Indonesia Journal

 17 Sept. Saturday, 6 PM: 

Pastor Ferry picked me up around 9:30 this morning and we just got back from a tour of the island. Before he came this morning I got a good language lesson from some of the hotel people. I learned all of the basic words, I call them the foundation words; good morning, please, thank you, good, praise the Lord, coffee, water, and bread. You can almost be fluent with those. When we left Manado this morning we drove up a narrow hairpin road for about an hour; straight up a mountain road to the “flower city” which is beside an active volcano. It was amazing to me how high we went and how all along the way there were houses built on these steep mountain sides. These mountains are covered with thick timber, bamboo, palms, and jungle thickets, with beautiful boganvilla, high biscus, and colorful floral plants. In the flower city there were flower shops everywhere. The volcano had a column of smoke coming out of the side. Pastor Ferry said it is like that year round. His church has a mission in the city. I met Pastor Tgenge and his wife Nopha. Pastor Tgenge graduated from the seminary about two years ago and his wife is attending now. They will both be in the classes on Monday. The house church they started has about 10-15 and growing. This is one of three missions Pastor Ferry’s church sponsors. One is on an island towards the Philippines, a 24-hour ferry ride away.

From the flower city we continued to go up on hairpen turns until we reached a huge lake, larger than Lake Bucchanan, called Tondano Lake area. It is surrounded by five volcanos, all active. The lake is surrounded by huge rice fields. We ate lunch in a little “fish café,” fish, rice, fried corn, greens, and pancakes called “10,000 fish patties.” Ferry said each one has 10,000 tiny fish in it. It tasted fishy. Then we visited an important site called Love Mountain. The government has a park there dedicated to the five religions on the island, Catholic, Protestant, Islam, Hindu, and Buddhist. It is an ancient site of reconciliation with old rock carvings and hot springs steaming out of the mountain side. There are small churches and other prayer sites. Ferry said that long ago there were seven tribes on the island. They met there and divided up the island for each tribe to live there in peace. The government made a park there to encourage the five religions to respect each other and live in peace. There is a huge monument there with a dove and the globe on top. From there we traveled down, down, down, back to Manado. We also saw the third largest statue of Jesus in the world. It is one of the  things Manado is known for.

I also learned that the pastors and students have requested that I teach on the parables of Jesus rather than NT survey. All of the pastors who are arriving have already had NT survey and the dean of the seminary said that he can teach NT survey to the students next semester if I was willing to teach on the parables. He said it had been a long time since they had offered a class on the parables. One of the things I stress in mission trip training is to be prepared to change your plans. I have also been working on some discipleship training materials for the past several months and part of it has been on the parables (book 2 week 1 for those who are in my Sunday morning pastor’s class), so I said “Yes, no problem.” I will preach tomorrow morning and then spend the afternoon getting the material on the parables ready. Class begins Monday morning, 9-12, then 1-4 in the afternoon. Tuesday – Thursday, 8-12, and 1-3 in the afternoon. On Friday I will preach the graduation message…unless there is a change of plans. Looking forward to the Lord’s Day and the week ahead.