Apologies right off the bat – we all forgot to get a picture of this! But we were blessed to join Pastor Dan Kletke and his Book Club from St. John, Canon City. While they have read a wide variety of books over the years together, most recently they read Ministering Cross-Culturally, a book Dan and I first encountered in seminary years ago. It’s a book that highlights some fundamental differences between many cultures in the world, and differences that definitely exist between US and Indonesian culture.
Pastor Dan, as per usual apparently, had several pages of notes to help the discussion along, but there were lots of questions about how these various cultural differences played out in Indonesia. A great opportunity to share in specific ways about how different life is now for us, both in ways that are challenging as well as ways that are beautiful. One thing you begin to learn through experience is that not everything about your home culture is perfect. It makes sense intellectually of course, but until you’ve lived it you really can’t imagine what it feels like.
And of course, some things about a new culture are really hard to adjust to. For me, one of those is how Indonesians are not overly concerned about time. Arranging with a handyman or a delivery person for a specific time and date is really an arbitrary process without any definite sense of purpose. A set time and date might mean they show up two hours early. Or four hours late. Or not at all.
It turns out one of the ladies at the book study had spent a decade in Japan working as a young woman. Another woman and her husband are actively praying about possibly serving overseas. It’s exciting to see these connections we never would have been able to predict!
The Nelson Family Indonesia 