village on lombok

we passed out these books throughout the month of july with surfing the nations. they are the bible in comic book form and written in indonesian. it's a pretty cool way that surfing the nations came up with to be able to take it to places where they don't want the bible. we gave these out to people on lombok where it is basically all muslim.
we also gave out clothing and got annihilated by the people wanting to get their hands on our donations. it was quite the experience. below is a picture of a local fisherman from the village we were visiting on lombok. the first picture is us arriving at the village... you can see our boat in the background.

desert point current

this is a video of "crazy carl" jumping off the boat at desert point in lombok. the key here is to not let the current sweep you past the ladder at the back of the boat because, as you can see from carl swimming, it is impossible to swim against the current and get anywhere. we had quite a few cases of our surfers getting swept out to sea while surfing here... luckily fishing boats picked them up. pretty crazy!
this situation among others provoked chris and i to talk about "wisdom vs. wuss." chris is the leader of surfing the nations (the group we have spent the last month with) and is 26 years old. being the "old men" of the group, we kept wondering what happened to our invincible attitudes... you know, the ones that lead us to the hospital on more than one occasion. we were laughing and debating whether we are old and wise and don't ignore the possibilities of stuff going wrong OR if we just became wusses in our old age as we watch all the 18 year olds do everything without looking back. what happened to us? it isn't near as fun!
of course after having this conversation, chris proceeded to go free diving in a cove that we were anchored in. he was determined to catch us dinner... which he did. however, along the way he had a more than a close encounter. he was diving down about 30 feet and then 15 feet into a cave, without air mind you, when he had a shark (the size of him) come around the corner and start right at him while speeding up. he quickly back peddled while keeping his spear aimed at the shark ready to jab at it if it gained anymore. how he didn't lose his breath i will never know. the guy can hold his breath for close to two minutes under water! so anyways, he lived to tell about it and one of the locals was with him and freaking out!

home sweet home

this was home for 7 days as we traveled to different island in indonesia. some of the islands visited were sumbawa, lombok, nusa lembongin, and gili. definitely the highlight of being in indonesia for the both of us.

monkey see monkey do

a loss for words

so after having my body temperature soo high from a fever for a few days i decided it was time to shave my head again... the mop was keeping all heat in. however, there was one minor problem with this... the only clippers we had with us were some beard trimmers that we bought for traveling. these clippers, we discovered after one week of traveling, weren't even sharp enough to trim my face. i know i have thick hair but seriously? anyways, desperate times call for desperate measures! i was going for it. anything to feel better! i started the process and it turned out to be a nightmare. it took about an hour before the clippers broke all together and this was the result i was stuck with! at least it was about 40% cooler right?

cheap has it's limits

matt here...so i got pretty sick in bingin… one of the nights i was sick we were trying to go to bed when a cockroach ran across my head. we proceeded to try and sleep with the light on so no more would come back. unfortunately this brought on the onslaught of mosi's (or skeetters or mosquitoes) because our hut was open at the top to the outside. after dealing with them for a few hours at 2 in the morning we finally decided to kill the light. we were just falling asleep when we heard a giant thud on our bed and we both jumped up and flicked the light on to see a giant rat running across our bed. this was the last straw! feeling like crap and being so tired didn't help the situation. we got up and went and slept out on a cement deck where we hoped the rats and cockroaches would stay away. a long night to say the least. after this we decided to upgrade our room to try and get me out of the elements a little bit to help me get better. just having our own bathroom rather than having to run out of our hut and down some super steep stairs in hopes that one of the two toilets weren't in use every time i had to go. which was often. very often! oh yes so having our own bathroom in our room with real walls was like heaven on earth. it was an unexpected expense but well worth the $10 a night. the picture below is from the room...

gifts in bingin, indonesia

we spent the other day giving out gifts to some of the kids in the village. the picture of kristine is with some kids showing off their new gifts. the picture of matt is with a really sweet grandma we met named leanne. and the last picture is taken at low tide looking back at the beach village where we are staying.

bingin, indonesia

here are a few pictures from the last couple days... this is the view from where we are staying. pretty incredible. the second is of travis (a guy on our team) with some local grandmas that we hung out with and gave clothing to for their families. travis and i have had some awesome conversations and he has been one of the reasons why it has been made clear that god wanted us here with a bunch of surfers. the last picture is of kristine and the leader of the team (who is the oldest besides kristine and i) and the youngest girl on the team. they are 23 and 16! kristine has really been connecting with these girls which is also a total answer to prayer. thank you all for all of your prayers!

indonesia

so we didnt realize we hadn't been able to send our last post that said where we are and what we are doing... so real quick... we are in indonesia now and working with a group called surfing the nations. you can check out their website to see what they are all about by clicking on the link on the right side of our blog. it is pretty funny that we are here in this surfing mecca place working with a surf organization and we don't surf! right before we left thailand to come here we started wondering if it was the best move because it wasn't going to be cheap and we aren't surfers! but then we were reminded about how we felt god calling us here for some reason. so here we are and man god has all ready been using us in a huge way! it has been amazing! wish we could share more right now but time is short. we will try to post more specifics soon!

Bingin

hey everyone! it's so nice to write. we have so many stories and pics and we've only been here for two days, but there is NO WIFI!! i know, i know, it's like, "come on people its 2010!" but seriously, that's how it is with a ton of things here in Indo. so i have to make this short cause internet is hard to find and when we do, it's expensive!! but indo is beautiful. matty's already been surfing once! waves are suppose to get big here, so not sure how that will look. def. out of my league. i was scared to go in just to jump waves cause they are MASSIVE. anyways... the group is smaller now. just ten of us in bingin and matty and i are definitely like the "ma and pa" of the group!! can you believe it? we feel soooooo old. but yeah, we are the oldest by like 8 years or something like that! we were both cracking up and can't believe we are in this situation. it's great though. like i said, so many stories that we can't wait to share with you. thank you for your continued prayers and support! we love you and will really get a chance to catch up in august once we leave indo. xoxo, k

game day on the land

we had a game day on the land that we got to put together for the kids... they had a blast! kristine was in her element running the thing like it was summer camp. lots of games and laughs!

picture of jesus

i was reminded of a song today by ben harper titled "picture of jesus." we were in the middle of a long leg of traveling driving on a bus through thailand with about maybe 100 other people… pretty much all foreigners. we have learned something about foreign travelers… they all smoke. well not all but probably about 90%.
so after a man goes in the toilet on the bus it begins to smell like smoke throughout the bus… pretty potent. so kristine and i put our shirts up over our nose and begin the stages of the normal second hand nicotine headache… naturally. after he comes back and an hour or so goes by he begins to get up again, cigarette in hand, to "use the restroom" again. right away someone jumps up behind us and taps the guy and says "i hope you aren't going in there to smoke." the guy plays dumb and and says he is just using the toilet. well what do you know it smells like smoke again once he goes in. so the guy behind us gets up and confronts him in the bathroom… not angrily but just gently reminds him that there are people on the bus that would rather not smell that and that it is a non smoking bus. the guy had his hands full because the smoker was being confrontational yet he just continued to stick up for the few. maybe it didn't even bother this guy but he saw us with our shirts and cared enough to go and fight the battle for us. he was a true picture of jesus to us that day.