Rivers Baptist Church - Christ alone - and Him crucified

Greetings,

Well another week has gone by, it seems the days are just blurring together.
We found out this week that classes for university won’t start until October 16th and then they break again a week later for the end of the fasting month. So that has proved a little disappointing for all of us, especially M. It means that in the 8 weeks only 3 and a bit weeks will be spent teaching at Uni and because school is out too we can’t go into the primary schools either. But that is what it is like over here… no timetables, no structure or organisation. We are just trusting that what happens is what is meant to happen, and taking one day at a time. It is good though because there is not such a focus on ‘things and time management’ there is a greater focus on people. People just drop in to each others houses all the time (no appointments made) and people are very hospitable.

Tonight we are going to a locals house for the first time to break their fast. That should be very interesting. We are told that there is loads of food to share…I’ve been almost guaranteed to be fed fish, so I’m dreading that part a little. Walking through the fish markets the other day some of the dried fish doesn’t look very appetising…all part of the cultural experience though : )

So this week the hours have dragged on a little, which is hard sometimes as it gives us more time to think of all the people we miss : ) and sometimes we feel we are achieving little... all under fathers control though! Some of the highlights of this week include visiting the Keraton Fortress with some of M’s friends. The Keraton fortress is the home of the last Sultan and has a beautiful view over town. There is also some beautiful traditional costumes worn by the Sultan and his officials. Another day our new friends took us to a place where we dressed up in the traditional wedding outfit. It was a lot of fun and the girls had a great time putting all the many bracelets and accessories on us : ) We also had a games morning with a group of uni girls and they took us to visit their houses. It has been good week for building relationships and getting to know a few of these girls.

This is the small group that M spends a lot of time working with, so over the next 6 weeks we will spend a lot more time with this group…they are so lovely by the way, keen to take us with them places.

We went to the markets again…the markets are an array of sights, sounds and smells and the fruit and veg is sooo cheap…I love it. I almost fainted at the markets on Tuesday. There is very little airflow, and in conjunction with the heat and lack of water all of a sudden I felt lightheaded and blurred in vision (a megan moment : ) so I sat down and had to resort to drinking water (we try not to drink when we are out.) It was quite funny though because very soon after I was crowded with locals and children wanting to help, sometimes you feel like you are on a stage…they are very lovely though! Soon after I was able to get up and walk to the Becak to go home.

On Wednesday night we went to a friends radio station to be interviewed for the English program. We will be on this program every week now being interviewed about various things. The funny part about it was that the people who call in get to request music and they picked all of these songs we know (in English). It made me think back to the lodge when someone requested ‘because of you’ by Kelly Clarkson. : ) Tegan and I were singing along to all the music. It was really cute our friend the presenter put on ‘boulevard of broken dreams’ by Green day and then said to the listeners… ‘I hope this song makes you feel happy’ Teg and I just laughed : )

It was good again to go to our American families house for pizza last night.
The husband came home this week and is in recovery which is great! I’m amazed by their children who are so well behaved and lovely!
We have gone out each day to spend an hour with the kids from the neighbourhood. We love them and they are very cute, but now they stand at our gate 5 times a day and yell ‘miss miss’ through our window wanting us to come out. The group always seems to be getting bigger as well : ) We did the ‘hokey pokey’ with them this week and their laughing and smiles… it was one of those moments I wish that I could take home to show you all and wrap up and never forget!

Well Thankyou for your continued thoughts,
Take care and bye for now Simoane