It\u2019s a Friday night, raining outside. The door is\u00a0open and the ratatat of rain blends with the soundtrack of the movie we\u2019re watching \u2014 Coach Carter. Samuel L. Jackson as a man who helps run-out-of-luck kids aim for their best life and isn\u2019t afraid to take the road less traveled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The boys highly anticipated movie night, like every week. Rikzar especially, who pokes us with questions throughout the week. \u2018Tonight, movie night?\u2019 he asks, a few words he has internalized, so he doesn\u2019t have to search for them or look to Alex, whose English is better. No Rikzar, not tonight, I mostly say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then movie night comes along again and we get the TV out of the way and move the couch to set up the projector. Almost every week five of us sit and wait while one finishes his dinner. Ferdi and Rikzar don\u2019t come home until after football practice,\u00a0passed 6:30 pm. So, we mostly wait for whichever one of them showers last. Then he joins and before we start the movie, we tease Sovian\u2014maybe this time it\u2019ll be one of those romantic movies he loves so much (it never is). Then we press play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ellis and I sit\u00a0with these four boys \u2014 Sovian (20), Alex (17), Rikzar (16) and Ferdi (16). We share, if not so much a house, then at least our daily lives with these kids. They live in the Free and Safe Transition Home and we live in the small annex next to it that used to be for the helpers, which it kind of still is. As we open our curtains in the morning, we see them getting ready for school or for chores or sometimes to join me on a morning run. We eat together; we teach them the few things we know \u2014 English, computer, public speaking, Bible \u2014 and we hang out, play sports or catch a movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As Coach Carter, on-screen, demands his pupils to study harder because he desires them to live their best lives, I feel strangely connected. I watch four boys watching a movie, boys who we\u2019ve only known for a month and a half, and I want them to grow up to become examples of love and kindness and perseverance and strength and I catch myself thinking these things and wonder what on earth is going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Ellis and I went off on our never-ending honeymoon to help charities around the world, we never imagined this. We imagined we would keep going and going instead of seeing so many possibilities in places that we wanted to do more \u2014 to stay longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It happened in Estonia, it happened in Mozambique, and it happened here, in Bandung, Indonesia.\u00a0
Due to plans \u2014 darn them! \u2014 we couldn\u2019t stay in either Estonia or Mozambique, but we could in Indonesia and so we did. Though not in a million years did\u00a0I imagine boys like this to come along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I assumed we would work some and carry on, but here we are \u2014 it\u2019s Friday night and I\u2019m not in a bar as I have been on most of my Fridays. No, I\u2019m watching a movie, skipping the risky stuff because the boys put hands over their eyes\u00a0anyway, I\u2019m teasing Alex because he has fallen asleep again, I see how Rikzar looks at me to check if I\u2019m laughing, and we hoot and holler when someone in the movie\u00a0slam-dunks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We never thought we would be here, but we\u2019re glad we are.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every Friday night we sit down for movie night, with the four boys who live with us. <\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46,29,45,47],"countries":[27],"class_list":["post-2071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-category-journal","tag-bandung","tag-free-and-safe","tag-indonesia","tag-movie-night","countries-indonesia"],"yoast_head":"\n