"Why God..."

My best friend told me the other day that every time I share a new story with her of God working in my life it reminds her of how intricately God is involved in our lives. I was thinking about this and all the conversations I have had with people all over the world. It seems that everywhere I go people are trying to come up with an explanation to replace a loving caring God. I don’t quite understand this, it almost seems as if a loving caring God seems too good to be true so people try to explain Him away or replace Him with some other religious practice that involves more rules. Well I have always been a loud preacher that our God is intimate and how He will show Himself to those who are available. Well here I am, I couldn't be more available than right now and yet it has been a really hard past few weeks. Looking back today I can of course see God's hand every step of the way but in the moment I remember being extremely confused and I even remember looking up to the raging PNG sun and wondering if God was really there. I remember the morning we tried to cross the border into Papua New Guinea. Everyone told us we needed to apply for our visa's ahead of time but the consulate was closed until the following Tuesday and this was a Saturday so we conjured up all our faith and put ourselves out on the line. I remember riding in our little mini bus on the way to the border, my 40 pound bag on my lap and having such a strong confidence that God was going to show us a miracle and get us across that border. Well 4 hours later we were back to the border town now with no money, the bank closed and huge disappointment on our hearts. I felt hurt like I had been wronged for having faith. It's easy to look back today and tell everyone "oh it was a good character building time, God always uses those moments to test us” but in that moment, I remember sitting on my backpack in that empty gravel parking lot looking out onto the open water of the ocean and asking, "why God...you really hurt me today" not that God had to get us to Indonesia, in fact He doesn’t have to do anything for us I mean really hasn’t He done enough? I have breathe everyday, that’s from Him isn’t it? So I guess what I am trying to say that in those moments when you feel like the world is falling apart and God has let you down don't forget who gave you breathe in the first place. We had a tough weekend waiting for that border to open up but I must say without it being cliché that God was leading our every step and yes my character was stretched. The day we finally got to Indonesia we caught a flight all the way to Jakarta where God blew me away. As we were standing in that airport our hearts beating faster as our bags didn’t show up I remember turning to the guys and saying, "this could really turn into a blessing, lets see what God has up His sleeve” Well a few hours later we found ourselves in a beautiful home, a bowl of rice in front of us and the experience I have always dreamed about. Do you know those times when you imagine something and how amazing it would be? "Oh that would be so cool if we could...” Well mine was to stay in the home of a Muslim family. It was a dream come true, sitting around a table shoveling down rice with our hands and talking about our faiths together. We even asked them to say their prayer in Arabic before the meal and we said ours. Lukeman, Uni, Nova, Feby and Jimmy, here's to you, you are amazing. It is times like those that make me really wonder if the God that we are serving is so much bigger than we think He is. Well to give a brief update things are looking on the up and up for us. South East Asia is an interesting world of scooters and squatty potties. We are always doing our best to be culturally involved but there is something about squatting over a hole with a water hose in your hand that just doesn’t seem right. But I suppose Malaysia is an upgrade from the Indonesian culture, which will look at you funny if you use your left hand for eating because the hose doesn’t exist in Indonesia but rather a bucket of water, you figure out the rest. We had great day touring the booming metropolis of Singapore and hope to be in Thailand in 2 days time. We are all excited to be on the road again and can’t wait for our parents to get here in 2 weeks. Things are feeling pretty positive for us and on the bright side of things Jordan finally saw the doctor about his rash he has been hiding and the doctor tells Jordan he has got to start wearing underwear, if only he had listened to his mother a long time ago, but as all rebellion has a consequence now Jordan has met his, so after he figured what size he might be after the last time (10 years ago) he got some brand new briefs. So Jordan is feeling much better and should be up and kicking in at least a weeks time. As for my skin fungus my stubbornness has yet to give in and it only grows but I am sure it will go away any day now. Well as the good Lord gives us breathe and leads our every step, we shall follow. Daniel

