To bribe, or not to bribe

As if our troubles on the way to Malaysia this month weren't enough, our next leg of our Asia tour was even more fun.

We arrived in Jakarta Saturday night the 24th and had to pass through the same two hoops as a week earlier on our way through to Malaysia: buying a visa, and passport control. Since the lines had been so slow the last time, I sent Diana and the kids on ahead to the passport line while I got the visas. But there was a small problem with Kerith's passport - it had no more free pages in it that were usable for visas. The agent directed me to follow him to another agent, who led me into a holding room. I was too far away from Diana to explain what was going on, but I just told her, and I believed, that it was a minor matter that they just had to figure out how to resolve. I motioned for her to just stay in line, and let one person at a time go ahead of her so she would always be in front.

The officer (by the name of Rizky) came and sat with me and asked if I understood the situation. His next question set us on a bad start: was it OK if they just left Kerith outside Indonesia? Hardly, I explained; we're talking about a little boy, and we're talking about a 2 week visit.

The problem was that when Russian immigration officials had given him his residency permit (which is written by hand), they messed his up, and so they just wrote through it MISTAKE, and started over on another page. So he had fewer pages than the other kids. I carefully explained that he could just cover that page, or he was welcome to use another pages dedicated to endorsements (whatever that is) which we never use. Well, neither of those options suited him, as he could (apparently) get in big trouble for using the wrong page. Who would get him in trouble seemed to change. At first, it was Russia. I laughed at the thought and carefully explained that they would never look for a page that didn't need to exist. Then he said that the US could come back and complain (I knocked that one down too), but he settled on Indonesia as his final answer. He could get in trouble with them (who, his supervisors?) if they saw that he used the wrong page. And the fine for such a thing would be over $2500 (25,000,000RP).

I saw where this was going, so I started playing dumb and slowing things down as much as possible. Ironically, although Russia is considered among the most corrupt countries in the world, I have never experienced the option of solving my problems through bribery there, so I was flying by the seat of my pants.

Rizky: I am taking a big chance here, but I can help you if you help me.
Me: I sure don't want you to get in trouble. What can I do to help protect you?
Rizky: I can talk to my supervisor if you can give me some money.
Me: Money? I have no money.
R: We have an ATM.
Me: Maybe we can write a letter together?
R: Need money. Don't you understand?
Me: No, I don't. (I go into all the options for stamping the passport again.)
R: (slowly going through the passport again. I can tell he is wavering. This is becoming too much work, and I'm a pretty sad case. I pray feverishly for God to open that door wider) It's too risky.
Me: (wondering what happens to the risk in the presence of money) How much are we talking? You need $2500?
R: No, just enough to make agreement with my supervisor.
Me: How much?
R: You agree, and I go talk numbers with him.
Me: (starting to falter) Is $100 enough?
R: That's not even close.
Me: (looking pained, troubled, and confused)
R: You don't understand?
Me: No.
R: I don't understand either (implied: I don't understand why you are such an idiot that you don't get what I'm trying to do here.)
[Supervisor steps in.]
S: Is it our problem that you didn't check your passport before coming here?
Me: You changed your laws, and none of my contacts knew about it, so we had to get another visa last week for a 5 hour stay.
S: That's not my problem. Look, none of us will have any problems if we just let you all leave the country.
Me: Let me talk with my wife (I've kept her in line all this time, not wanting to have to stress her out over this, but I don't see an out yet.)
R: You need your wife's approval to spend money?
Me: We do everything by agreement.
R: You can't do this without her?
Me: No can do. Let me bring her in.
R: OK.

Diana decides to bring all the kids in and leave the line. She tells him about the person here to pick us up. He perks up at the knowledge that she is Indonesian, so he gives us his phone. We get Memey, our main contact person, on the phone, who starts to negotiate with Rizky. A ray of hope. They agree to have Lita, the one there to pick us up, come talk with him. Honestly, I don't think I could have done this without Diana's strength. She was amazingly placid and determined to see this through.

For some reason, this takes another 20 minutes. Meanwhile, Rizky has nothing better to do, and he starts playing Connect 4 with Simon. The Supervisor comes in and brings us all water and offers to buy us food. He comes back later with hot dogs and fries for all the kids. Bizarre. I step into the adjacent room to pray. Whereas the holding room we were in was small with chair railing covered in burns from cigarettes, this room is much larger, dim, and empty, except for a desk and portraits of the President and Vice-Presidents of Indonesia. My prayer was essentially this:

"All authority belongs to you, Lord, so these guys ultimately answer to you. I want to preserve integrity in this situation, rather than playing into their scheme, but I have no idea how, so I'll just rely on Your authority to resolve this."

