Travis Duerksen ’12 (right) is on a year-long voluntary service term at JKI Maranatha Church in Ungaran, Indonesia. Duerksen is a digital media specialist with the church, pictured here with others attending a YouthTeen service.
On any average day, Travis Duerksen ’12 shares breakfast with his host family before setting out by bike through the hectic streets of Ungaran, Indonesia, to the JKI Maranatha Church, where he’s serving a one-year volunteer assignment through the Mennonite Mission Network’s Journey program. As a digital media specialist, Duerksen’s mornings are often filled with web design work of some sort; afternoons frequently involve photo or video shoots to prepare material for a Sunday service or one of Maranatha’s many outreach efforts.
Each of the church’s three services – the first of which begins 6 a.m. – is attended by around 150 people. On Sundays, Duerksen usually takes pictures and videos of the various services, edits them immediately afterwards and then helps push them out through the church’s ambitious social media operation.
“That’s a very big thing. That’s a lot of their outreach. Instagram and Facebook are a much bigger thing here than at home,” said Duerksen, who majored in digital media at EMU. (Indonesians are some of the world’s most enthusiastic users of social media.)
The stuff he puts out from the Sunday services are typically intended for other church members; the bigger projects – like the Christmas video he was planning with other church staff in late November when Crossroads reached him by Skype – are intended for outreach to the broader community, the vast majority of whom are Muslim.
English is taught in schools, but not terribly widely spoken in Ungaran, making communication a challenge at times, despite Duerksen’s best efforts to get up to speed on Indonesian. And cultural barriers also sometimes present themselves as he works with church staff on various projects – certain emotions aren’t necessarily expressed and communicated in the same ways as they are in the United States
“What I’ve really enjoyed is being quiet and just listening and experiencing how other people work and relate to other people in their lives,” he said. “I’m used to doing things myself in a very specific way, and being in a culture that’s a lot of times very, very far removed from what I’m used to has been fun.”
Before he went to Indonesia, Duerksen spent two years working in Kansas with the IT department at Hesston College. While his work now – recording sermons to post on Facebook, taking pictures for the church website, etc. – places him in a very different part of the digital realm, it’s also shown him how meaningful computer-oriented work of any kind enhances human connections.
“In digital media, you’re always trying to connect with someone through a medium. You’re trying to get someone to bring emotions to the surface through your work with a camera or video or audio.
“And, in a way, working with IT is similar because everyone calls the Help Desk with a certain problem. They’ll tell you what’s wrong, but a bit of the art of it is understanding why they’re having that problem, or what they really want that computer or bit of technology to do,” he said.
“Both of them are working with technology, but really they are about connecting with other people and practicing empathy.” – Andrew Jenner