There and Back again.... A Calvin Seminarian's Journey to Indonesia

Well, Samwise and Frodo... er.. Keri and I have made it to Indonesia. Great to be here. Our travels (or travails) have taken all kinds of twists and turns. Here are the latest updates beginning with where we last left you, our loyal readers: Tuesday Afternoon in San Fran.

5PM We take the shuttle to SF Airport to confirm our new 1AM flight on China Airways. We are told that their ticket counter will not open until late tonight before the flight. Okay, so we head back to the hotel for our third trip on the Hotel Shuttle (We are beginning to know our Shuttle driver by name).

7PM Since we are in SF we decide to call up an old friend of ours from Edgerton, Brett Nibbelink. Brett and I went to grade school, high school and Dordt College together. He and his wife Michelle live in San Jose where she is a teacher and he works as an engineer for a defense contractor. Michelle is out of town on a class trip, but Brett is free for the evening, so he drives up to the Hotel.

8PM We enjoy a splendid dinner at the hotel restaurant on EVA airlines. Keri has chicken breast stuffed with with prosciutto, Brett has the grilled salmon and I have the Ribeye Florentine. The steak was so-so, but considering I did not have to pick up the bill, the meal had a certain desirable flavor.

10PM We say our goodbyes to Brett and take the shuttle to the airport for our third visit to the SF airport in 24 hours. We stand in line at the ticket counter for an hour. We find out that we were never confirmed in our China Airlines flight so we do not have tickets for this flight. We are now on the 10AM Wednesday EVA Airlines flight. Since we were going to be on a different airline, EVA airlines had already pulled our bags. However, they told us they only could find two out of three bags. At this point, I could not stop from laughing. What else could go wrong on this trip? The EVA airlines people ask if we would like our bags. Yes, we would like to change out of our two-day old clothes. Amazingly, when we go to the area to get our bags, all three are waiting for us. They ask us if we would like to check them in now so they can hold on to them. We tell them a resounding NO. We will take care of our own baggage. Weary, we take the hotel shuttle back to the hotel (at this point we get to know another hotel shuttle driver and we know the route by heart). Fortunately, we still have our same room since we were booked in it two nights.

Wednesday.
7AM we take the Hotel Shuttle for the possibly final time. I have now seen the same two miles of California six times. We check in and the agent says they booted us off the flight. Thankfully, there was a manager there who knew us from the night before who promptly put us back on the flight. Amazingly the flight is on time for 10AM. We get on board. We taxi the runway. We are ready for take-off. We are ready to finally leave this country after three days of trials and tribulation. Keri has her passport, nothing can stop us now......... The Captain asks if there is a doctor on the plane...... Someone on the plane needs medical attention so we taxi back to the gate...We are delayed an hour.... Finally at 11:30 our plane leaves the USA, and we are on our way to Taipei.

Thursday
3PM (Taipei Time) After a 13 hour flight complete with fairly good airplane food (the beef tips were great) and several mediocre movies (My reviews: Music and Lyrics 2 stars, The Pursuit of Happyness 2 1/2 stars, Norbit 0 stars) we land in Taipei. However, we have now missed our flight to Jakarta, Indonesia, so we will have to stay in a Taipei hotel one night. Alright, we now get to see a little of Taiwan or the Republic of China. We stay in a nice hotel with a great view of the city. We have authentic Chinese food that is mediocre at best. We shower and sleep, eager to start day five of our trip.

Friday
6AM Catch another hotel bus to the airport. I have decided that we should have just taken shuttle buses to Indonesia, at least they run on time. Our flight to Jakarta leaves at 10AM. We stand in a variety of lines until we finally board our plane to Indonesia. We are away.

2PM land in Jakarta. Spend an hour going through immigration and visa lines. Get our bags and meet Rev. Untung and Pastor Lukas of the Back to God Hour ministry. Untung quickly tells us that we are all scheduled to leave on another flight to Jogjakarta in an hour. We get on the next plane and leave for Jogja.

6PM we land in Jogja. Jogjakarta is the former capital of Java island in Indonesia and home to 3 million people. It is the Javanese people's cultural headquarters. Also it is the epicenter of the large-scale earthquake that hit Indonesia last May 2006. Over 6000 people died in that 6.3 magnitude earthquake with an estimated 1.5 million left homeless in the region. We will be in town for the one-year anniversery of the quake. We will spend the weekend visiting BTGH listener communities.

We stay in a hotel in Jogja, glad to be finally resting in Indonesia. We want to thank God for safe travels, and we want to thank everyone who was praying for us on this trip. We hope to have more details about our weekend in Jogja soon. Also make sure you scroll to the bottom of the page, where we will post new pictures.