{"id":2652,"date":"2015-01-13T11:56:09","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T16:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=2652"},"modified":"2015-01-13T11:56:09","modified_gmt":"2015-01-13T16:56:09","slug":"from-it-to-digital-media-volunteer-in-indonesian-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2015\/01\/13\/from-it-to-digital-media-volunteer-in-indonesian-church\/","title":{"rendered":"From IT to digital media volunteer in Indonesian church"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Travis<\/a>

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.<\/p><\/div>\n

On any average day, <\/span>Travis Duerksen \u201912<\/b> 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\u2019s serving a one-year volunteer assignment through the Mennonite Mission Network\u2019s Journey program. As a digital media specialist, Duerksen\u2019s 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\u2019s many outreach efforts.<\/p>\n

Each of the church\u2019s three services \u2013 the first of which begins 6 a.m. \u2013 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\u2019s ambitious social media operation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a very big thing. That\u2019s a lot of their outreach. Instagram and Facebook are a much bigger thing here than at home,\u201d said Duerksen, who majored in digital media at EMU. (Indonesians are some of the world\u2019s most enthusiastic users of social media.)<\/p>\n

The stuff he puts out from the Sunday services are typically intended for other church members; the bigger projects \u2013 like the Christmas video he was planning with other church staff in late November when Crossroads<\/i> reached him by Skype \u2013 are intended for outreach to the broader community, the vast majority of whom are Muslim.<\/p>\n

English is taught in schools, but not terribly widely spoken in Ungaran, making communication a challenge at times, despite Duerksen\u2019s 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 \u2013 certain emotions aren\u2019t necessarily expressed and communicated in the same ways as they are in the United States<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019ve really enjoyed is being quiet and just listening and experiencing how other people work and relate to other people in their lives,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m used to doing things myself in a very specific way, and being in a culture that\u2019s a lot of times very, very far removed from what I\u2019m used to has been fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before he went to Indonesia, Duerksen spent two years working in Kansas with the IT department at Hesston College. While his work now \u2013 recording sermons to post on Facebook, taking pictures for the church website, etc. \u2013 places him in a very different part of the digital realm, it\u2019s also shown him how meaningful computer-oriented work of any kind enhances human connections.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn digital media, you\u2019re always trying to connect with someone through a medium. You\u2019re trying to get someone to bring emotions to the surface through your work with a camera or video or audio.<\/p>\n

“And, in a way, working with IT is similar because everyone calls the Help Desk with a certain problem. They\u2019ll tell you what\u2019s wrong, but a bit of the art of it is understanding why they\u2019re having that problem, or what they really want that computer or bit of technology to do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth of them are working with technology, but really they are about connecting with other people and practicing empathy.\u201d \u00a0–\u00a0Andrew Jenner<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On any average day, Travis Duerksen \u201912 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\u2019s serving a one-year volunteer assignment through the Mennonite Mission Network\u2019s Journey program. As a digital media specialist, Duerksen\u2019s mornings are often filled with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":2653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[466,6],"tags":[507],"class_list":["post-2652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fallwinter-2014-15","category-magazine","tag-travis-duerksen","issues-fallwinter-2014-15"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2654,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652\/revisions\/2654"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}