Adventure Time with Keri!

The rest of the days kind of blended together…this is what I get for not journaling every day.

In between evangelistic meetings, VBS, and eating (b/c we felt like they were continually feeding us), we managed to squeeze in time to go visit the orphanage twice, the Union office, dedicate a new church, and eat some more. The group also went to go visit the college in Manado, but I decided to opt out and go with the boys instead to film some B roll which enabled me to go see some of the sites around the area. The surrounding areas are beautiful! Unfortunately it starting pouring rain midday and we had to stop filming. That’s one thing that was a daily occurrence. Rain. And lots of it. It never failed to rain every single day. And it wasn’t just a quick shower all the time. It was heavy rain for like an hour or two. 

Sunday we went to visit the orphanage.

Somehow, by the grace of God, I got to lead out in VBS at my own church. Remember the first church I went to on Friday night? Yeah, that church. Apparently they had told the congregation that there would be a children’s program starting Sunday night. The only problem was that our group was already spread pretty thin between the 9 different sites. We decided that I would go lead out and Juliann would assist me. After my crash course the day before, I was more confident in leading out. Thankfully I had another great translator. But more about my site later.

One thing that I was able to participate in was the eye clinic. Ok, let’s back up a bit. I’ve been on two Quiet Hour (QH) mission trips prior to this one. Both times I was privileged to work at the eye clinic under the direction of Judy Melashenko who has lead out in countless eye clinics. I learned so much from her and am so thankful for all that she has taught me. Little did I know that all that would come into play on this trip. I had previously talked to Quiet Hour at one point and mentioned that I would be willing to help out with the eye clinic if they wanted to send glasses over with people. I didn’t hear back about all that and when I got to Indo, I was pleasantly surprised that they had sent two boxes of eye glasses. There were a few problems. The first problem was…I was the only one that knew how to conduct the eye clinic. The second problem we ran into was that the eye and medical clinics were being held in the late afternoon on three different days at three different sites. This wouldn’t have been so much of a problem except that since everyone HAD to be at their own sites by 6pm, there was no wriggle room for other ppl to come with me. Actually, I lied, there was one other person (thank goodness!), Geraldine, that was able to come with me, but more on that later.

Monday was the first day of clinics and we were told that it would start at 3pm (mainly because the doctors and nurses coming to do the medical clinic didn’t get off till then). So we (Dan, Geraldine, and the boys – who came to get some footage) went to Dan’s site and waited…..and waited….and waited some more. We were in the middle of nowhere in a small village so Bryan and Arody got some super sweet footage of the kids. It was past 5pm by the time the nurses arrived…and then it took another half an hour till the doctor arrived. They seemed almost as confused as us when they got there. We ended up doing a house visit first at a house across from the church. Inside we found a lady that was bedridden and had severe burns on her legs. The burns were caused by a gasoline incident a year earlier and it still looked pretty bad. The doctors and nurses made sure that her dressings were being changed and a doctor was coming to see her regularly, then we were able to pray with her. 

After that, we got the ball rolling with the eye and medical clinic. Geraldine, a nurse, helped out with the medical clinic by taking blood pressures. That left me by myself to manage the eye clinic. I don’t even think I had time to register that until afterwards. Thankfully one of the nurses knew English and he was able to be my translator for most of the night. Because it was so sudden, I didn’t have time to really set up or anything, making it a little on the chaotic side at first. I forgot to mention that I didn’t have any tools to use that I’m used to having. Bryan had to print off an eye chart from online…except it wasn’t to scale…so it wasn’t all that helpful. Haha. Pastor Terry ended up finding the actual eye chart in one of the suitcase pockets after the second clinic. I don’t know why I didn’t think to check there. Anyway, I was using a newspaper for those that needed reading glasses. We use a newspaper b/c it has different sizes of font plus it’s in their language so they can read it out loud to us if need be. Thankfully it went pretty smoothly for about two hours, although my translator had to ditch me early because his crew left and then Merry took over from there. Her English is good but limited, but we were able to communicate just fine!  I think we were able to see about 75 ppl that night in the two hours that we had the clinic. It never gets old to see the smile on the people’s faces when they realize they can read clearly. I think that’s what keeps me going as it is extremely exhausting work standing there seeing person after person non-stop. 

The majority of the following pictures are while we were waiting for the medical team to get there. 

