A few pics

Pictures tell the tale. I'm too tired to write much. W and I are prepping courses for classes later this year.

Beautiful flowers from the garden

There's beauty all around us. Plants and trees - grown as houseplants where we come from - thrive in the volcanic soil.

Bandung as a city cleaned up nicely for the Asia-Africa conference in April. The city is lovely but garbage is starting to drift back onto the streets as people toss wrappers and paper on the ground.

 The Bunda family has lived with us since May (except for a 4-week tour of SE Asia). They're in their last week. They'll return to Seattle next weekend. They've been exploring charities and programs that work with children in Bandung. They'll write up their findings for future teams.

Child walking the porch railing at dusk, and guava tree waiting to be climbed

Sunday
After speaking at Bandung International Church, we have lunch with friends old and new. We've talked to family in Canada, the USA, and Korea this week, catching up after a week or two with limited interactions due to travels and studies.

Sunday lunch with friends

Some ladies come by mid-afternoon, a trio collecting money for a neighborhood project = reclaiming a vacant lot for a community garden. The new area will provide extra parking, too.

An hour later, a friend drops by with a banana cake (= yellow loaf cake on top of a dried banana, topped with cheese shavings.) She's been traveling and working away from Bandung for six months drops by. She spends the evening with us. 

We're all hungry after sundown at 6, so I bake frozen chicken and sweet potato fries. (I always have a meal or two prepped in the freezer.) We enjoy our own version of a salad bar. Salad fixings are cut and stored in an ancient Tupperware container in the fridge. Our helper is Sundanese - she dislikes salad greens - and can't understand why we crave salad when we've had "too much" fried food (which is the Sunda staple method of cooking.)

It's warm in the evening so we stay outside with mosquito repellent on exposed skin. We share our evening tea or coffee with friends. The Muslim calls to prayer resound off the hillsides below and across the valleys.

Sunday night friends on the porch: two strings of Christmas LEDs provide perfect lighting

Monday
We spend the morning with an American professor who is visiting the country of his birth (here). He lives in Missouri, where he works with a web-based ministry. He makes the trip back to teach once or twice a year. One of his former students, who oversees a youth organization in Bandung, is along as a local host and driver.

The Bunda family meets with charity organizers in the afternoon. Supper is leftovers.

Read more:
*Rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God. Joel 2:13 ESV

*But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4 ESV

*The tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Luke 18:13 ESV

*Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:9-11 ESV

Moravian Prayer: Lord, we confess that we sin each day. We ask your forgiveness and your help to live the lives you would have us live, loving one another in all things. Amen.