This morning we went to church as usual. Every sunday in church we recite the credo. When we first came to Bandung we could barely read the credo never mind keep up with everyone else. Now, we can actually keep up! And we actually know exactly what we are saying! (We know what the credo says, but now we can literally translate it.) This is very exciting. We can also understand a lot of the sermon, but sometimes it is hard to get the total theme as we are still just focusing on understanding it sentence by sentence. But we are making great progress. Right now we are in unit 6 which still focuses on reading and writing. Units 7-9 are discussions about texts from the Bible and articles from the newspaper or other magazines. This will greatly enhance our ability to participate in Indonesian Bible studies. Previously Units 7-9 were not required by MAF, but too many people had trouble with understanding sermons and Biblical discussions as Bible language is not the same as the spoken language.
On another note, our water looks much better than before, but is still a little yellowy. Could be from some residue still in the pipes... hopefully...
Marc is doing a lot better. He actually slept through the night last night. Yeah!! Yesterday I started Brynnie on some Zithromax, that I had brought from Canada, after talking with the expat doctors assistant who is the school nurse at the kids school. I'm so thankful to have a western trained, western person, to ask medical questions of. Doctors here are just not up to par with those back home. People here go to the doctor for every little thing. Then the doctor prescribes antibiotics and vitamins for every little thing without explaining why. This is a huge burden on the average famliy here. If they were just more educated about illnesses it would be very helpful. Unfortunately, here people are taught by rote. They are not taught to figure things out, to examine things and investigate things. Of course the average person here does not have access to resources like a good library or the internet. The lack of knowledge of even the most basic information especially concerning health is astounding. The man that paid for our time in Jakarta is trying to help reverse some of that. He has started a number of schools where a lot of the teachers are from other countries. He is also in the process of building a Christian boarding school in Papua. It is there that the education system is probably one of the worst in Indonesia. Many kids are lucky if their teachers even show up! This lack of education is also one of the main hindrances in getting more locals to be able to work on or pilot aircraft and work in the offices of MAF. Anyways, I've rambled on a bit, but that's the way it is here!