EXTENDED EXTENSION

It is now just  3 weeks until we depart from West Timor for England. We have now received our final visa extension, which means we can be here for the remainder of our time, not having to worry about the visa situation. When we left Norway, we had a 60 day tourist visa which we could extend for a total of 4 times 30 days meaning we could be in Indonesia for a total of 180 days. After this time we had to leave Indonesia, and headed for Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Whilst there we successfully applied for a new 60 day extendable tourist visa for each member of our little clan. So after the 60 days were up, we got an extension of another 30 days through the local immigration office here in Kupang. This we did 2 more times.

Each time we have been to the immigration office, there has been something which has happened that didn’t happen before (including the time the whole immigration staff were playing volleyball in the car park, which meant I, Peter, had to park on the road). The one but last time, we almost accidentally drove into the midst of an official motorcade. I don’t mean crashing, but driving where they didn’t want us to be. It could have been the Governor, or some other high-ranking official, who was coming to visit the immigration office, just as we drove out of the car park to leave (on our normal route which we had done countless times before). But a smartly dressed soldier, turned us back into the car park, and then waved us out-of-the-way of the official’s car.

So, because of it being our very last time to apply for an extension to our visas, and being aware that there could be some little surprises along the way, we decided to apply a bit earlier than we had done for our previous applications. Monica and I drove up to the immigration office, but it looked closed. This was strange as we were there in opening hours. We had to meet our sponsor for signatures for the required sponsor letter afterwards, so decided to meet her first and then return to the immigration office later. This we did, but it still looked like it was shut up. We saw a random man, who had stopped on his moped near the office. He then walked into the parking area, so I decided to try to speak with him. Luckily, he spoke a bit of english, and said that the immigration office had moved! I asked him where, and he said that it was near the airport, which is on the other side of the city virtually.

We thanked God for the random man, and headed off towards the direction of the airport. Random man had not given us an exact description of where we should go, but we drove to where we thought it could be. Once we had driven past the place of our thoughts, we decided to stop at a little shop and ask some people if they knew where the ‘Kantor Imigrasi’ was.  They didn’t speak english, but got a nearby woman to come and translate who amazingly spoke english. This seemed so random, even more than random man at the original immigration office. Anyway, one of the two men phoned a friend (‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ style), and they got the info as to where the office was, and said that we could follow one of the men on his moped, as we drove.

So, he then drove as if he was trying to win the Superbikes championship, but we managed to keep him in sight. After a while we realised that it must be near one of the hotels we stayed in when we first came to Kupang. And indeed, it was quite close to the Timore Hotel. Soon we were at the newly built ‘Kantor Imigrasi’, which happened to be right next door to the children’s prison (don’t ask!).

We were quite impressed with the new building…it was bigger, brighter, had a feeling of niceness about it, and even had air-conditioning. We handed in our applications and were told to come back in a week to pay. Seven days later we returned, but they told us that more time was needed to process the applications. They told us to come back 3 days later.  We went back after 3 days  to find out what was going on.

On arrival, they told us that Daniel’s application had been accepted, but only his. This was strange as we had never had a problem before, or experienced that one or more had been accepted before the other members in our family. They told us that more time was needed, as there seemed to be a problem ‘with the system’. We assumed their internet connection was giving them problems, as our applications had to be sent to Jakarta. We said that we would come back the next day, a Friday. Our visas expired on the Sunday, and the office was not open in the weekend. Early Friday morning we returned keen to see that everything was okay. However, it was not, and they didn’t know when the problem would be corrected. There was a man at the office who spoke good english, who we had spoken to a lot, but he was not there. One of the ladies who spoke a little english phoned him, and he said to return in 3 hours or so. Monica and I went home. Throughout the whole process we had been praying for God to help us. We had a peace that He would sort it out, as the thought of us having to leave Indonesia at very short notice was not good. Where would we go?…East Timor (10 hours drive and anyway we would have needed to apply 3 days before for a visa…), Singapore for 2 days, Kuala Lumpur again, Australia, or just go back to London now?