Jakarta

After leaving PNG we had a strong sense lingering with us of caution. Thinking 'what else will go wrong?'. For example when we sitting on the plane to leave Jayapura, still we questioned if we were truly able to leave, or if at any moment the flight attendant may come and ask us to get off for some kind of delay. However, I had a strong hope and belief that God will not delay our plans any further as we left PNG. On Wednesday we caught a flight across Indonesia Landing in Jakarta in the evening. When we got off the plane to collect our bags we could not find them, any of them. I remembered our ticket stubs for our bags were on my ticket, which I had left in the pocket in front of my seat on the plane. We had no bags, and no proof that we had bags. It happened to be a flight where we left more things in our undercarriage than ever before. Panic struck the three of us, and perhaps anger towards me for the loss of the stubs. We stood there in the empty airport in a foreign country with no bags, no plan, and no one we knew. Hard to imagine that God was working out a pretty sweet deal for us. An airport worker named Lukeman walked up to us with his airport uniform, he asked us what our situation was, and began working to solve our problem. He sent people to retrieve the ticket from the plane, called all the airports of our transfers, and began doing everything possible to track our lost luggage. Lukeman assured us that perhaps the flights tomorrow would bring our bags if we came back the next day. But he was unable to get us a hotel because he could not contact anyone to authorize that payment. He began to look for anyway to help us, and found that all he could offer was him home. We were shocked, he was willing take us three foreigners into him home until he found our luggage. A few minutes later he received a call from his people that were searching. They informed Lukeman that our bags were found in a warehouse and would be 10 minutes for them to get them to us. We when we finally had our bags in our hands, and our stress lifted from us. Lukeman said to us, we would still be able to stay with him in his home if we liked his offer. We did like it and took his offer and went home from work with him, and met his entire Muslim family that soon became our huge blessing. We spent the next three days with the family, eating with them in their beautiful home and going with them to the Fantastic World Theme Park with the family. In our 3-day stay with the family, we learnt so much about the Indonesian Culture, the Muslim traditions and met new people who we hope to someday visit again. We found that having our luggage misplaced was the way God lead us to meet a different culture in a foreign place through a very great family. Kenton

Escape From PNG

What should have been a simple two day exit route became a stretched out Jail sentence of two weeks. No matter how hard we tried we could not get transport to leave the country. We took a PMV to Madang and even on the way there, a simple taxi ride, the driver got stuck in a river and we had to help to get unstuck and outta the river. Then once we arrived in Madang, we booked our boat tickets to go to Vanamo. But then outta nowhere the day we planned to leave on the boat, there was a tsunami warning and everything was shut down. The boats were delayed, everyone had abandoned the city. People were left waiting for food in restaurants and everyone was running down the streets in a panicked state. So then we had to figure out how to get a refund for our boat tickets and get another way outta Madang. We found a plane ticket but it only went half way, so we took it. That flight brought us to Wewak, from there all the boats and flights were cancelled because of the tsunami, so we spent some time there trying to get away. Finally a guy gave us a ride to the next town and said that there would be boats from there. So we took the ride and went to Adepai where we ended up having to wait again for a little banana boat to take us to Vanamo. After watching heaps of boats leave with out us, a local man helped us to get on board one of these little vessels. From there it was a five-hour ride filled with big waves, water splashing and really sore bums. But we were excited because we had made it to Vanamo, and therefore we were just a short one-hour drive from the border and freedom! But then as soon as we got our hopes up the famous PNG saying, "Expect the unexpected" happened yet again. Because of the Easter holiday everything was closed down for the next five days. The consulate was closed, the borders were closed, all of the stores were closed, and even the banks were not open. So during that time we lived off of crackers and noodles. Once our money ran out we started a tab with a little snack shop so we could still get noodles to eat. It was a complete ruckus, and we were not impressed by the whole scenario. But after a short five-day wait there we finally got a visa to enter Indonesia and we caught the first PMV that we could get and made our escape from PNG! I am really hoping that the movie about this part of our trip is released soon. Although I am not so sure if it will be a suspense movie or a comedy! Either way we escaped and we are now on our journey to meet our parents in Thailand! Lehmann

We will be entering into a stint of travel from Madang to Indo. Where we may not have much internet access, so we will be having to respond to you emails and comments at a latter date. Off for now. We have a boat to catch.