Or so I thought. When my son Graham and I arrived two hours late at the Informatics Building for my advanced leadership and supervision class, I apologized to the waiting students.
"It is no problem," one student replied cheerfully. "We had to evacuate the building because of the earthquake anyway."
Huh?
Only then did I realize that the shuddering of the car was actually tremors from a nearby 6.4 magnitude earthquake. Jakartans fled in terror from their workplaces, which probably explains why traffic was even worse than usual. After all, an earthquake just two weeks before had killed 1,000 people on a nearby island.
But to go back in the building after an earthquake evacuation and wait two hours for their professor to arrive? That's as good an indication as any that Christians in Indonesia are serious about preparing the next generation of leaders.
Indonesia has more Muslims than any other nation in the world. Christians are a small minority, and in some places they are subject to persecution by extremists. Christian schools abound, however, and are stretching their meager resources to to educate thousands of students and introduce them to Jesus. We found the teachers to be hungry for training, eagerly welcoming the Passing the Torch workshop (the name was changed because a "baton" is an unfamiliar object to most Indonesians) and the advanced leadership courses.
My favorite part? Watching our Filipino speakers take responsibility for training and encouraging the Indonesian workshop speakers. I was humbled by their level of ownership of the training material and the outstanding professionalism of those who delivered the training in Surabaya, Jakarta, Bandung and Malang.
To use the race analogy, we're on the third leg, and the Indonesians are excited about continuing to train others and pass the baton (torch) to other Asian nations.
This entire project was made possible because of the excellent leadership of the Association of Christian Schools in Asia, guided by Asia director Dr. Janet Nason and Indonesia director Dr. Ishak Wonohadijojo.
Here are some pics I hope will give you a sense of how God is moving in Indonesia.
I'm afraid we completely disrupted physical education class at the Samuel School by taking pictures. These children are the reason we do what we do.
Amy delivers the Passing the Torch workshop to teachers in Surabaya.
Imagine how exciting it was to see our training workshop translated into Bahasa, the national language of Indonesia!
My son Graham addressing a group of teachers with the translating help of another Passing the Torch trainer, Paul.
The advanced leadership class in Jakarta, earthquake survivors, all.
A common cityscape in Indonesia--lots of motor bikes and mosques. 237 million people who need Jesus.
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