Medan, Indonesia 2015 Day 5

Indonesia

December 22nd, 2015

Day 5

Today is our departure from Jakarta to Medan. The hotel shuttle crawls slowly through heavy traffic, while the air pollution is high; it is 31 degree C today and very humid. We watch motorbikes and scooters – which are the main transport in Indonesia – where it’s normal to see sometimes families of 4 all on one bike; or people transporting all kinds of goods this way. I guess it’s the fastest and cheapest way to get from point A to B, because they can navigate between the other vehicles. What seems to us like such a dangerous undertaking, for them it belongs to their normal daily living; amazing.IMG_2293 (1)

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The long drive to the domestic airport in Jakarta gives me some time to mention a little bit about the country itself.

Indonesia is a country in Southeast Asia. It is part of the Malay Archipelago. It has 18,108 islands, and only 6,000 of these islands are inhabited. The most important islands of Indonesia are Java, Bali, Borneo, Sulawesi, and Sumatra. The capital of Indonesia is Jakarta on Java. Medan is the largest city of Sumatra with about 6 million people.

The economy here in Sumatra consists mainly of plantations like coffee, bananas, rubber, palm oil and durian fruit. The percentage of unemployment is very high and people who are employed are working in the plantations, in factories, very little in business and tourism.

Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world with a population of 238,452,952 (2004 est.) Half of the population lives in Java. The official language of Indonesia is Bahasa Indonesia, but a total of 737 languages are spoken throughout Indonesia mostly confined to remote tribal groups.

The religion that most people in Indonesia follow is Islam, although formally not an Islamic country. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population on earth. Other religions include Protestants and Roman Catholics, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

When we finally arrive at the crowded airport in Jakarta and making our way through security it is interesting to watch so many different ethnic groups in one place.

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We finally leave Jakarta by Garuda Airlines with one hour delay!

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Beautiful sunset in Jakarta when we take off!

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When we arrive in Medan, we see the smiling faces of our brothers, who are so happy to see all of us again.

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It is after 9 p.m. when we step out of the airport and it’s still 28 degrees C and very humid. The drive to the hotel takes about one hour.

While driving, Brother Itok tells Brother Vin that they started the live streaming of the services to some groups of believers in different areas of the country and that the internet service here in Medan has improved recently. This way of bringing the Word to the believers was presented during the meetings in New Zealand in October 2013, where Brother Timmy laid out the advantages of this “new technology” for the ministers in this region and it was again presented to them during the meetings in Perth/Australia in June 2014. Now they are up and running and it’s a great blessing.

After checking into our rooms in the hotel, which is just a 10 minutes drive from Brother Itok’s home and church, we fall in our “new” beds way after midnight.

 

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