Happy Tuesday, Blogging Family! We recently got back from our much-anticipated trip to Australia and Indonesia and are slowly adjusting to being back on this side of the dateline 🙂 Thank you so much for your prayers! It was a truly blessed trip, and I’m excited to share some highlights. If you’re new to this series, you can catch up on previous posts here.

While the overarching purpose of our trip was for us to spend time with Ivan’s extended family and for me to experience Indonesia for the first time, the flight paths also provided a wonderful opportunity to schedule a “long layover” on Sydney and spend time with a friend from my time studying violin in New York who’s been instrumental in helping me relearn violin (over Zoom), and has also prayed for and encouraged us over the years. It was very sweet spending time together in person for the first time in over a decade, worshiping together in church on Sunday, and also exploring a beautiful city and marveling at amazing aspects of God’s creation that apparently are “normal” down under but exotic to us Americans. The photos of the wallaby and cockatiels were not taken at a zoo!

After Sydney, we flew another 8 hours to Surabaya, where Ivan did most of middle school. It was educational for me to tour his school, Intan Permata Hati (IPH). Particularly interesting was the fact that the school has certain zones marked “English only” and the teacher giving the tour noted how hard it is to enforce the English-speaking zones. Those of us who’ve met Ivan as an adult probably have a hard time imagining him as anything other than what I like to call “EFL” (English-First-Language), but visiting IPH reminded me that English is in fact his second language. I’m very grateful that Ivan’s parents were intentional about investing in an education that would foster English fluency, and that even as a young teenager he was committed to practice while living in Indo!

Most significantly, it was such a sweet blessing to meet so many of Ivan’s relatives who are still living in the Surabaya area. I was overwhelmed by their kindness, generosity, and hospitality. They went out of their way to make me feel welcome and included in the family gatherings, and waited very patiently while Ivan translated what they said! My Indo language skills are sub-par at best. I could understand quite a bit of what was said, but by the time I thought of a reply, the moment was LONG gone. This meant that 98% of the time I only smiled and nodded, or answered in English. Given this dynamic, I was extremely grateful for everyone’s kindness and patience. I also think that this dynamic is a marked difference between entering a family of believers vs. entering a family of unbelievers. Although there is some sense of obligation to be courteous in many families, I think the knowledge that we were also brothers and sisters in Christ and shared a common spiritual bond was an undeniable, additional motivator in overcoming differences from language and culture.

After Surabaya we flew to Jakarta, where we met even more relatives. Once again, I continued to be so blessed by everyone’s welcoming attitude and desire to connect and build relationships right away! We also got the amazing opportunity to explore Sepa Island, which is about a 90 min. ferry ride away in the Java Sea. As you can see from the photo, we passed a lot of interesting ships and fishing boats on our way to and from the island. I’d never been to a tropical beach before, so after we got there I was amazed that we could literally see tropical fish swimming in the water around us! The island also had an area where we could observe a lot of small sharks. This was fascinating for me, although I’m not sure it held quite the same allure for Ivan. 😉

Overall, we were also both very grateful for good health until the ferry ride back to Jakarta from Sepa Island. I may have already been getting sick because, although I got motion sick on the boat ride, I never completely recovered. Let’s just say that the flights back to San Francisco through Singapore were quite long indeed and certain symptoms still have not worn off.

Nevertheless, given our rigorous travel and activity schedule, the fact that we (especially me) made it that far unscathed is a HUGE praise and testimony to God’s faithfulness and protection. When we first started traveling internationally a couple of years ago, a trip with this level of back-to-back activity, plus lengthy flights, would have seemed impossible. We are so grateful for everything that God has done and continues to do in both of our lives to make this trip possible specifically for the purpose of building and strengthening relationships.

Thank you again so much for your prayers! We are excited to see what He will do the rest of the summer!