our family in jakarta...

rocks!!!


the guys here are great, everybody has a wild story to tell about how jesus changed their lives. now they are living together and are doing crazy stuff all over the place. some are involved in hiv prevention work, caring for the sick, educating the young, hanging out with the people in the most vulnerable communities. others run a sort of education center for children of families that are too poor to afford education, and lots more.
at the heart there is the community, sharing lives together, living together and by this learning from each other, encouraging each other to live what god has put on everybody's heart to do. it's all very simple, very passionate and very natural.
and they invited us right into it all. showed us around, let us take part of their every day life.


yesterday night we visited some of their friends from the local punk scene, and i faced the challenge of riding on a motorbike through jakartas streets. i was really nervous but it got better, i guess the prayers i kept muttering helped :-).


I have a lot to learn from the guys here. I remember Ton in India saying "church is irrelevant without the poor" and here it is again, the poor people right at the heart of the community of believers. and although there are many projects, many things to be done, it is all very relational. they are not building some other type of denomination. instead a network of friends has been established all over indonesia. and there is freedom for all sorts of things, friendships with junkies on the streets, business ideas to enable the communities of the rural poor to earn a living, creative ways of communicating the good news and educating children about drugs and hiv... it's very broad and it's totally about living and enabling others to find real life as well.

hey thank you so much everybody for the generous gifts for jakarta!!!
we have some things planned and will let you know how the money is used.