the end of the beginning.

team indo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1EavkyypM4

i don't think i ever realized how sweet home really is until i spent two months in jakarta, indonesia. it's good to be back. i honestly tried falling asleep every night in indonesia to thoughts of clean air, silence, wheat bread, green grass, clean water, a real shower, ice cubes and the ability to walk without looking down for cockroaches.

i really didn't get much sleep. those thoughts were too good to sleep through.

i think i've seen a lot of things throughout my nearly 25 years of life. i've looked down from the top of the eiffel tower, the statue of liberty and the london eye. i've looked up and seen the washington monument, the space needle and sydney's opera house. i've seen the world from upside down and in midair throughout my ten years of gymnastics. i've seen the look of sheer joy in a new father's face as jeff burst through the waiting room doors to announce jude's arrival. i've looked helplessly into the tearful eyes of friends who have lost parents all too young. i've looked into the pained and desperate eyes of my own loved ones that have been taken from this earth way too quickly. i've seen my parents nearly collapse of overwhelming shock and happiness as we surprised them with a 25th anniversary party. and i've seen the world from ten different addresses i've called home in four different countries on four separate continents. 

my eyes have seen a lot. 

but then there are the things my eyes have seen that i never could have expected. i never could have prepared myself for. i seriously never could have guessed that my eyes would actually meet these things. 

i've looked into the hungry eyes of children whose hands are still reaching out to me after i had given away the last of all the food we had. i looked into the eyes of a child that will be handicapped for the rest of his life because his parents couldn't afford the $15usd medicine he needed. i've seen the lame start to walk...i've seen the sick be healed...i've seen lifelong muslims come to christ.  

i wanted to write a concluding post to my incredible experience -- there's no way i will be able to describe here what i experienced in jakarta, but i really want to use this opportunity to thank you. if you're reading this, it means you are someone that is somehow connected to me and/or my family - and especially with the threats that we faced in indonesia, i know you were praying. i could honestly feel it. and i want to thank you for that. 

there was an insane amount of spiritual warfare surrounding our team throughout the two months we were there. among other things, we found ourselves faced with unexpected terrorist threats that really brought a whole new element to the trip. 

in 2002, a few men bombed the indonesian island of bali, killing several natives and tourists. it just so happened that while we were in indonesia, the men responsible for that bombing were being executed, so there were copycat threats being made - targeting jakarta. both the australian and u.s. embassies in jakarta were targets, as well. 

about one month into our time in jakarta, we were told that these terrorist threats were aimed not only at jakarta, but at the north part of jakarta, the area we were confined to for living, working and spending our free time.  a bomb was found in one of the slums we worked in weekly - right next to a gas plant. if it hadn't been found, it would have undoubtedly leveled our entire part of the city. a couple weeks later, another bomb was found in a nearby shopping mall.  our YWAM ministry coordinators and our local translators both received word from the indonesian military that these threats were very real and shouldn't be ignored or taken lightly. from that point, on - we weren't allowed to be in any shopping malls (which was difficult...all there is in jakarta are HUGE shopping malls), westernized restaurants or among large groups of people. it remained like that for the rest of our time there. 

never did i ever think i would be living in a situation like that one. and i can't act like i was all high and mighty the whole time - completely above the fear of the threats. because that would be a lie. i was scared. we were all scared. living in that type of fear is something that i would never wish upon anybody. and it gave me a renewed sense of respect for anybody that does have to live under those circumstances. it is an indescribable, terrifying feeling to walk around knowing in the back of your head that at any moment, there could be an explosion. i truly cannot describe that feeling. 

there was one morning shortly after we learned about the threats where we were all in our house and there was a really sudden and REALLY loud thunder (well, we later learned it was actually thunder)....everyone came running into our bedroom in less than .5 seconds screaming and jumping onto the same bed in a big huddle. i decided i'd be the one to scope things out. not REALLY sure what i thought i would find when i stepped out the front door, but i didn't see any smoke and didn't hear any screaming so i deemed it a false alarm...courtesy of mother nature. but that was enough to get the heart beat racing a bit. 

i didn't think i would feel threatened at all in indonesia. none of us expected to be there during the terrorist threats, but i don't think any of us would have traded that experience for anything in the world. the fear that those threats placed on us forced us to completely surrender to God and put all of our trust and faith in Him...to literally put our lives in His hands. i think it became so easy when we were feeling safe and secure in australia to say that we put our complete trust in the Lord, but when we were staring terrorist threats in the eye -- when they were finding bombs in our neighborhoods -- when we had to walk past armed military guards everywhere we went....that'll really make you reevaluate the way you're living your life, and it literally became completely vital that we surrender to God and just trust Him with EVERYTHING -- because otherwise, we would have been conquered by fear. we would have never left the house. we probably would have left jakarta earlier than we planned. and the enemy would have won. 

