Today we were able to join with the local Reformed Church (Gereja Reformasi) for worship. Although much of the service was difficult to understand, it was still wonderful to be able to join with fellow Reformed Christians in worshipping God.
I contacted the pastor on Tuesday to confirm the service location and start times, and so he had prepared an English translation of his sermon for us. I knew enough Indonesian that I was able to follow along paragraph by paragraph, even though I could not understand much of what was being said.
The church group is meeting in an old Chinese restaurant that they have been gifted with the use of. It is a bit run-down, so even after arriving and recognising the building from some previous photos, I was still not sure that we had arrived at the correct location.
Following the service, we spoke briefly with the church members there. I was able to talk to some who did not speak much English. We were offered a photo opportunity by Rev. Yan, which resulted in about five minutes of standing in a group while various phones were proffered so that everyone could get a photo.
Surprisingly, the traffic wasn’t too bad after leaving church, so we made it back to our hotel in less than half an hour.