We Arrived!

The view out our window from the Triniti Hotel in Jakarta

We got in to Jakarta on Wednesday around 7:30am... And guess what? All our bags arrived!!! Praise the Lord! We were met by MAF staff at the airport and we shared our first "meal" a waffle with ice cream and chocolate sauce :) it was quite good. Will was brave and immediately jumped in and was doing his best to thank people in indonesian...

This was a snippet of one of our cab rides while in Jakarta.

Our flights were incredible! Singapore air provides your choice of drink what seemed like every 5 minutes... Full meals every few hours and they were really good. They were so concerned with our stomach being filled, they woke Will up out of a deep sleep to feed him. We had a few people lean over to let us know the noodles should be dipped in the sauce as Will started to pour his sauce over his noodles. This got a good giggle out of the people next to us. Then they demonstrated the proper way, and we immitated :) i'm sure that will be the first of many things we will use gestures to learn! The stewardess gave Gracie bags of diapers, wipes, baby food, coloring books, a stuffed Shrek head, blankets... She was pampered! And such a good little flyer. She did wonderfully and only had one melt down as we decended into Singapore and her little ears started popping and she was so panicked she wouldn't nurse. Finally when she did start nursing she fell asleep...

We had an hour and a half to get off our plane from PDX, sprint over to LAX international terminal to check in, and then go through security.  Unfortunately the computers were down so boarding passes were being written by hand for the whole flight (Airbus 380).  Fortunately it started working again, but we were still at the back of the line.  Thankfully we made it to our plane with 5 minutes to spare.  I would have videoed the running we did but Nan was smoking me while she pushed the stroller...awesome.



In Jakarta we took a taxi to our hotel. We wove through the jakarta traffic in which the two lanes do not apply :) Nan held her breathe the whole drive as car pass within an inch of each other. We are so thankful! We ordered our lunch and were fighting sleep trying to make it until at least 7 pm. We decided to take a 30min nap around 2 pm. We had only slept 3 hrs maybe since our departure from PDX. Will said he wasn't going to sleep so i didn't need to set an alarm... Needless to say, we woke up at 11pm only because Gracie started to wimper to be fed. We fed her and then went down for another 4 1/2 hours... We woke up for good around 330 am... An hour later we heard the first call to prayer.

Gracie is doing wonderfully! She is adored by the Indonesians. Everywhere we go people stop to coo over her and chat in Indonesian. It is darling bc she LOVES them! She could be crying and the moment they come see her she giggles and coos back.




Each day we are here we are more and more comfortable. We look forward to starting language school on Monday which will improve our vocabulary above four words. We are in a dorm across the street from language school (IMLAC) which is great considering we do not have anything but feet for transportation. We will be here for about a month until an MAF house opens up.




Yesterday Will had a chance to ride into town with a seasoned language school MAFer who was able to show him where to go to pay bills such as electric, phone, internet, and water. He did his best to pay attention to the route and not the traffic as he road on the back of the motorcycle. As different as the driving is here there is a good flow to it and everyone understands that we are just trying to get from point A to B so hardly anything is taken personally. We are still just amazed how much texting goes on while driving scooters. Good stuff ;)




Thank you again everyone for all your prayers. There are many changes that come with moving here, it is encouraging to know all the prayer warriors we have.

Gracie and Nan all dressed up for our first church service in Indonesia.