Some hours later we returned (with the children who were a little curious to see the new building-and the children’s prison). Still nothing had been sorted out. The lady said that everything would be okay in an hour. How did she know this? We decided that we couldn’t sit there for an hour with the boys, so drove home. Right after we got back to our house we got a phone call saying that we could come back as everything was okay… So I returned and paid for the applications. On the Monday we returned to pick up our passports, which had the correct visa extensions. So even though we started very early with the process this last time, it had taken around 2 weeks to get everything processed. The immigration staff have been helpful, and have given us no problems, even though we have had a few surprises along the way. In some ways, we have got to know the staff a little,  and we have very much appreciated  their help.  We must admit though that we are very happy  not to have to apply for any more visa extensions.

GETTING AROUND KUPANG

It has been such a long time since we have been able to write here. Apologies for that, but I, Peter, will try to explain. You may have heard that wordpress was attacked by botnets, and that it has not functioned properly as a result of this. However, when this happened, our internet connection was so poor anyway, that we could hardly do anything on the internet…let alone upload photos onto the blog, as we couldn’t even open wordpress. For a few days even, we had internet access for maybe a few minutes each day, then nothing at all. So we went to talk to our internet provider, and they (to cut a long story short) informed us that we actually have access to a much better and faster internet network than what we have been using (we now use that). Why they didn’t tell us this months ago, will forever be a mystery, like with what happened to the Marie Celeste, what came first, the chicken or the egg, and where do all the flies go to in winter (in the northern hemisphere)? But enough on this blog about our blog.

Family 5 travel…count the legs. Plus a little girl on the front.

We have mentioned before that driving in Kupang is a challenge at the best of times. God has blessed us with a car, which you need to get around here. It is not safe to walk on the pavements…actually there are no pavements where we live. For us as a family of 5, we need a car. However, the local population seem to get around the city using differing modes of transport without too much problem. There are the bemos, a kind of public transport. The well off people will have a car (and usually a driver, and a maid for each child, and a maid to clean the house, and maybe a gardener too-but I’m getting off the point a little). Yet the most common form of transport you will see in Kupang is the moped, or motorbike. And the humble moped can actually be used in so many varying ways. It can be a people carrier, poultry deliverer, hardware carrier; be used to carry bottles of water, bags of cement, ladders, long poles, timber, and many other things. Please take a good look at the photos I have put on here. But don’t worry, we don’t have a moped. Most drivers of mopeds will use a crash helmet…even if it is just to hang on the handlebars, in case they see a policeman. But the passengers very often do not have a helmet, and the children very rarely do. Of course this is very dangerous, and we have seen people fall off or have minor crashes. The only positive here with the traffic is that you very rarley go faster than 40 kmh (around 25 mph).

Bob the builder?

Mysterious Jedi knight?

Wet season?…no problem.

Chicken run

Cow on truck

Men on truck

Waiting at the petrol station

Could take a while

Our post!

Daniel chilling in the heat

 

 

 

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Some weeks ago we got to celebrate christmas again.We knew of some post that had been posted to us from Norway. Well, we finally received it a few weeks ago. This was only after a trip to the post office here, and being quite persistent with them, as they denied that anything had come for us from Europe. Eventually, they found 4 packages to us. Some of those had been posted long before Christmas, way back in September or October. Each thing was very much appreciated. Thank you to those who sent these things.

Bike race

As you may see from one of the photos, all 3 of our boys are now biking without stabilisers (støttehjul). Daniel being the youngest was the last to achieve this. It was quite amazing, as he asked us to take off his stabilisers. Then maybe half an hour later, he was biking with no problems. It’s opened up his biking world so much, and he really enjoys biking with his brothers and the rest of the gang in our street. We are very blessed to have a street that is maybe 100 m long which has a gate at the end. This is watched over by security guards, who at times will join in the football matches with the boys.

Playing at the new kindergarten

After Easter, the boys moved to a new building with their school/reception/kindergarten. It is not far from the previous buildings that they went to. And now, Erik is in the same building as Joakim and Daniel, which makes it more convenient for us in dropping them off (even though they’re still finishing at different times).

Now it is only a month until we begin our long journey to England, via Kuala Lumpur. The timing of us getting better internet is very good, as we need it more than ever now to do things in preparation for moving to England. God is with us in all this preparation. Thank you to those who are praying for us in all of our travelling from one side of the planet to the other, and back again (almost).

