A Steep Learning Curve

When I moved to Indonesia, God put me on a steep learning curve. Suddenly I was in a strange country, without even the faintest grasp of the language, was constantly fumbling and making cultural errors...plus, I was thousands of miles away from my family and long-time friends. Could I be joyful in this new situation that I found myself in?

I remember particularly one sunny afternoon, not very long after arriving in Kupang, Indonesia, that a cousin of my husband's came to visit. I was introduced, and he introduced himself, and then a conversation ensued, with my husband translating so that I could follow the conversation. After a few minutes, my husband excused himself to go to the bathroom. He was gone a LONG time. The cousin felt awkward so he began to try out his limited English skills. But because of his limited vocabulary and strange pronunciation, I just COULDN'T understand what he was trying to say. He repeated over and over the same sentence, but to no avail. He began to sweat and I felt terrible for not understanding him. "How frustrating this is!" I thought. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry! Suddenly, to our relief, my husband reappeared. It turned out he had been sitting just around the corner almost the entire time, trying hard not to laugh out loud. That incident has been told over many times since, usually accompanied with loud guffaws. But even though I too was able to laugh about it, some fears also crept into my heart. "Would I be able to learn the language quickly? How long could I manage living like this?" I mused to myself. 

I also remember the first time the ladies of the church asked me to lead the devotion for their weekly women's Bible study. I had only been in Indonesia for about three months and did not as yet have a very good grasp of the language. But my husband insisted that this was an honor and that they would be quite disappointed if I said no. Wow! That was scary! However, I found a solution to my problem. I wrote down everything I wanted to say, including the prayer, in English and asked my husband to translate the whole thing for me. Then I READ THE WHOLE THING. The devotion went ok, the ladies were pleased that I had lead the devotion, and all was good. But not for long. About a month or two later, they asked me again! This time I challenged myself. I wrote everything down in Indonesian and then asked my husband to edit it for me. What a humbling experience. I took the sheet of paper back from him filled with red markings. But nevertheless, I rewrote it, and then once again read the whole thing, albeit somewhat more confident than the first time. The third time the ladies asked me to lead the devotion, I forced myself to leave my sheets of paper at home, only taking with me some bullet points with which to guide me. What a challenge to do that in a second language! By the time I had said, "Amen" I literally had sweat poring down my face and three sympathetic ladies immediately and simultaneously handed me tissues!!

My feelings of joy were really crumbling by the time Christmas came around -- my first Christmas in Indonesia. It did NOT feel like Christmas at all! There was no snow, it was VERT HOT, and what strange traditions they had for celebrating Christmas! For the first time, I felt some waves of homesickness. Would I ever feel joyful at Christmas time in this place?? 

Then I became pregnant with our first child. Let me explain a few things here. At that time and place in Indonesia, it was very common for the electricity to suddenly go off and stay off for several hours. Sometimes it would go off in the middle of the night.Oh how hot it was, with no fan! And because the fan was off, the mosquitoes would come and start buzzing by your ears. Now you ladies might understand that that was very trying for me, even more so now that I was pregnant. One evening, when I was about eight months pregnant, I was in the middle of taking a shower, when the electricity went off. You must understand that when it was dark, the cock roaches liked to come out of the the drain holes. I stood stock still and listened. Sure enough, I heard a scuttling noise. At that moment, I panicked. I suddenly couldn't take it anymore. I climbed up onto the side of the water tub to get as far away as possible from those cock roaches and let the tears flow!

Those are some of the incidents I can recall of my early days in Indonesia. I can laugh now about them, but believe me, I did not laugh at the time! My joy was seriously under attack in those moments. I had to re-consider some of my earlier ideas and definitions of joy. For one thing, I had thought that Christmas was not Christmas unless there was snow outside and pretty Christmas lights and Christmas decorations all around. But then I began to remember what the real meaning of Christmas was -- that Jesus came into this earth. Then I felt joy once again -- true joy! I also had to learn a lot about relying on God. I had to learn to rely on Him and trust Him, even when I felt completely at a loss with the language, with the culture, and at those moments when I felt confused and misunderstood because of cultural differences. Philippians 4:6+7 was (and still is) a favorite text of mine. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." I was definitely on a steep learning curve in those early days of my life in Indonesia, but those words reminded me again and again what I should do about it and where I could go for help. And amazingly, only by His grace and with His strength, I am still here 21 years later!