Going to the bathroom here is something you would be better off holding until you get home. There are several reasons why this is true, one being that there probably isn’t any toilet paper in there, and number two (no pun intended) is that you might never make it into a stall! In America we form a single file line and wait until a stall becomes available and carry on first come, first serve. My first cultural experience was in the Jakarta airport bathroom, waiting for a stall to become available. As doors would open and I would move toward them, people would just walk in front of me and take the stall I was headed to! At first I was confused as there is no apparent “line” or method to the madness, but I soon realized if I wanted to get “my turn” I just had to plant myself in front of an occupied stall and wait until that person came out, not allowing any room for others to get ahead of me – I wont go into detail about the stall I picked happening to be a “squatty potty”! It sounds pretty crazy and rude from an “American” mind-set. How could they not see that I was there first? Why are they cutting in front of me? But that is just the way it works here, and they are not the weird ones, I AM! They were probably wondering why I was standing in the middle of the bathroom apparently doing nothing! Now that I know how bathrooms work it doesn’t seem rude anymore – its just another part of life to get used to! It’s a strange thing to have almost every aspect of your life change in a few days. We are adjusting to a new country, language, culture, home, food, friends, church, transportation, wildlife, weather, schedule, and the list goes on… When its all typed out like that it seems like we should have each had a mental break down by now but we are actually doing really well so far, thanks to God’s guiding hand on our shoulders. We love our new house and the food is great! We have an awesome leadership team here who has been amazing with helping us get settled and off on the right foot. It’s a good thing we both love animals because there are plenty to be found around here. Lizards run across our walls all day long eating the bugs and Nathan has acquired his first “pet” with a 4’’ long scorpion he found in our bathroom. Right now we are in “warm-up” stage, where we try to meet as many of our neighbors as possible and let them know we are new to the neighborhood and would like to learn their language and culture. We have learned some basic “survival phrases” to help us get around for now and soon we will begin language learning sessions with a local language helper. Everyone is SO friendly and helpful here, which we are so thankful for. It takes some of the awkwardness away when you are meeting people for the first time and can’t say much more than “Hi, our names are Nathan and Abby and we are new to the neighborhood”! Most of the time we are invited to come in or sit with them and have even been given small gifts. We will continue to build those relationships as we watch and listen to them in order to learn more language and culture. One great thing about this culture is the community aspect. Each neighborhood really depends on each member to function. Everyone has their own business and they buy and sell with each other. At around 4pm every day, most people are out on their porches or visiting neighbors. It is understood and expected for everyone to visit and interact during the late afternoon hours. These times have been perfect opportunities for us to mill about and get to know the neighbours. Please continue to pray for us as even the small things can be hard to adjust to. We are preparing for our first Christmas season away from any family or familiar sights and sounds. 1 Corinthians has been popping up frequently these days and is so encouraging as reminder of WHO is doing this work in our lives. “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
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It’s nice to have a home. I actually get to leave my shampoo & conditioner IN the shower when I get out now! (This is Abby by the way. Nathan doesn’t use shampoo, or conditioner for that matter!) We are finally settled in an apartment here in California. I have never lived in a city before but so far its pretty cool. Sure, you can hear the people upstairs vacuum their rug 3 times a day (I’m not exaggerating, we think they must be germ-a-phobes!) & I can calculate when the next ice cream truck will drive by with its bell ringing, even at 11pm when all good little children should be in bed, but there are great things about it too, like being across the street from an awesome grocery store that has amazing produce sales every week. This is a big “yay” for us since we have been juicing a lot & it can get really expensive without good resources for fruit and veggies. Thank you Lord for nutritious green drinks! Thanks Lord also for so much free furniture off of craigslist! We have pretty much everything we need & it doesn’t even look like it’s from my grandma’s basement either! God has been very faithful. Just to give an example of how cool God is, last week we went to pick up a bookshelf we found on craigslist. The man who gave it to us needed some help moving a few things in his storage locker so as we helped him we got to know each other a little bit. It turns out that he has started an outreach to the homeless community in the Los Angeles area & invited us to help out with it! We had just been talking about how we wanted to be involved in some sort of outreach, especially with the homeless! He was very interested in our plans to move to Indonesia as well. Along with him were an older Italian husband & wife & their daughter who were equally interested in our plans & offered us some things that we needed for our apartment. Who would have thought we would meet such cool people through a craigslist ad? We plan to help with the homeless outreach this Saturday passing out lunches to the people living in skid row.
Ministry opportunities are already falling into our laps. Nathan gets up at 5am on Fridays in order to go to a discipleship Bible study at church. It’s worth the early rise! I get to sleep in a little longer on Tuesdays before I go to a women’s Bible study that has been a great chance to meet many ladies & learn together from God’s Word. On Thursdays we are taking a Missionary Epistles class at Eternity Bible College. It’s fun to be back in a classroom setting again, especially to study Romans & Galatians! After class we join our Church college group for fellowship & study where we help lead one of the discussion groups. This week we are attending an awesome ministry leaders seminar. People from all over the world are attending this conference that is challenging us to train up church leaders in different countries to reach their own people. We are excited to be a part of it since this is one of the goals we hope to attain through planting a church in Asia Pacific – Church leaders who will train up their own people to reach the surrounding people groups with the message they have heard! Speaking of Asia Pacific, the most exciting news we have to share is that we are OFFICIALLY accepted to join the field of Asia Pacific! We had a great Skype meeting with two of New Tribes Mission’s Asia Pacific’s field leaders yesterday & they let us know that they would love to have us join their team in Asia Pacific, so we have officially changed our status to “en-route” to the field! It definitely gives us an extra dose of excitement to be one step closer to getting there. As most of you know, we hope to have the needed funds to leave for Indonesia in November of this year. We are praying that God would continue to bring people along that want to partner with us in taking the gospel to this country with so many needs. Right now we are at 36% of the monthly finances we need to be able to go. You can learn more about our finances & giving on the partners page, or if you are in the southern California area and would like to get together to hear more about our ministry plans then send us an email. Thanks for reading, praying, & giving. You are very appreciated. Because of Christ, Nathan and Abby |
AuthorBurris Family, living in Asia Pacific Archives
April 2019
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