The Forerunner Times

"A life journal by Nathan J. Elias, called under God's grace to be His forerunner and restorer for His glory."

What can a man do given 40 days of time?

Moses communed with the LORD for 40 days on the top of the mountain and returned thereafter with the tablets of Ten Commandments in his hands (Exodus 24:18). After he broke the first tablets during the Golden Calf incident, he went up to the mountain for another 40 days to extinguish the Lord’s anger and get the second set of tablets (Exodus 34:28).

After being strengthened by the food sent to him by an angel, Elijah travelled for 40 days to the mount Horeb, the mountain of God, where he met God not in the wind, not in the earthquake and not in the fire, but in a gentle whisper. Afterwards, he called Elisha to succeed him as a prophet (1 Kings 19).

Jesus fasted for 40 days in the desert in preparation for His ministry. During this time He confronted the three temptations of the devil and successfully conquered them. After His ressurection, He spent another 40 days to show Himself and appear to many of His disciples to teach them about the kingdom of God and prepare them to spread the Gospel (thus begins the Acts of the Apostles).

What did I do in the last 40 days?

After giving a testimony in front of the congregation during the Easter Sunday on March 23rd (where I shared a condensed version of my previous articles, “What Could I Do When The Lord Passed By?” and “Do I Know You?”), I fell back from the light and spent my days in the darkness. No more prayers, no more times of devotions. Only anguish and hate towards others that remains in me, devoid of all love and peace within. No more connection with the Lord, no more conversations. There is only me and my pile of work that never seems to end, occupying my time and my worry as each day passed by.

This will have to change tomorrow, when once again we will be remembering the Ascension of Jesus. Let my spirit also ascend once more to honor and glorify the Lord. I sensed that my community in CMC has also lost the flame, as the hordes of assignments and exams has led to less meetings and less commitment of continuity and unity. I plan to take some lessons from CMC’s “Faith Project” such as having a prayer chain in the community. As most of us use StarOne with call rates of Rp 19/minute this shouldn’t be hard to do as long as the commitment is there.

I must begin to find my place in this community and make it grow, no longer being only an observer but now starting to take part in its growth. For too long have I remained stagnant, now I must move on with faith and willingness to obey and serve the Lord’s wishes. I must start to give new ideas and new plans to make it grow. I pray to the Lord that this community will regain its strength and commitment to once again fervently serve the Lord. This is my commitment to you, oh God, please let me be Your salt and light in this place, be a candle that shines in the dark whenever the light starts to fade away and the darkness comes to take its place.

“Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness:
but a faithful (Greek: trustful) man who can find?”
(Proverbs 20:6, King James Version)

These weeks I have been so busy traveling around East Java to promote my HP products for the government education programmes such as DAK, BOS or BIS SSN. One week I’m in Lumajang, another week I’m in Jember and today I just returned from Mojokerto to present my company’s proposal to several school headmasters and headmistresses. After conversing and having dialogues with many of them, I can seem to find one particular virtue that is missing from today’s people and especially business people: TRUST.

Having traveled to three places already, I can see that all of them are interested in what I offer in my presentation, but they seem unable to trust me because they have been deceived before by others. Previously, others have come to them with a similar offer to mine, and they accepted. This is where the problem started for them and usually the lies from the other companies came in these categories:

1. They fail to deliver the amount of goods they promised
Let’s say that the support given by the government to each school is enough to purchase 20 units of PCs and so they ordered 20 units from these companies. The company did not send all 20 units in one delivery but they said they will do so in two or three deliveries. But after the first delivery, the company just vanished without a trace and so the order was left incomplete. Not only will the schools suffer a loss of money, but their headmasters will also face probes for corruption. If they spent the money to buy 20 units, but only have let’s say 10 units at the time the goverment surveys the schools, of course the government will question where did the rest of the money go. And in this case, since the company is gone happily, the schools are the ones who will face the charges of corruption.

2. The goods don’t match the specifications in the agreement
Another case of companies who sold lies for their own profits. Since the headmasters are not well-versed in terms of computer technicalities, these companies think that it would be so easy to fool these headmasters. They promised to give goods with a certain specification but in the end they replaced the contents of the PCs with lower-spec components, such as replacing a Pentium Dual Core (Exxxx) with a Celeron or Pentium D, or installing less RAM than originally promised. And guess who will be in trouble when the goverment’s anti-corruption team comes knocking? Poor headmasters and poor students. Even if the headmasters are not charged with corruption, the students will be the ones suffering from this practice, because they’ll get lower spec PCs than originally intended and thus they will not be able to use the PCs as efficient as originally intended (it will definitely be slower).

3. They fail to deliver the warranty promised for the goods
Again, poor headmasters and poor students should this happen. These companies usually only offer store warranty, not vendor-supported warranty. And guess what, since these companies usually come from a different city than where the schools are located (let’s say the company is from Surabaya while the school is in Jember), the company can just vanish or give a fake address and the school won’t be able to trace it. So if the PCs get broken, poor them, no warranty and they have to send it somewhere else for repairs, and of course they’ll be charged for it.

After knowing these issues they face, I feel that it is my place and my duty to become a good and truthful businessman that can be trusted and will become a blessing for them. I made them a commitment to send all the items in one go to eliminate the first issue. And as I am a Premier Business Partner and Master Dealer of HP Indonesia, I guarantee them that all my goods and softwares will be original and true to the specifications. This eliminates the second issue and assures them that they would have no problems when the government team comes for a survey.

For the third issue, my position as both a Master Dealer and Authorized Service Partner of HP Indonesia grants my company with the ability to handle all services for HP products in Surabaya and East Indonesia. Thus, if they have any issues with the PCs they can just send it back to my company and I will handle it for them. In addition, HP products come with a nationwide warranty, and HP have more than 25 service centres all around Indonesia that can handle these issues, so they can just send their PCs to any service centre that is nearest to them and the warranty will still be valid - it’s not just valid in my company, but nationwide. This makes it easy for them if, let’s say, they buy a laptop and they are having issues with it while they are on a trip to another city. They can just deliver it to the nearest service centre and they’ll have it fixed in no time.

It is my wish that I can be a blessing for others in my business, not just in it for the money, but also seeking to grant them peace and happiness by what I offer. Giving them the right solution to every problem they seek, the right answer to every question they have. May God use me more and more to be a blessing in this aspect of my life.

Just a quick poll to freshen things up. I’m so busy that I haven’t had the time to update lately. Maybe soon I will continue to write some more interesting articles for you. For now, this will have to do.

Just so you know, I vote for Chelsea