Tuesday was the day that I got to go sightseeing with the boys while they shot some B roll. We visited Mount Empung, an active [apparently] volcano (with a huge crater), although it hasn’t erupted since the 18^th century. Speaking of active volcanoes, we were staying right next to Mount Lokon which had erupted a month before we got there and then it started spewing stuff WHILE we were there. It was crazy! I don’t actually have a picture of that…but Bryan does and hopefully I will be able to post it later. We then got footage of the farmlands along the slopes of the mountains/hills (whatever you want to classify them as). It’s SO beautiful there!

Then we went to Lake Linau, which is a color-changing sulfur lake. By then it had started pouring and we took shelter under the little chalet there. That place was also super pretty despite the rain.  I think that was also the day that I actually got to take a nap for once since we went back after seeing the lake. I still hadn’t had time to catch up on sleep so those two hours were like gold to me.

I led out in VBS again that night (Tiffanie, Juliann’s mom, was so kind as to take over while I was at the eye clinic the night before and then on Wednesday too!) and the kids has so much energy! Apparently all 25 or so of the kids that were there the first night we started told all their friends or something b/c there were about 50 kids the next night and more every night after that! They had to change rooms three times to accommodate all of us! If I could’ve harnessed all the energy that all those kids had, I think we could’ve lit up NYC for more than a week. I kid you not. The only time they weren’t noisy and talking to each other was when they were praying or singing. Haha! Even when we were telling stories with felts or puppets there was a loud hum in the room. They all seemed to enjoy it though. They really, REALLY loved the crafts we did every night. THAT was crazy. They would all clamor for more stickers and surround you until you couldn’t move! It was hard to fill up two hours of time unless we had two crafts to do. One hour I can do. One and half hours isn’t too much of a stretch…but that extra half hour? Oh man…. it can be hard. Plus I’m a newbie…so I don’t have tricks up my sleeve like all the veteran leaders out there. I need more experience!!

Wednesday we were supposed to go to the orphanage but ended up going to a church dedication. It was a huge deal. The governor of the region even came out to say a few words in addition to all the church leaders. 

At some point during the big lunch I ended up meeting a church member that knew a lot of people I knew back at school and home. He even had heard of my family in Malaysia since he lived in one town over from ours for a long time. It was crazy! Also, here is where I delve in on the fact that we live in a small world. One of my friends from college, Leslie Bojoh, is Indonesian and he knew we were in Indonesia and had commented on one of our pictures because he was excited for us, etc. etc. Then after I posted a picture and put what town we were in, he all of a sudden told us, “THAT’S WHERE I WAS BORN!!!” I was so shocked! Out of all the thousands of islands and villages that make up Indonesia, we were in the exact town he was born in. It was CRAZY. We were both freaking out. Haha! Apparently his grandfather founded one of the first churches in a nearby village and his father was a pastor in the Minahasa conference before they moved to the US. I even found out we had passed the hospital he was born at almost every day! I got to talk to pastors that knew his family and it was so cool. Sigh, such a small world!

Anyway, as I was saying.

Wednesday night was another clinic night. This time I had more help! I gave a crash course to Geraldine and we had two lines going at once instead of just one. Pastor Warren (this was his site he was speaking at) also gave us a hand in whatever way he could while we were checking people. I started out with a translator that knew limited English and then slowly he abandoned me to help Geraldine.

Ok, let me explain. Since the Malay and Indo languages are similar, and I know a little bit of Malay, I can sort of communicate when I really need to. After everyone found out I could speak a little, you can imagine everyone coming up to me and speaking to me rapidly in Indo. It was quite overwhelming to say the least. I think I could understand and communicate about 30-40% at any given time. Haha. They do have an accent compared to Malay and they use different words here and there so it was difficult at times.

Umm…where was I? Oh yes. The clinic. So my translator left me to help Geraldine and his “replacement” was not really a translator at all…mainly b/c he didn’t really know English at all. Haha! He was just really enthusiastic to help me. Every time I would put a pair of glasses on someone he would exclaim, “YA!!” whether or not it was the right pair. It cracked me up. It was a bit frustrating not being able to communicate very much with the patient. I couldn’t ask them everything I wanted to and hoped and prayed I was giving them the right pair. It’s always risky when you do something like this so I was praying like crazy and trying to make sure that was the pair they needed. We had a steady stream of people for almost 4 hours with a break in the middle to eat. We were beyond exhausted! I don’t even know how many people we saw….but it was a lot! 

So the job that Arody and Bryan have is documenting the whole trip plus interviewing ppl. I sometimes help them out with this task whether it be standing in for ppl (while they're setting up), or sitting next to the camera asking the questions.