I had traveled this far for the chance to meet two particular young people: Anton Ariwajaya and Kustari Kustami. Over the last few years, George and I have been privileged to meet thousands of people around the U.S. Admittedly, there is trepidation every night about meeting new people. "Will they like us?" "Will they throw us off the stage?" But I have not generally worried that we would be perceived as staggeringly rich. Quite the contrary, I imagine we are frequently seen as two guys who can't even sell enough CD's to afford a razor to shave our faces or to buy shiny black "real" shoes to wear in the concerts. On this particular occasion, though, I was having a difficult time playing the role of the guy being driven through the crowds outside the hotel, which in that setting was palatial but might, in any US city, be compared to a Holiday Inn.

When I was in college, long before George and I rode our bicycles around the USA, long before LOST AND FOUND, before "Oh them lions..." or "...nobody calls her baby..." I decided to sponsor a child through Compassion International. I sent in a postcard and asked for a child packet to begin sponsorship for $18 per month. It was, at the time, honestly kind of debatable whether or not I could come up with $18 per month on my state-university-student budget, but it always seemed to happen. I began exchanging letters with a kid in Indonesia and I kept his photo in my dorm room. He was very young at the time and I would send letters which were like notes of greetings and he would send me literal "letters," or characters from the alphabet scribbled on the back of the Compassion-supplied paper. Some of the other students from my dormitory saw his picture and also decided to sponsor kids. Receiving his "letters" at school and looking them over in the library study rooms when I was supposed to be solving simultaneous equations or gathering bibliographic information, I would try to imagine what Indonesia was like, what life must be for Anton Ariwajaya and how eighteen dollars a month could possibly make any difference. Not one time, during those late nights at the library, did I imagine that I would travel to Indonesia one day, and meet Anton face to face or spend an afternoon visiting his school and chatting with his family in their home.

Last summer, the nice folks at Compassion International told me they were making a trip to Indonesia and that I could go along to visit Anton. After a brief shuffling of the concert schedule I was able to go on the trip. My friends Taryn and Doug in Los Angeles also sponsor a child in Indonesia-Kustari Kustami-and I thought perhaps I could see her too and bring greetings or gather photos.

I met Kustari one morning at the hotel in Semaraang. She arrived with her mom, her teacher, and her little sister. She was dressed in her fanciest outfit-the dress she had received last Christmas through her Compassion project. I went out to the mall the night before meeting her and gathered some gifts my friends wanted her to have: a watch, a couple full outfits of clothes, shoes, hair berets, colored pencils, paper to draw on and a few other odd fun items. This all cost right around ten dollars. Then, in the morning, she arrived. Sweating and nervous, I haltingly offered greetings. Check out the picture and you'll understand how easily I was charmed by this beautiful, ebullient nine-year-old from a village on the other side of the planet. What I didn't know until we spent the morning becoming acquainted was this: she is one of the lucky few in her area. Because of Compassion International, she has the chance to go to school. Through her school she gets all kinds of other benefits like basic health care and what they call "nutritional opportunities" (what you and I call "food"). Because of attending this school she will have chances at a life that would otherwise be far beyond her reach and her benefits will impact her children one day, her grandchildren, and her entire community. She rides her bicycle by herself one hour each way to and from school each day. She leaves her home at 6:00am. Afterall, she's nine. And she feels very very blessed for the chance to have this transportation. Her father is lucky to have a job as a trash collector for which he gets paid by the state some small amount of money each week--out of which, her teacher reports, the family is able to save enough to pay their share of Kustari's tuition at the school. Here is what I wanted to tell you: Kustari's tuition is 12,000 Indonesian Rupias per month. The family is required to pay 20% of the tuition so that they have "ownership" and participation in the educational opportunity for her. Compassion pays the remainder. Get this-one US dollar can purchase 8,000 Indonesian Rupias. Now suddenly, all that higher math from college comes in handy. Her tuition is about $1.50 per month. Her family's share is about thirty cents. And they feel lucky to be able to raise it and give her a chance at a better life. I'm not sure what else to say except this: I no longer have to wonder how $18 could have made a difference.

Later that afternoon, I went to the Salvation Army school where Anton is a student. After a few minutes of confusion I was introduced to him. At first, to be perfectly honest, I did not recognize him. He was so much bigger than I recalled from the photos. I guess it was a lot like seeing one's friends' kids after a few years away and thinking, "Could that possibly be the same kid?" He had really grown up. Pretty soon it became quite obvious that he was the same kid whose picture I had at college when he was just five years old and whose photos I had been receiving periodically for years after that. Here was the young man who always wrote to me, "Dear Mister Michael D Bridges." After years of his letters and joking about his use of my full name rather than something like "Dear Michael," I sort of started going by this full name all the time. Here was the kid who would write quite casually to me, "the floods have overcome my village," or, "the people are working at the rice fields," giving me what felt like my own personal National Geographic report. And here I was standing with him at his school meeting his friends and teachers, and-forced by my Compassion International friends-singing, "Oh them lions..." to them.

