My Indonesian Adventure
The point of the trip was to learn, and WOW, did I learn things!
It all started months ago, with an email from an acquaintance in Indonesia. It didn’t just come to me, but I was grateful to be included in the invitation. The gist of the message: “We would like a group from Dordt to come and visit to learn more about what we are working on in Indonesia, and how we might create mutually-beneficial partnerships.” It took a few weeks to get the team sorted out, but I was glad to be able to join the group: we were going to Indonesia for 11 days to connect with folks from Universitas Pelita Harapan (Light and Truth University) and Sekolah Pelita Harapan (Light and Truth Schools), and the foundation the helps to fund and direct these amazing organizations.
I shared my Indonesian learning adventure on Instagram, and if you’d like to see what I did and discovered, you can get a sense of it in these two snapshots I saved from my stories. Here’s the first half of the trip, and here’s the second half.
We were there to learn, and to connect, and to build relationships, and to explore opportunities for partnerships. These institutions are Reformed—in the same faith tradition as Dordt—and while there are differences, for sure, we also found plenty that we have in common. It will be interesting to see how things unfold in the future and what fruit might be borne out of the seeds planted in our time in Indonesia.
But I can say a few things for sure: I learned a lot on this trip! This was my first “to the other side of the planet” trip I’ve ever taken, so there was quite a bit of learning, just related to the travel. But any time I’ve been in a cross-cultural setting, I’ve always learned things as well.
In no particular order, here are just a few of the thing I learned on this trip:
If you are 6’5” (198 cm) tall like me, it is worth every penny to pay for the upgrade to bulkhead seats for international flights.
Wearing compression socks on long flights is a good idea.
The Doha, Qatar international airport is a lovely oasis in the desert with an indoor rainforest, beautiful concourses, and very, very crowded gates where you will hear a Tower of Babel’s worth of different languages.
Indonesia is an INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL country!
Indonesia is also an incredibly diverse country. It’s pretty huge too! About 17,000 islands spread across nearly 3200 miles (5000 km), which is wider than the continental U.S. I had the privilege of visiting 5 different islands while I was there (Java, New Guinea, Flores, Komodo, and Padar.) Each was different from the others, and each was lovely in it’s own way.
Indonesia is a Muslim majority country, but there are people of many different faith traditions there. Christians, while a minority, are an important group in Indonesian culture.
Indonesian fried rice is the best fried rice I’ve ever had in my life.
Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world, and about half of those people (around 140 million) live on the island of Java.
Jakarta (the capital of Indonesia, located on the northern coast of Java) is an overwhelming megalopolis with millions and millions of people, and there are also millions and millions of motorbikes and scooters EVERYWHERE.
The rule in Indonesia is that if there is an accident, the vehicle with the most wheels is at fault. That sounds terrible, but it actually works really well in practice, because it means that everyone is constantly looking out for everyone else. Trucks watch for cars, who watch for motorbikes, who watch for pedestrians. Despite the crazy traffic and people zipping around everywhere (seriously, see the Instagram stories I have linked above for some scary video of this reality) we did not see a single accident in all of our time there.
There are hundreds of languages spoken throughout Indonesia, including several hundred just on the island of New Guinea, some of which are spoken by a single tribe. Bible translators are still actively working throughout villages in Indonesia to get the Bible to all of these people groups.
The interior of the island of New Guinea is a mountain range covered by rain forest. It is beautiful, but inhospitable to get there. We were grateful for Missionary Aviation Fellowship pilots for flying us around to several different villages to visit schools and medical clinics throughout Papua (Papua is one of the Indonesian provinces located on New Guinea—not the separate country of Papua New Guinea, which is also located on that same island. Confusing I know.) Some of the runways we took off from and landed on were terrifying: right on the side of a mountain, and we lifted off just clearing the trees.
On a related note, Mission Aviation Fellowship pilots are AMAZING flyers who are a lifeline to both missionaries and the native people living in the interior of Papua.
The village schools in Papua and Flores that we visited are making tangible differences in the lives of real people who are living in poverty. The schools and medical clinics we got to see in our travels are not only means of spreading the Gospel, but also of living out the heart of the Gospel in a Matthew 25 kind of way.
Universitas Pelita Harapan is an awesome Christian university, and their Teachers’ College graduates over 250 students every year, who go on to make a massive impact on education across Indonesia and throughout Southeast Asia. These teachers are well-equipped to make a real impact in the communities they are called to serve.
Indonesian people love to celebrate! I had the privilege of attending the UPH Teachers’ College commencement ceremony and celebration, and it included singing and dancing along with the speeches and conferring of diplomas. So fun to be included in this!
If you ever have the opportunity to go scuba diving, take that opportunity.
