So some news about the amazing country of Indonesia!!
I dont really know where to begin, our time in Yogya was truly blessed and so amazing. We met up with a pastor that the previous year's team met by prayer walking through the streets as they pioneered the country. We were also privileged to have the leader of one of last years team join us for our time in yogya.
Yogyakarta is situated on the island of Java and is seen as the spiritual capital of Indonesia. The country is mainly muslim and every morning and afternoon you are reminded of this by the sounds of the prayers coming from the mosques. . The people of Indonesia are beautiful. Yogya mainly consists of Universities, so it is a big student community. We were linked to the student church, so it was really incredible to spend so much time with the young people, as I have seen that I really have a heart for discipling students. Our days were extremely busy and mainly consisted of a routine of us waking up to catch the bus at 6am to go to the Christian school that we ministered at. At the school our ministry consisted of teaching English (and Afrikaans ;-) ) at the Elementary school and opening with devotions at the kindergarden. We also got to spend a lot of time with the teachers and just pray for them and encourage them and have fellowship with them. In the afternoons and evenings we usually had activities with the Destiny Generation (the student church) members. A lot of them are involved in teaching their friends english and in that way invite them to cell groups etc. So our team helped with teaching english. We were also involved in ministering at the different cell groups and share a message of encouragement that God put on our hearts. I really enjoyed this a lot. We also prayed for most of the church members and a lot of them experienced a lot of freedom. It is quite scary to hear some of the stories of how the people were involved in the occhault, but it is amazing to see their gratitude towards God and what He has done in their lives. I can see this is in the way that they sing with everything in them "Jesus be y centre, it's all about you, from my heart to the heaven, Jesus be my centre."
As a south african growing up in a christian family I was not aware of the amount of spiritual dark things happening in the world. At a stage this year I was nearly overwhelmed by the amount of darkness until I realised that light is always stronger than darkness. God already won, we have the VICTORY. We have to claim back the ground. We have to take authority and reign on EARTH.
So this was aslo part of the message that we tried to encourage them with. To let them live in complete victory in their own life and also to take authority in the Spirit and to bring in the harvest field in Indonesia.
The thing that made Indonesia so great was definitely the relationships with the people. They were all between 20 and 35 and it really felt like one big family. Many nights we would just chill with them and go and try some of the local foods together. (Delicious and very fattening)
During our time in Indonesia I just realised again that God's heart is for us. He loves us and He wants to bless us. Since the beginning of our journey our team has been blessed in so many ways. In Indonesia the blessings just continued and multiplied. We were blessed with every lunch by a "random" lady. KFC, pizza etc, things we could never afford on our R3 per meal global budget. The lady even took us out for lunch one day to a lovely bakery. Each of us also got blessed with 2 brand new shirts.
GOD IS good all the time and all the time God is good. Sometimes it does not feel like this, but we know it is the TRUTH and I will tesfy of this. He who is in us is stronger than he who is in the world.