instead, we just gave it to God. our comfort, our safety, our outreach - we just handed it over to Him. and instead of being scared out of our own skin every day because of what terrorists were or were not going to do while we were there....instead, we took on the challenge and pushed ourselves even harder. we looked at it as a sort of compliment. satan wouldn't be targeting our area...our slum...our home if he didn't feel threatened by the work we were doing there. something big was happening in that area of jakarta....God was working miracles in that area, and so, naturally, the enemy would target that area. i'm not totally sure what i expected when i boarded the plane to jakarta, but i can tell you that i never thought it would be an all-out spiritual and physical battle. i thought my fighting days were over....but, luckily, this was a battle that was truly character building for me to fight. 

i was, obviously, unable to update this while i was in indonesia, but was also not able to send out very many emails at all. i did my best to email my family and i know that they did their best to keep many of you updated, but i owe you, as friends, family, supporters and prayer warriors, so much more than that. i want to share my experiences and stories with you, and am blessed for the opportunity to have done that with many of you already and look forward to doing it with many more of you. those that are in the area: come to vgbc on the 28th of december -- i'll be sharing in the service that morning.

 i've enjoyed telling and re-telling many of the incredible stories i have from the trip...every time i tell a story or look back at pictures, all i can think is, "i can't believe i did that...i can't believe that actually happened...i can't believe i was THERE." it was, undoubtedly, the most difficult two months of my life: physically, spiritually, and emotionally. 

but totally and completely worth it. it changed me more than i could have ever expected, and i am so grateful for that. 

as christians, we were the minority there. we were reminded of that from the minute we boarded our plane in brisbane....they play a muslim call to prayer over the loudspeaker and on every screen in the plane. we arrived in jakarta at 2am and heard the call to prayer being played over the mosque loudspeakers as we left the airport. we saw the huge city of jakarta completely shut down for nearly a week as the muslims observed ramadan. we may have been outnumbered, but we had something much bigger and much greater standing behind us. and that made all the difference. 

we saw MANY healings, we saw salvations, we visited four different slums weekly, built relationships with both christian and muslim families, handed out food to people living on the streets, spoke at churches, bible studies, youth groups, and orphanages; painted a mural in a slum, built a bridge in a slum, installed a purified water well in a slum, held children schools, preached the gospel, killed about a billion cockroaches and became scarily disconnected from america (on election day here, we happened to walk past a small restaurant with a tiny tv in the corner that had obama's picture on it with a headline that read something like "OBAMA MENAMAR"....seriously never wanted to know the meaning of a word as bad as 'menamar.')

and now comes the "what next?" part. i'm not completely sure about that, but i've got some options so i think that's a plus. i may be going back to australia (in, like, a week!) to staff the new school of students that would be going through what i just did. that would get me back to chicago in early june. i've also looked into a couple of grad school programs to get my master's degree, and i'm looking into several organizations that work on college campuses -- i'm finding that mentoring and discipling young women is something i'm really passionate about. 

anyway...more to come on the future plans. that decision will be made within the next day or so. i know so many of you are praying for me and for that i am eternally grateful. i love you all and have LOVED, LOVED, LOOOOOVED being back here to see so many of you!! (my mom says it will be harder this time if i go back because i'm "more pleasant" to be around now.....i'm just gonna go ahead and take that one as a compliment....!!) 

here's the video our team made to show at our graduation....we came back with about 10,000 pictures (seriously.). you already have to read this insanely long blog, so i'll spare you the pics, but the video has some good ones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1EavkyypM4

-- oh, this is kind of funny: you may notice in the video that i'm not looking as...um..."put together" as i maybe used to. well, my appearance wasn't a main concern of mine so i wasn't making much of an effort. BUT, near the end of the trip, i just felt gross. it was about three billion degrees there, i hadn't taken a real shower in two months, we couldn't work out, i was being eaten alive by mosquitoes, i wore the same, like, three shirts every day without having laundry done, and we couldn't even consider the possibility of wearing makeup. i'm not trying to sound superficial, but i seriously just started to feel disgusting. so one morning, i just prayed that God would give me a word or a verse or something and take my mind away from feeling like that, because i know it was the enemy trying to bring me down and take my focus somewhere it shouldn't have been. that very same night, we were out on the streets meeting with people and handing out food. two women came up to me and kept pointing at me and speaking to me in indonesian. i couldn't find a translator and finally just looked at them helplessly because i couldn't understand them at all. finally, one of the women just pointed at me and said "beautiful." i just started laughing! how cool is God? seriously. i shouldn't have been caring about that or feeling that way, but i did. and God spoke to me through this indonesian woman who i'm sure had probably never heard or spoken the word "beautiful" in her life, but He knew what language i needed to hear! 

okay, i hope to see a lot of you on the 28th so i can share some more stories with you....and for those of you that can't make it, i'll try to update this again with some specific stories that were really cool. 

terimah kasih!!! (that's the only indonesian i walked away knowing. it means thank you. well, that, and i guess i know the meaning of 'menamar' now...)