One of the fascinating things that I have been discovering over the years is that there are many international students who come to the States to study. By pastoring on a college campus, I have seen many international students who represent many nations come to the States and then return to their country. In fact, at one point at the University of Michigan we had close to 122 nations represented. Wow… that is a lot of nations!

As I have been out here in Indonesia for about 2 months now, I am meeting a lot of these international students who have studied abroad. Many of them come back to their country to help out with the family business or they just end up starting up new ventures. It is exciting to see many of these young, well-educated single adults who are making an instant impact in Indonesia.

This is one of the target groups that we are trying to reach with the Gospel. They are a unique group of people because of their experiences overseas. Their perspective is more global and they bring to Indonesia a freshness of vision for the country.

One person in particular has recently launched a BlackBerry application which enables a the user to use a lot of functions that is related to everyday life, such as news, restaurant information, movie showing times, and stock exchange data. Some of us were one of the first ones to download it to our BlackBerry and it has been a great resource.

It is exciting to see what Indonesia will look like in the next 10-15 years with so many young, overseas educated people investing into their country. It is my prayer that many of them will come to know Christ and that those who are already believers will leverage their blessings to make a difference for Jesus Chist.

You can check out an article on the Jakarta Globe about one of the re-expatiated Indonesians that we have gotten to know over the months.

Click here to read the article.

 
This past Sunday we had our Preview Celebration at the location where we will be holding our church gatherings on Sunday. There was a lot of anticipation building up to the Sunday. In fact, it was a mixture of excitement and nervousness. The team and I were excited because this is why we committed our lives to come to Indonesia. We have also been building relationships with people who have been experiencing God’s radical love through our LIFE groups; and we knew that if some of them experienced God in a corporate worship setting that God would continue to minister to them in a powerful way.

We were also a bit nervous because there were still so many things that we had to get ready for the Preview gathering. There were some things that we had no control over; therefore we just had to trust in God. There were other things that got done in the last hour. There are still a lot of kinks that we need to work through before our official launch this coming Sunday. But we realized that what we need is more of God’s anointing.

But overall, we had a great time of worshiping God together as a church by having the two LIFE groups coming together. Some of our members invited their friends, so it was encouraging to see. This was a huge win for us as we have been praying and planning for this day to come.

Now we have about a week to get things tweaked and ready to go on Sunday. Even though there are still some things that we are waiting for in terms of God’s Provisions, God has provided us with what we need rather than what we want.

After the service this past Sunday, I couldn’t help but to be thankful. It felt a bit surreal knowing that 13 years ago Christina and I went through some of the same emotions as we started the church in Ann Arbor. But this time it was a bit different – not only due to the cultural issue but most importantly, we had a greater sense of trust.

God has been faithful to use our church in Ann Arbor to bring transformation to so many lives that have come to the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor. We believe that the people God is bringing our way here in Indonesia will experience the same transformation through the preaching of the Gospel message.

This is just the beginning. We are truly humbled at the fact that God would use people like us to spread His Fame. As we make Jesus famous, all the nations will come and worship Him.