the heavens are above the earth,

so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him…"—Psalm 103:11

Go check it out for yourself!

The Monkey rides his horse

I've been trying to post a short video clip of the monkey from the other day, but I keep getting an error. Hopefully it will work this time. You may have to wait a couple of seconds before it appears.

History of Transportation . . . Indonesian style

The kids at the P-town learning center have been studying the history of transportation. This week, the 4-6 graders focused on something very close to home . . . the pedi-cab or otherwise known as a becak (bay-chuk).

The tukang becak (becak driver) gave them instructions on each part . . .

. . . as the kids diagrammed and Kak Tri helped them along.

And then afterwards, of course, they all went for a ride around the neighborhood.

Traveling monkey show

Yesterday we did something for the first time since we've been living in Indonesia. Every once in a while, a guy on a bike with a monkey in a cage on the back of his bike goes by our house. He bangs on his drum to let everyone know he's coming around, hoping that someone will hire him for a 15 minute show. So it was about 4:00 in the afternoon, the kids were playing in the front yard, and the kids heard the drum . . . "Oh Dad, can we please have the monkey show."

The little monkey has about six different routines. They were all pretty much the same, but he would have a slightly different outfit.

The monkey trainer would beat his drum while singing a song and the monkey would run around in a circle on his leash. There might have been some meaning to the song, but I couldn't quite catch the words above the noise of the drum.

This was probalby the funniest act. With the lion mask on, the monkey went haywire, climbing the fence to the side. Also, as he would run, the trainer would release some of the slack on the leash, allowing the monkey to run right at us. Boy did we scurry for cover!

After the show was over, I paid the $2, and this two year old monkey went back into his cage.

GOOD NEWS!

While I was over at the learning center this afternoon, Kim called me with the news of Ethan's latest lab test: the white and red blood cell count went down to almost ZERO! This is amazing news. After two weeks of it going up and then to have it all of a sudden go down! - Just as we were teetering on whether or not to send Kim and Ethan to Singapore. Wow! Praise the Lord!

So the next steps right now are to keep observing Ethan, both fussiness and blood loss, weigh him at the end of the week, and re-do the lab test next week. Hopefully, this means that the bacteria or bug or whatever it was - we've never been able to completely identify what he has over the past month - has been killed off by the meds and it's finally getting out of his system.

We wait. We hope. We pray!

This morning before we got the news, I happened to be reading Psalm 46 for my devotions. So I took it to breakfast and we claimed this as a family:

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore, we will not fear;

though white blood cells increase,

though he's sometimes fussy and we don't know why,

though blood in the stool is still there,

though a trip to Singapore will disrupt our lives,

though we don't know what will happen tomorrow,

Be still and know that He is God;

He will be exalted among the nations,

He will be exalted in the earth!"

Thanks for praying so that we can remain here exalting God.

Weekend trip

Last week I sent out an update about some students who will be helping us out from time to time over the next couple of months. On Saturday, a few of us drove a couple of hours to meet them.

Here's one of my friends sharing with the group about his life. It was great to see him get involved with this and really show his leadership.

Ethan Update

Thanks for your continued prayers for Ethan. There's some good news and some disconcerting/mysterious news. For the good news, he did increase in weight last week. Also, we're finishing up his last round of medicine (for parasite and bacteria) this week. His tests have come back negative for both, so we've been able to rule them out.

However, he continues to have some bleeding and both his white and red blood cell counts have gone up (thought we're still a little confused by how much). The bleeding could be caused by a number of different things at this point, maybe even lactose intolerance. So Kim is removing all milk from her diet to at least try this route. This doesn't really explain the elevated WBC and RBC, but maybe this is from the medicine he's been taking for several weeks?

Our pediatrician friend here in town thinks it's probably a good idea for Kim and Ethan to go to Singapore to get him checked out. We're both a little stunned at this thought, considering all that we've been through over the past year. So we're pursuing this option, getting paperwork in order for them to go if necessary.

This could be nothing, but then again, it could be. We just don't know. Please pray for clarity over what is causing this in this little guy's body. Pray for healing. Pray for wisdom about treatment and if Kim and Ethan should go to Singapore.

I can't say enough how thankful we are to have you all pressing on with us in prayer.

One last Health Walk

Even though Independence Day was two weeks ago, there are still remnants of community celebrations throughout the city. Yesterday, the community that the learning center is in had their health walk.

There is always an official start to the walk, with someone waving a flag at the beginning of the line. We even had a guest with us from Disney World.

I was at the front of the line. As the flag waved to get us started, I turned to snap a picture. I was nearly trampled by the throng of health walkers eager to start. There are about 700 families in the community. Not all came out for this, but it still was a large group. Talk about a community atmosphere. Imagine several hundred people getting together in your neighborhood just for a walk.

After the hour and a half walk, we gathered on the volleyball court with great anticipation. It was door prize time: mystery gifts, fans, and a TV awaited.

We even had dancing entertainment from the ladies' aerobic class.

And I was one of the guest presenters. Notice the t-shirt I'm wearing; we had around 65 made and most of them were given out to people in the community. A great way to advertise and build community relations.