THREE WAY CONFERENCE

Last semester the children had a “student led conference” that we wrote about in a previous post. This semester they had a “three way conference” right before easter. This time the teacher also participated, but other than that it was very much the same as last time. The children show a lot of the work they have done in school. It is very nice for us as parents to see what they have done and the developement they have had. Our boys were really looking forwards to this day, and so were we.

looking at pictures

walking from the school to the kindergarten

When we came here none of our boys were reading. Now Erik is reading very well in both Indonesian, English and Norwegian. Joakim has lately started to read too. Even Daniel can read some simple words and sentences. When we came here we were quite surprised to see how much was expected of the children at such a young age. We almost felt a bit sorry for our youngest boys who had little chance to play and instead started learning letters and numbers.

The children though have really enjoyed it, and have had a very good time in the school and kindergarten. There are two teachers and maximum 20 children in each class, and the teachers have very good relationships with the children. Our boys have also made some very good friends here. They are looking forwards to going to England and Norway, but are sad that we are not going to come back here. They are sad that they will not see their friends again. And they have already started praying that they will get new friends in England.

KFC IN KUPANG

What would we have done without KFC here in Kupang? Being the only western style restaurant here it has been quite a big part of our life. So we cannot have a blog  about our life in Kupang and not have a post about the KFC ( Kentucky Fried Chicken).

Very often when we go to the KFC I ( Monica) think back to the day we arrived here in Kupang. We landed at the airport and got a taxi to take us to the hotel where we had booked a room. The room consisted of 2 single beds, a mattress on the floor, and a lizard…Not very inviting. ( The next day we checked into another much nicer and more practical hotel) So we got out on the street to check out this new city we had arrived in. This street is one of the most busy in the whole of Kupang, and not really that inviting either. So we decided to make our way to the Flobamora mall and the KFC that we had read about on the internet. We tried to get a taxi, but there were just lots of bemos and we didn’t know where we had to go. Luckily we saw a policeman and asked him where we could find a taxi. The policeman didn’t speak much english but understood where we wanted to go, and offered to take us there in his police car! He even wanted to give us his phone number so that  he could come and pick us up after we had finished!

After our first meal at KFC we came back quite often. Especially in the first month when we were still living in hotels.We were there probably 3-4 times per week. Thinking back now I wonder where on earth we ate those days when we did not go to the KFC? Once we got our own place we were able to gradually start cooking ourselves. ( Once we found out a few meals we could make) so our trips to the KFC became much less regular. And now when we have the new hypermarket we can cook nicer food at home and go there even less.

So what is so special about KFC? Nothing really, just that we all like the food, it is nice and clean, and the children really enjoy watching ads for KFC on all the TV screens they have. Also it has quite a nice little play area. This means that it is very popular for arranging birthday parties for children…

The birthday girl

Last week Daniel came home and proudly showed us his invitation for a birthday party at the KFC. One of the girls in his class was celebrating her birthday there. After having been to a few parties we are starting to learn the codes for parties in Kupang. The first thing to know is that unless you want to be the first person there you should not come on time. If you want to arrive right before the program starts you should come one hour late. People will actually be arriving all the way up to the time the party is finished. Another thing to say about parties here is that they are BIG. Everyone is invited. Friends, family, neighbours, everyone you know. And many children will bring their siblings, parents, maids and so on…So back to the party at the KFC…Once the program started they had a lot of party games for the children. A big part of the party is slicing the birthday cake. But only a few chosen people get to taste a little spoonful of cake. Then completely at the end the food is handed out. Boxes with chicken and rice, drinks, and a bag of sweets ( which are enormous and in reality enough for a whole family). Then people go home and eat the food at home. In most parties though the food is served and eaten at the party.

 

Otherwise we just want to wish you all a very happy easter celebration! Our easter holiday starts tomorrow after we have had a ” three way conference” with all the three children. This is similar to the student led conference we had in the autumn, just that this time the teacher is also a part of it. We are really looking forwards to this holiday, as I am sure you all are!

FEVER IN THE TROPICS

According to our travel health book fever in the tropics should always be taken seriously. If living in a malarious area consider fever to be malaria until proven otherwise, it reads.  You have to get to the doctor preferably within 8 hours of getting a fever, it goes on to warn us.