Learning to scuba dive in a swimming pool is NOT AT ALL the same as actually diving on a coral reef, but it is essentially important preparation for the reef dive. (I panicked a little in the pool, which meant I did not panic when 50 feet under water swimming among the sea turtles, corals of all description, giant pufferfish, super-poisonous lionfish, 15-inch wide cobalt-blue starfish, and every color of tropic fish you can imagine. It was a mind-blowing experience!)
Komodo dragons are just as amazing and terrifying as you might think. (See below for more on that.)
Indonesian dining uses spoons primarily, rather than chopsticks, like most other Asian cultures. Forks are also common at the table, but they are more often used as an instrument to compose a bite on your spoon.
Duku fruit look like a potato on the outside, segment like tangerines on the inside, and taste like lychee.
The bananas you get at the grocery store in the U.S. (Cavendish bananas, almost assuredly) are bland in comparison to the amazing bananas available in other parts of the world. Fresh mangoes, papayas, and pineapple are also amazingly delicious.
Indonesian coffee tastes different than any coffee I’ve had in the U.S. (Not bad, not better…just different.)
The angklung is a fascinating traditional Indonesian instrument from Java, and it was fun to get to learn about how to play it from a group of middle school students.
There are interesting if not entirely surprising holdovers of Dutch colonialism all over Indonesia. From some Dutch words that are still part of the Bahasa Indonesian language, to Dutch architecture, to a large bakery company called “Holland Bakery” that makes pastries all over Jakarta…those hundreds of years of colonial impact continue to have echoes.
Many people in Indonesia speak English to varying degrees. (My experience was admittedly skewed by interacting with lots of expats and Indonesians who were looking to forge connections with us, of course.) But many schools include English in the way schools in the U.S. regularly include Spanish as the de facto foreign language option.
The flight from Jakarta to Doha is long (about 8 and a half hours) but the real killer is the flight from Doha to Seattle (which is about 14 and a half hours.)
The Doha to Seattle flight takes you almost over the North Pole, because the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and the straight line between Doha and Seattle is across the Arctic.
Traveling to the other side of the world definitely does weird things to your internal body clock. (It has taken me four days but I think I’m back on Iowa time at this point.)
The opportunity to travel is a huge blessing. If ever you have the chance to visit Indonesia, I heartily recommend it to you!
Thanks for letting me share my learning with you! I hope that you have learning adventures of your own this summer—whether they involve travel to a different time zone, or exploring in your own back yard.
Dave’s Faves (Indonesia Edition)
Here are three things I’m absolutely loving after my trip to Indonesia…
Dave’s Fave #1: Bubur Ayam
I ate so many delicious things while on my Indonesian adventure, but this is one of the few that I enjoyed multiple times. Bubur Ayam is a breakfast food: it’s a rice porridge, served with chicken broth and shredded chicken. There was usually a buffet of other toppings to add in to your liking; mine usually went with shallots, crushed peanuts, fried garlic, mushrooms, green onions, and sambal (a chile sauce that you can get with everything—a little bit goes a long way.) It might sound like a strange, savory breakfast, but it was so, so good…I ate it at least six mornings of the 11 days I was in Indonesia.
Dave’s Fave #2: Seeing Komodo dragons in the wild!
This former science teacher was absolutely delighted to get to visit Komodo National Park while in Indonesia, and (with ranger supervision) get to meet up with some Komodo dragons in the wild. These are the largest living lizards, and the largest ones we saw were 7 or 8 feet long. (I didn’t get close enough to measure them!) A truly remarkable experience for me!
Dave’s Fave #3: Meeting people I know on the other side of the world
This trip was fabulously fun for meeting up with people I know from other times and places—former students, a current grad student, a college friend, and former Dordt colleagues. So great to get to see all these wonderful people in person during my travels!
The Last Word!
On the wall at UPH Teachers’ College I found a familiar quote. (They are a Reformed institution…if you know, you know.)
In light of all I saw and experienced on this trip, this seems like a fitting way to conclude. Every corner of this world, every nook and cranny of human existence is under Jesus’s rule and reign. The Gospel is going forth in Indonesia, and in North America as well. It’s easy for me to get hung up on the bad, the wrong, the evil I see in the world. Maybe you too, friends? But let’s take heart: Christ has already won the victory, and we are in the in-between time now, where we wait the final restoration of all things. And in the meantime, remember that we are invited to participate in the renewal!
Seeing the good work that is being done in Jesus’s name throughout Indonesia gave me a ton of encouragement, and inspires me to look for small ways I too can work towards the coming of the Kingdom, day by day. Grace and peace to us all as we keep serving in those “square inches” we are are welcomed to tend to.
Great travelogue! And important lifelong perspective. Thanks, Dave.