John and Anna Weeks YOUR link to tribal missions 
One of my responsibilities of being here is working each day with our newest language-learners. For a period of 10 weeks, we go out everyday on what we call “culture and language excursions.” We take all the different transportation around town, go to the market, to the rice fields, to the Post Office, various factories, tailors, universities and basically all over this region! The students take photographs of each excursion and use these as a platform to learn the language and culture associated with that excursion! They do all of this with Indonesian language helpers and my guidance. 
Please check out our Photos tab under the album Language Consulting to see more photos of excursions. Check out our other albums if you have time!
One of our final excursions was to a local coffee plantation, one of my favorite trips! It was interesting to study that coffee is not native to Java! What, but we call coffee “Java!” The plants were smuggled out of Ethiopia-Yemen in the 17th century by a Dutch botanist who took the live plants (punishable by death) to the Netherlands to be studied. The Dutch realized the plants would flourish in the Dutch East Indies, or Indonesia, specifically in the mountains of Java. Since the Dutch occupied Indonesia (controlled it for 350 years until 1941 when Japan occupied it during WWII) they forced the people to grow coffee rather than rice. There was a subsequent famine because now they were growing coffee instead of enough rice! The initial plants were Arabica, but there was a “rust plague” that killed many of those plants. These were replaced with Robusta, a more hardy plant. The Arabica is still grown at the highest of altitudes and contains less caffeine.
Every Friday we all get together with our Indonesian language helpers for group session. We each share new cultural and linguistic discoveries as well as play language games. This past week we played a language game in order to study conjunctions and “transition phrases” and how to logically and meaningfully flow from one sentence or thought to the next. We first brainstormed the conjunctions and “transition phrases” that we use in English such as but, and, however, after that, unlike, actually, fortunately, therefore, meanwhile …etc. Then we brainstormed which “transition phrases” or conjunctions we’ve heard in Indonesian so far. Then one of our language helpers began a story and each of us would add a couple sentences to the story using these “connector” and “transition” phrases. We realized that each of us in our own language only uses a certain set or “arsenal” of phrases and words to connect our thoughts together and certain connector phrases are only used when writing, preaching, or publicly speaking.
Then we shared blunders or cultural mistakes that we each make. I shared how just a couple weeks ago I was sharing with an Indonesian about our friend who had died. I remembered a colloquial phrase and said “dia berkarat,” but used the wrong prefix. What I had said is “she is rusty” where the phrase I wanted “dia sekarat” means “she was dying!” In speaking about the realm of dying, there are many potential blunders just waiting for us to stumble upon! When a person dies you must use “meninggal” whereas when an animal dies you use “mati.” However when you are in church you will hear about Christ’s death as “Yesus mati” not “Yesus meninggal” where in spiritual terminology you use the word for “death” that refers to animals dying as opposed to people dying when talking about “Christ’s death!” When you go to a funeral (you go to all neighborhood funerals) you tell the family “Kami turut berdukacita” which means “we join in your sorrow,” but be careful not to use the word “bersukacita” instead of “berdukacita” because that means you “rejoice” with them! And the cultural and linguistic mine field goes on and on and …
Please be praying for Paula and I as we each take trips to another island for ministry. Paula leaves in just four more days to help with the youth program during a regional conference. I travel in one more week and will help with “team kick-offs” for two of our tribal teams. Please pray for me as I still have lots to prepare! Please pray also for Anna Marie as she travels leaving in one more day for Jakarta with Katie and Grace for a medical trip. Katie has been having some medical problems that need to be addressed by a good doctor. Please pray for the three of them to have a profitable trip, for answers to Katie’s medical problems, and for safety and a fun time sharing and traveling together.
Thanks so much for your prayers and support,
John for the Weeks family