The Presidents didn't seem to mind me there, but Lydia was afraid because I was praying loudly, and she didn't want any bugs to pick it up, so I agreed to take my prayers undercover.

Finally, Lita arrives. For some reason, she knows nothing of Memey's negotiations, so we are back to square one, and she doesn't get very far. Diana has the idea of calling the US Embassy, and not only does she have the number on her, but she actually gets a real person. It's Saturday at 9:30pm.

I explained to John, the on-duty guy, the situation, and he asked to speak to Rizky. The pohone changed hands several times, and along the way I found out that John actually had never heard of this happening and had no idea what to do. All he could say was, 'If this guy is trying to shake you down, then we have an issue here. I'll be sure to look him up on Monday." I eventually suggested that John give him the authority, from the US government, to put the visa on the endorsement page (which I have since learned doesn't have to be a big deal). John's response was, "hey, whatever I can do to be of help." I passed the phone one last time, and they struck a deal. Both took down each other's contact information to hold them accountable.

They took Diana and I into their war room and photographed and fingerprinted each of us. Rizky then gave us a warning about taking care of this problem and not doing this to them again. I responded graciously, adding, "That would be risky for Rizky, wouldn't it?" He smiled.

Yucky trip, hopeful trip

We arrived today in Langkawi, Malaysia, for our missions once-every-four-years worldwide conference. There must be some great things in store, because I would hate to have experienced what we did to get here in vain:

• 5 flights over 44 hours
• having to completely start over, rechecking all our luggage 4 of the 5 times
• kids at times in tears from exhaustion
• a crisis at almost every step:
• the 1st flight was so delayed we feared we'd miss the connection
• the 2nd flight was in jeopardy from the fact that we couldn't produce the credit card I used to buy the flight a few months ago before it was stolen. Finally a nice supervisor intervened.
• after the 3rd flight we had to pay $125 for visas since we would be in the country for 5 hour, one hour longer than the maximum allowed without.
• between getting visas and getting through passport control, it took us 2.5 hours to just get in the country (Indonesia), eating precious time out of our brief respite in a hotel (which a kind anonymous to us person paid for. We lay down at 1:15am, and had to get up at 3:45.
• our 4th flight was tainted by the fear that we had just found out that we would likely not make our 5th flight, as the airline didn't think we had allowed enough time to transfer, even though booked it thinking that doing so between the same airline in the same terminal was safe in one hour. But no, they don't check the bags through. We'd have to get them all and start over.
• when we arrived, with 55 minutes to spare, I sprinted ahead of the family, passing a couple hundred people walking to passport control and made it first in line. Then I ran to the other end of the terminal and checked into the next flight, hoping that they would hold on for the rest of the family since I was there. The lady was nice but told me that the computer would close down check-in automatically in 10 minutes - a half hour out from the flight. I ran all the way backwards through customs to baggage claim, where the rest of the family was waiting for the baggage (they had run past most of the 200 people too), just now starting to come out. I then sent all of them ahead to sprint to check-in, while I waited for the baggage. I then piled all 9 bags up on a cart and made the journey across the airport a 3rd time alone, literally threw all the bags through the electronic scanning machine, re-piled the cart, and ran across the hall with it to check-in, where the agent was waiting for me.

Jesus is good. We are here. We laughed; cried. And so expectations are high for this week. It's beautiful here. Pics later.

A local adoption woe

I've had an amazing number of letters responding to my recent newsletter on the crisis in Russian adoptions. As I've written back sometimes, it's a blessing that God is bringing these issues to the surface so that His Body can cry out for a breakthrough.

Here is one of these letters, which I thought I would post, since it is from a family who actually adopted from the very orphanage that is near our apartment, where we all (especially Diana) have volunteered.