So, is Kupang a malarious area or not? This was one of our big questions before we got here. According to all medical resources all of east Indonesia is malarious area. Otherwise cities are usually counted to be malaria free, but not Kupang. Most people will say that there is some malaria here, but mostly a less dangerous type (vivax). We had to make a decision whether or not to use anti malaria pills. After a lot of reading on the internet and praying about it we decided not to ( considering all the negative side effects of malaria pills ).  Instead we decided to make sure we didn’t get any mosquito bites.  This is of course quite impossible. By installing air conditioners in the house and sealing all gaps between windows and doors we have been able to make the house mosquito free. The children are sprayed with mosquito repellent before they go to school and before they go out to play in the afternoons. But they still get bitten. We have even tried eating B vitamin pills. Medically it is just a myth that this works against mosquito bites, but after having used them for some months they actually seem to work at least a bit…

A bigger problem than malaria is dengue fever. We are at the height of the dengue fever season now, being at the end of the wet season. One of our neighbours had dengue fever a few weeks ago and was in hospital for a week. The day she came home somebody came and sprayed the whole area for mosquitoes. This is a free offer from the government in trying to minimize the problem.

So after having been here for over 9 months we have had our first high fevers.We had had some quite rough weeks leading up to this where we were not able to sleep very well. Mostly because of a lot of very heavy rain in the nights, and also quite a lot of power cuts. (A few weeks ago we had 8 power cuts in a period of 24 hours, the longest one lasting 3 hours. Then last week we had a power cut in the evening/night that lasted for 6 and a half hours. This in addition to all the shorter “normal” daily power cuts).  In addition the kitchen exploded with mould. Wether it was the lack of sleep or the mould or just some virus, we don’t know, but the result was that we all got unwell. Aches, colds, head-aches, coughs…….and fevers…..So we chose to play safe and had our first encounters with the health care system in Kupang.

What we had heard about hospitals here was not that great. The more well off people here will go to Jakarta or some other bigger city in Indonesia when for example giving birth. The facilities in Kupang are not good enough. Luckily we have a small but nice, new and clean hospital just a short walk away from our house. This is actually a maternity hospital, but they also take other patients. We had to go there two days in a row with two different family members. The conclusion was that it was nothing serious. Monica was quite happy to check out their very small and very basic lab.

On the way home we even met a British woman whom we have spoken to a couple of times in the hypermarket. She actually lives 5 min walk from here, and we never knew. She came to visit us with her little baby daughter a couple of days later, which was also very nice She actually told us that she has had malaria three times and dengue fever once. It’s very useful for us to hear about other foreigners experiences.

BEING DIFFERENT

There are not many foreigners here in Kupang. Once in a while we can see a backpacker or two walking around. (Maybe on their way to see the komodo dragons, the worlds biggest lizards, on one of the nearby islands).  There are a few mixed marriage families, mostly men from Australia married to Indonesian women. There are also some people from other countries, even a norwegian man, we have heard. The Irish/ Indonesian family who we had a bit of email contact with before we came here moved back to Ireland only a few months after we came. As far as we know we are the only all western family here. There are no foreigners that we have any regular contact with, so we are quite alone here in being different. We for sure stick out, not just one white person but 5!

Most Indonesian people are not very discrete, at least not on this remote island. So when we turn up somewhere new they clearly show their amazement and amusement at seeing us. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie with their however many children would probably not get as much attention if they showed up in our home countries. Especially the boys get a lot of attention. ” Ganteng” is a word we hear a lot, which means handsome. People will want to touch them and squeeze their cheeks. Our boys actually handle this surprisingly well, so much that we finally realized they quite like it. As long as it doesn’t go too far, like when a big woman pinched Joakim’s cheeks so hard that he started crying. I looked at her, anticipating some kind of apology, but what did she do? She laughed…( maybe more on Indonesians and laughter another time…)

To us adults, people will say ” Hello Mister” ( often to both of us depending on how good their english is) Another word we hear often is ”Bule”. According to one blog we found this means ” big, white fat buffalo”. I have unfortunately not been able to confirm this interpretation, but for sure it is used to describe ” white” people. There are long ongoing discussions on expat forums on whether this is an offensive word or not. I guess we would say that depends very much on how it is said…

