Visit to the Orphanage

Part of Mom and Dad’s role at JICF is to head up the multiple ministries the church is involved in. As the Wacek kids were all planning our trip to Jakarta, we heard about some of these ministries and decided we wanted to visit a few of them. One that really piqued my interest was to visit an orphanage. As shown by my career choice, kids are my passion, and I thought it would be nice to provide some support to these children who probably do not receive much attention. So, mom got in contact with “her people” and we made plans to go on Friday, July 8. The lady who would be taking us, Lenny, asked if we’d be up for providing some sort of entertainment or craft for the kid. Since the four of us were blessed with the Wacek singing ability (which is worse than none), we opted for the craft idea. All through the week we brainstormed crafts that would be meaningful, easy, and nice enough not to get thrown away right when we left. Some ideas we came up with were macaroni or fruit art (which were both nixed because we figured there are too many people in poverty here for us to be ‘wasting’ food), tie dye t-shirts (too messy and not hands-on enough for the kids), bracelets (cliché), and picture frames (would possibly remind them of the families they didn’t have.. or that was Mom’s logic at least!). The winning idea was to make no-sew pillows with them.

Before we could go, though, we obviously needed materials. So on Thursday, Leah, Ben, and I went with our driver to a little hole-in-the-wall fabric store to get everything we would need. After struggling to pull out 3 HUGE rolls of fabric, the employees finally told us that there were sample swatches of each fabric roll hanging all over the shop, so we just had to point to what we wanted. They watched in amusement as we went through each one deliberating over whether or not it would be a good pick. As we calculated, recalculated, chose fabrics, measured, and changed our minds, etc, the employees were very gracious and never once got upset. Now, this could be because we were white and in a section of town where white people typically do NOT shop and they were in awe. Or, it could be because with our 27 meters of fabric, we were giving them more business than they’ve ever gotten. Whatever the reason, it made it easy to do business with them, especially when they gave us free bottled water... something that’s unheard of in Indonesia!

After we finally figured out how many boy patterns, girl patterns, young patterns, and old patterns were needed, it was time to buy the stuffing. Since none of us claim to be expert seamstresses, the concept of pillow stuffing was somewhat foreign to us. Additionally, since Indonesians operate in the metric scale (as Americans should!), when they asked us how many kilograms of stuffing we needed, we were completely clueless. Doing what any quick thinking twenty+ year olds would do, we decided we needed to make a sample, so we had them cut another half meter of fabric and started cutting, tying and stuffing. With our extremely accurate measurement of “3 handfuls for one pillow,” the employees somehow came to the conclusion that we needed 10 kilograms of stuffing. Not wanting to run out, we upped it to 12, and then were given 13. After we paid up and managed to get the HUGE bag of stuffing into the car, we walked next door to a stationary store to buy 25 pair of scissors and then went home.

In case anyone was wondering, THIS is what 13 kg of stuffing looks like.

Our prep job wasn’t done though, as the 27 yards now had to be cut into 2 ft by 2 ft squares to be handed out to the kids. Then, we had to cut out each of the 4 corners to allow the kids to tie them correctly. Thankfully, as mom always says, many hands make light work and we had everything ready before it was time for us to go to Young Adult Bible Study.

Getting ready to cut the fabric.. we just so happened to get two of my FAVORITE fabrics EVER. Man. U and America!!!

At 7:30 am the next day, we loaded everything in the car to try to get to the other side of town before 9. Turns out traffic is a lot less than we were expecting heading that way, that early on a Friday, so we made it before 8. Well, the mall doesn’t open until 10, and as soon as the driver found out we had an hour to waste, he took it to mean “please drive at 2 mph around the mall for the next hour.” Eventually, we found a coffee shop that was open (most of them open at 10 with the mall… a LITTLE different than in America!!) and hung out there until our escort arrived at 9:45.

When we got to the orphanage, we found out our escort wasn’t staying, so we quickly introduced ourselves and had her do whatever translating we needed and then we got right to work making pillows! It turned out to be the PERFECT craft because the directions were simple enough that we only had to give them once, it was easy enough that almost all of them could do it on their own (we had to make some for the infants and toddlers and help with tying for the 4-5 year olds, but otherwise they were all self-sufficient!) and the kids LOVED their final products! We knew they were practical, too, as soon as we finished making a Barney pillow for a little one-year-old, handed it to her, and she laid down and fell asleep on the tile floor in the middle of all the commotion!!

Turns out our calculations on materials was pretty much spot on. We had only a few pieces of fabric left over and almost the perfect amount of stuffing. (We ended up running out initially, but it’s only because each kid in the beginning was stuffing his or her pillow to the MAX. As soon as we said they needed to share, though, they gladly did so and each ended up with just the right amount!)

As they were finishing up their pillows, we handed out printed copies of Matthew 11:28 and through broken Indonesian I explained that these pillows were for physical rest, but God was the only source of true rest… hopefully they gathered SOMETHING from what I said. Then, Ben prayed and we sang 2 worship songs with them (they provided the guitarist and lead singers, thankfully!) and then we left. It was a really neat trip and we all left glad we got a chance to meet these kids, no matter how brief.