Street Stories - A Ringside Seat To Over 4 Decades Of Taking Jesus To The Streets Of The World

Within a couple of days, we gathered at the gate at Tom Bradley International Terminal in Los Angeles on our way to Indonesia. We were looking forward to meeting Pastor Steve and Detty Laidlow and planning a strategy together to reach out to the earthquake victims, finding ways we could offer disaster relief to them. After flying 19 hours and 45 minutes, we landed at the Soekarno-Hatta Airport in Jakarta. We were praying because we could not get approved Visas in advance of our trip to enter Indonesia from America. We were believing God to be given “on arrival ” visas that would allow us to enter Indonesia. That would have been a very long flight back home to America if our “on arrival ” visas had been denied. But as always, God was faithful to go before us and give us His favor and our team was granted visas to enter the country. As the immigration gentleman handed me my visa and stamped my passport, I noticed a stark sign posted inside the airline terminal. The sign warned that if you are caught in Indonesia with drugs or pornography, the sentence was the death penalty. I didn’t realize Indonesia was so strict regarding the punishment for their laws being broken. I also had not realized that Indonesia is the 4 th largest populated nation in the world with 18,000 islands. I also had not realized until we arrived there that Indonesia is the largest practicing Muslim country in the world. Later during our disaster relief trip, this fact would be brought to my attention in a way more real than I could have ever imagined.

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