Saturday

Today we made visits to STM HKBP, the vocational technical school run by the HKBP church. The students learn skills in auto mechanics, computer maintenance, electricity, and machining. The students are about 15-18 years of age and attend classes Monday through Saturday. A few of the teachers took part in SALT 1 in 2006 and will be returning participants to the SALT 2 workshop next week.

We then went next door and visited the director, staff, and children at Elim Orphanage. Some of the children have lost both parents, others come from families who are too poor to care for their children. The children go to local schools and have chores to do on the orphanage campus every day. The orphanage does not seek to have the children placed for adoption because of the risk becoming child servants.

Late in the afternoon we visited a new Women's Crisis Center. This center is run by another Lutheran church body, the GKPS. This meeting was very informative as we discussed domestic violence in Indonesia and also brought our experience of the U.S. and Latin America. The role of the church to educate and enlighten not only the congregation, but also the clergy and the community was also discussed. The women we met will be attending the SALT workshop and will bring wonderful gifts of knowledge and experience to the workshop.

Once again it is raining, but it did hold off until after dinner. Tomorrow we will worship in 4 different congregations and bring greetings from the I-K Synod. In the afternoon, we will move to Samosir Island where we will have the SALT conference. We don't know what our internet access opportunities will be so you might not hear much from us this next week.

Blessings,
The SALT Team