About Our Group

We are a group of 12 students and 2 professors from Calvin College venturing to Indonesia for three weeks. While in Indonesia, we will visit schools and businesses, along with seeing the sights! We fly out from GRR on January 2 and arrive back in Grand Rapids on January 23.

Friday, January 11, 2013

January 9: It's Business Time

Now it's time for another exciting episode of everyone's favorite interim, Indonesian Adventure: Calvin Style

We woke up ready for another day of Indonesian awe and wonder. We were not disappointed. Today our schedule consisted of visiting 3 different businesses. We shoved off around 8 after a delicious breakfast.

The first business we visited was Siloam Hospital. We talked to a couple different men who were working on the development of some new hospitals that are going to be built. We learned about the health and economic situation in Indonesia. They also told us about some big plans they have. If I remember correctly (which I admittedly struggle with sometimes) they plan on building 50 hospitals in the next 4 years! I was blown away by such an outstanding goal. They truly seemed to understand God's calling for them.

Next we met with someone at Hypermart. In my opinion this was a fairly boring meeting. He talked through a presentation on store setups and the different types of stores Hypermart consists of. Other people may have found it more interesting, but I'm the one writing this post so I'm not going to say anything else about it.

We ate lunch at a nearby mall (I had McDonald's) and then headed to our final and hands-down best visit of the day. We visited PT Arwana Citramulia Tbk (or Arwana for short), a business owned by Fabian's dad. We were given special polos to wear and were picked up by company drivers. After an hour or so car ride with conversations ranging from Disney songs to bodily functions (at least in our car) we arrived at Arwana.

Arwana is a tile making company. After a short, but interesting, presentation on company philosophy and working for God, we received a tour of the company's factories. There were some really cool machines and really nice workers. We learned that Arwana has a 100% recycling policy. Nothing goes to waste. At the end of the tour we got to all sign 2 tiles, one for us and one for Arwana to hang up with other tiles signed by guests.

Signing the tiles

After the tour we were invited to have dinner at Arwana with several of the workers. They didn't sit and talk with us though. Ohhh no.They performed for us! One group did a traditional dance. The other group sang/played music on instruments made from materials around the factories. They were both very good. During one of the songs by the second group they pulled a few of us from the crowd to dance with them. I was one of them and despite my better judgement I'll post a picture of us dancing below. We had a lot of fun hearing them and taking pictures afterwards. They were all very nice, fun-loving people and really seemed to enjoy working for Arwana. 
 
Showing them how Americans cut a rug
 
After thanking our hosts for a great tour and a fun-filled dinner we headed back to the hotel to rest up for our next day of joyous wonder here in Indonesia.
 
Thanks for your prayers for our safety and our ability to see God in new ways while we're here. Please keep sending them! Until next time, avid readers.
 
-Ben "Danger" Wyse


 


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