So how are us adults handling all the unwanted attention? Not very well, we must admit. We do not really enjoy it, and to be honest we are not really getting used to it either. Walking into a shop and everybody bursts out laughing is one of those things we have to put up with. And people are not laughing because of our bad Indonesian, but just because we are different. Even when we walk into more modern offices people will suppress their giggles behind a more sophisticated response. Another thing we have to put up with is a lot of staring. People will regularly just stop and stare at us as we are shopping or whatever else we are doing. Something not quite as bad but still a bit annoying is when people stare at what we have in our shopping trolleys. A few times people have even taken things out of our shopping trolleys to study them a bit closer. Yes, we truly stick out here and so does what we have in our shopping trolleys…

Luckily we have our places where people are getting used to us and we can feel a bit more normal. And when we are with Indonesian friends we are almost a bit “protected” from the crowds. Of course not all the attention is negative. A lot of people are genuinely friendly and respectful. We see a lot of smiley and friendly people, and these absolutely make up for a lot of the harassment we occasionally get from others.

The boys playing football  in the pictures are examples of some very nice children. We met them one time on a little trip, they joined us, played football with the boys, ate our biscuits and even dared to taste our waffles. Good memories. These boys were very friendly, respectful and helpful.  Quite normal  actually…

FINDING OUR WAY

Around a year ago we were in the middle of preparations for going to West-Timor, Indonesia. We had already sold our house and had started to give away/throw/sell or pack away our earthly belongings. When we look back  it was quite an amazing time. We were taking a big step of faith, but it didn’t really feel like that. It just felt completely normal. ( even though we knew that what we were doing was not really that normal). The reason I (Monica) am saying that it was an amazing time is because God completely carried us through that time of big transition. He made everything go so smoothly. He gave us such big peace in everything we were doing. We knew that we were doing a crazy thing, but we knew we were doing it for God. We could really feel that He was so present in all our practical work of moving our family. It didn’t necessarily make sense and we knew that we could be wrong. However, even if we were to later find out that it was wrong we would still do it, because we  BELIEVED that it was what God wanted.

We came here because God led us clearly into coming here, but we did not know what we were going to do here.  In reality we knew nothing about anything. The only thing we knew was that we had to wait for God, and do what He wanted us to, and not just do our own thing.We can testify of how God completely took care of us and gave us  everything we needed. We had nothing, He gave us everything. A house, friends, school for the children, a car and everything else that we have needed.  That is worth many posts by itself, and we have written about it many times before. God really showed us his faithfulness once again.

We thought God took us here because He wanted us to do something for Him here. Now we see that our time here has not been about what God was going to do through us, but what God was going to show us. For those of you who have read the post called “THE BREAKTHROUGH” you might have realized that God has really surprised us here. We haven’t really done much other than spend time with God, but God has really spoken quite a lot. Why we had to come all the way to the ends of the world in order to hear these things, we do not totally understand. We do see though that this has  been a place with  few distractions so that God has had a lot of opportunity to speak.

We really believe that Peter has received a message that needs to be shared. The message  about deception in the church in the end times is for the whole church.  We started to realize that we would not be coming back here after our visa expires in the end of May. We have been in a very isolated part of the world this year. Geographically we feel God is taking us  out of the isolation and back to the ” centre of the world”.  So our next move will actually be to ENGLAND.  We have not received  “writing on the wall” this time, :)  ( to all of you who have heard the story of how God led us to come here) but God has given us new direction clearly enough for us to act on it. We have had our rounds of asking God is this REALLY what you are saying, of “counting the costs”, and facing all the new challenges. Now we have come to a place where we feel ready, we have peace, we are happy about our next step, and we see that it makes sense. ( Which in itself is quite a little miracle as Peter has said so many times that he never wants to go back to his home country  ) And we know that God is going to lead us and take care of us in our new step of faith, just as He has always done before.

Peter’s additions to the post:

God started to show me firstly from His Word, but also in other ways that when Jesus and the Apostles speak of the last days, the first thing they mention is deception.  They go on to warn us against deception.  I believe we are in the days where there are real dangerous deceptions in the church.  Old deceptions, and newer deceptions.   This message of warning against deception, is for the whole church.  I am well aware that there are others around the world whom Jesus is saying the same sort of thing too.  England will, we believe, be a significant place in the last days.  There is much spiritual deception and darkness in my homeland.  In many ways, England is a place that touches the whole world…in language, in commerce and business, in being a place where the nations come to study/work, and in spiritual ways too.  Many ministries and large churches are based in London and the rest of the UK. So from the first of June our address will be somewhere in England…