Thank you so much for writing these insights and your progress, as we so much appreciate it. We continue to pray for you. We, like so many, adopted our daughter from Orphanage 46 ten years ago. Sadly we have had the same issues and all the adoptive parents from our church have experienced similar issues. Ours recently ended with our daughter running away on her 18th birthday, just 7 weeks ago. We showered her with Godly love, with many late nights of crying and instruction, and many attempts toward Godly counseling. Our family was subjected to her daily lies, deceit, and she was more than just a strong willed child. We observed many dangerous and destructive behaviors. The sneaking around on the internet (outside of our home) and what she did on it was the biggest struggle. She could be anyone she wanted and seek attention. We love her so much, but now she is in a situation where the people she is staying with do not understand her behaviors, her distructive tendancies, and the daily communication and accountability she needs. Please pray for us. The terrible lies, the pictures we see of her that are not even close to being appropriate, and the many things she has done....is not nearly as hurtful as her comments such as, "It's okay they are not my real parents anyway...and I never really loved them anyways." We know God has a plan for our daughter, but we are struggling to see his purpose right now, as we believe she is in a unsafe situation, but the people she is staying with have cut off all communication with us. We are praying for her safety, that God would reveal Himself to her, and would show her the love that she needs so desparately in her life. Although there were so many ups and downs over the past 10 years with our daughter, we truly continue to love her. Please pray for her, us, and we will continue praying for your ministry and that the bondage of sin on these children will be broken.

If that doesn't motivate us to press on, then I don't know what will.

Renovating with Yuri

I went with Yuri today to his house to finally see this place he has been so feverishly working on for the last several weeks. What's an orphan doing with a house, you ask? Don't be so hasty. This is the house (duplex) that he, his sister, and mother lived in before the family was broken up. It's been abandoned for 10 years, though, after a fire left it unlivable. Now his mother lives elsewhere, and after his hazing incident at the dorm, Yuri is keen to reclaim that territory for his own again.

The setting is really pleasant - well beyond the city limits, in a residential setting with single family homes with gardens and rolling hills. His home is wooden with 2 rooms and a kitchen (would that I had taken my camera), and it's a bad as you could imagine after being neglected for so long. Yuri has been a hero, putting in countless hours cleaning and fixing it up, but it's a huge job, and it was hard for me to be excited about it, since it's not like it's going to look all that great (given the poor quality it was built in) when it's done since he has so little to put into it.

On the way there we stopped at a trash heap where he often goes to look for glass for his windows and other goods. No luck today. Our time at the home was spent on spackling walls that have no prayer of ever being straight and Yuri putting wall paper over them. Russians hardly ever paint, and one reason is that they have so much to cover over that it would never look good to do so. The key is really thick wall paper, and he has done a nice job under the circumstances. In fact, I'm proud of him. Then we worked on the entrance way, taking off eight layers of former wall paper. Yuri estimates the age of the home at 40 years, and with 10 years empty, that's quite a track record!

He hopes to be able to move in in a month, but beyond the walls, there is no electricity, water, sinks, or toilets in there. But he's my hero for his tenacity and vision. I just wanted to give some moral support to my young mentee. It was good male bonding time.

Restoration House

Something I've always liked doing is getting out in the community to meet new (to me) ministries. I don't do nearly enough, but I have extra motivation with my new role at MIR. Just Monday, I found out about a ministry well outside the city that serves much the same population as the Harbor - post orphanage graduates, yet not really the same kinds of kids at all. There are three levels of orphanage graduates.

1. High functioning kids take care of themselves (a tiny minority).
2. The Harbor targets the middle strata, able to function at a minimal level, with some motivation to thrive in life. These are the kids I have worked most with to date.
3. Restoration House goes for the kids who end up on the streets because they have failed to navigate the challenges of life after the orphanage.

We are talking about highly dysfunctional kids, who have NO independent living skills, who usually (maybe even always) live on the streets, and who usually are addicted to something, most likely sniffing, which causes permanent brain damage in a way that no other drug does.

I spent several hours with Olga (left) who founded Restoration House (pictured above) and runs it to this day. What was most encouraging about their work (beyond the incredible devotion and sacrifices the staff live out) is the openness they report these kids have to the gospel. In contrast to the average kid at the Harbor, these kids seem to have a greater sense of their need for God, for help, for transformation, and they seem to be more in touch with spiritual world.

Olga had two requests of me: they are desperately seeking a camp where they can take the kids this July when a team from Oklahoma is coming to help lead. There are a lot of camps around, but they are all booked or too expensive. Already I could help by putting them in touch with the contact person at MIR's Camp Elama, which she had never heard of.

Her second request was for a space in the city for kids to gather for a Bible study. I was frankly amazed to think that these youth would actually want to attend a Bible study, despite what she had explained above, but the other issue is their palpable need for relationship and love.

I'll get on that.

Dorm life ain't no party

Yuri showed up for his weekly visit the other day. Only he didn't look well: two black eyes that proved a violent confrontation had befallen him. He had just that day come out of the hospital after nearly a week there! The reason: a couple of fellow students had come to pay him a visit and ask to play his guitar. When he refused, they put him in his place, as it were - beating him for an hour and a half! He didn't go to the hospital until the next day, and never called us!