After visiting his school, we drove nearly one hour to see his home and meet his family. Oddly, I thought, he lives an hour drive away from school in a very crowed place, not exactly rural. It turns out that his family has had to move. Formerly they did live near the school, with Anton's grandmother. She, however, had a debt she could not pay and the house was taken from them. They now live in a "squatter's" area an hour away from their old home and from the school. Anton's father drives a "bus" or, what we might call a minivan for employment and is able to drive Anton to the school each morning before dawn when he begins making his rounds. We got to the home and attracted quite a crowd of neighbors. We sat in the front room of the three-room place. We talked and I gave Anton the gift I had brought for him: a Swiss Army watch like the one I wear. I also brought him a LOST AND FOUND shirt. He showed me around the house and demonstrated the use of the well, which is in the third of the three rooms. Living in the house with Anton is his brother (older) and his mother and father and grandmother. Only his father is able to find employment and bring any money into the family. It was an amazing opportunity just to see the place and to be with them. Here is what I want to tell you: meeting Anton's mom, she told me that Compassion sponsorship makes the difference for Anton between a hopeless future and a chance at an education and a real job. Along with this "real job," Anton might have the chance one day to provide for a family and to alter the face of his village and community. What I am perhaps most amazed by is that Compassion International is the kind of organization that would allow me to visit the child I have been sponsoring. That I showed up at his house and he and his teachers and his family all agreed: Compassion International works and makes a positive difference in his life. I was even amazed by the most basic things: he actually gets my letters, he really knew who I was and he was honestly grateful for the sponsorship relationship. I don't know what I was thinking. Perhaps somewhere in the back of my mind I am always skeptical until I can see things like this working. But there I was in the crowded front room of a home in a squatter's village in Indonesia with the kid from the photos I get from Compassion.

Later in the afternoon or evening Anton and I (together with his school principal and the folks from Compassion) went back to the center of the city and we took photos of ourselves together in a coin-operated photo booth at the mall. We watched a movie at the theater, which was something Anton had never done before. I was able to get Anton a soccer ball from a sporting goods store and a frame for the photo-booth photos. We had dinner at the hotel and chatted like old friends before he headed back to his home with the teacher who had accompanied him around midnight! By the time he left I was already feeling like I would miss this friend. And I will.

As I wrote earlier, I never expected to be in Indonesia. Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world and is about as far away from the US as anyplace not requiring a spaceship to visit. Indonesia is a group of thousands of islands, the largest of which is called Java. Yeah, as in coffee. Oddly, though, it did not put me in mind of any of the trendy haunts in Minneapolis or Los Angeles where one might see the word "java" in Neon. Except in this way: at times I was a bit ashamed that some of those other places called "java" are among my favorite hang outs. Like I wrote, Indonesia is about as far away from the US as anyplace. It is a place where (forgive me the use of the clichÈ reference to the "price of a cup of coffee a day," but it somehow seems apt here) the money I spend on a single specialty coffee drink in the US can be used to send one of the kids I met to school for ten months. Unless I get the extra shot of hazelnut--that kind of money would last for an entire year.

I'm sorry to be so harsh. I really am. Quite honestly, I just don't know how to reconcile it all. I'm not sure how to live with this knowledge and, frankly, I'm not sure how fair or valuable it is to lay it on you when you are simply trying to read the band newsletter. I have to tell you the truth. My life has been changed, I really think it has been, by visits to Peru, India, and, most recently, Indonesia. But I am still getting those specialty coffees. What does that say about me? What about, "...what I have done and what I have left undone...." What about the tee shirt I am wearing from the GAP outlet store, or the jeans, the running shoes, the kids who make them? I am awestruck by my brokeness, speechless over the width of the chasm between me and what is right, pure, or holy. Makes me glad for the Savior, that's for sure. Makes me want to cling to the cross, rely on God's grace. Makes me marvel at mercy wider than the distance between me and what I want to be, wider than the distance between me and what God wants me to be. Mercy, whose name is Jesus, that means God loves me-even me: filling again the thirty-gallon gas tank of the $21,000 van we tour in, clad in a J Crew sweater, holding a cup of Starbucks coffee. Obviously, God loves me not for anything I have done but because of God's Word of Love whose name is Jesus. One other thing: He loves you too.

I suppose it took me eight weeks since my trip to Indonesia to write this letter about it because I just didn't know what to say. I still have no answers to what I saw and experienced. I am, like I wrote above, humbled anew by the mercy and love of God. One thing I am constantly in mind of at this time of year is how this trip magnifies the true meanings of the holiday season-Thanksgiving is a remarkable understatement, and Christmas, well, thanks be to God for the Savior, another vast understatement. I pray it more fervently this year when we sing on this Christmas tour, "...make your blessings flow far as the curse is found," or, ".... cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today."

I am moved to marvel at God's mercy and I am reminded to cling to the cross of Christ.

It is a hard problem trying to reconcile our personal plenty with the poverty of our world. The one thing, the one glimmer of hope I can offer you is this: go ahead and sponsor a child through Compassion International. These days it costs $24 per month rather than the $18 it was when I began sponsorship. Here's why you should sponsor a child: 1.) your sponsorship literally saves a person's life; 2.) this sponsorship will change things for your child's children and grandchildren and entire community in the future; 3.) it makes the world a better place; 4.) people get to hear the Good News of God's love in Christ; 5.) the sponsorship relationship will change your life. I think I'll stop at five reasons but there are many more. If you already sponsor a child, take a chance and sponsor a second child. Sign up and ask your youth group to be the sponsor. Take this on as a family project. Let this be they way your family celebrates Christmas. Make it possible for every individual in your family to sponsor a child and to develop this ongoing personal relationship with a person in great need.

Come to one of our Christmas shows this month and sign up to sponsor a child. Even if you can't stay for the hour-long show, just stop by and sign up to be a Compassion sponsor. We will have a table with child packets set up each night. If we are not coming to your area, e-mail us back today and we will send you one of the child packets we have at the Christmas tour. Participate with us in that way as we proclaim together this month, "He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found."

Peace and Christmas Greetings,

Michael

Go back to the November 1999 Newsletter.

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