Boy, was I in for an education. What Yuri experienced is called дедовщина (dyedovshina), a term normally reserved for the way new army recruits are hazed by the older cadets. It turns out it's also practiced (according to Luba at the Harbor) in 98% of all male dorms, and 97% of even female dorms. This from a research proposal I found online (through Google translation):

Dorms, to some extent, became the main feature of the "socialist way of life", they formed a special subculture, which has many varieties. It is not only criminal subculture gulag barracks, but also a subculture of communal dormitory and "great construction projects of communism", a subculture in a secure dorm limitchik urban subculture of military barracks, barracks for the temporary accommodation of agricultural seasonal workers, a subculture of student dormitory, etc. During the years of Soviet power grew, and brought up more than one generation of people who had no hearth and home, past and communal dormitories, having learned their language, customs, values, norms of behavior, the twisted psychology of interpersonal and intergroup relations.

Dorms have always been a zone of high crime rates, special kinds of immoral behavior (alcoholism, drug addiction, substance abuse, sexual promiscuity, profanity, etc.). This applies to vocational school dorms. With the crisis experienced by our society, the decline in the economy, with increasing migration, decline in living standards for people subculture hostel PTU (vocational schools) has a strong further advance in the direction of criminalization. Overcoming the effects of this particular subculture on the behavior of individuals and groups, its decriminalization, the formation of humanistic subculture of young people living in dormitories PTU - these are tasks that must be addressed.

So did Yuri go to the police? No way. He explained that since these guys had a record, they would be arrested, and then their friends (they are from the Caucuses where nationalist loyalties are really high) would come and possibly kill him. The dorm "commander" found out about the incident, but Yuri told her that everything is OK. She knew the deal, and told him not to be afraid. Somehow she has the bullies under threat without jeopardizing Yuri's safety either. Thankfully, she cared enough to intervene.

Luba told me that they had warned Yuri when he left the Harbor a year ago about this kind of thing. As a weak guy with no experience in defending himself (having grown up in a Christian orphanage), he was a rather poor candidate for going to such an environment. But he insisted. Wanted his independence and a free place to stay. I guess we should be amazed he lasted this long! Pray for his safety. If this continues, he will have to consider leaving not only the dorm, but school altogether, as he would have to go earn a living to pay for a place to stay. Diana and I would likely offer our place if there were no other options.

First day on the job

As I reported recently, I've been asked to serve on the board of a local ministry, MIR, who serves other ministries in the city be providing administrative services, program help, and connections with Western volunteers. Here is a summary of my first day (April 20th) going in to see how I could help:

I met first with Tanya, the coordinator of a program that they do with a ministry called New Horizons to provide host families for orphans for a month in the states. I had no ideas initially what I wanted to know from Tanya, so I just asked questions and followed my curiosity. What came out was that getting permission from orphanage directors and the related organs of authority is getting more and more complicated, so she would love to see more help making those connections. OK. File that away.

I then met with the executive director, Masha Oshkina, to follow my curiosity some for the same purpose. It happened that one of the leaders of New Horizons was there in the office at the time, being in the country to adopt a child himself. She introduced us, and I started peppering him with questions about them and how they work, and what they need. Come to find out they could place more kids in host homes (done in the summer and the winter) if there were more kids available. "Could you front some of that money to free up staff to find more kids?" He wanted to know how much. I gave him a monthly figure, and he thought it was do-able. "Give us a proposal, and I'll check on it meanwhile," he answered.

Masha, Tanya, and I had ourselves a project. Now, this was not a complicated deal I made, but what I want to point out are a few key elements here:

1. For some reason, this had never occurred to anyone else.This is a gift of our American culture - thinking outside the box. Masha and her husband (who is developing this project and will run it) actually do think creatively, I might add. They are proving a delight to work with.
2. Even if they had thought of it, the idea of so aggressively putting it into a proposal like I did sometimes doesn't happen. Plus, as the recipients of such help, they can feel in the lower position (though Westerners don't want them to feel this way, and I'm not saying they did in this case).
3. Although this isn't that formal a process, the Americans need the proposal in a form that addresses their needs and concerns. Americans have a specific way they want proposals to look, and it just takes some learning. Masha and Tanya immediately went to work and put together some great reports, and then I helped them understand what is wanted from the other side. I have a lot of experience in grant writing and grant reviewing, so...
4. This was pretty much a God day, confirming that He has sent me in this direction.