This past Friday I received an invitation to have dinner at the home of PakJames Riady. It was quite a surprise for me to receive such an invitation since he and his wife are the founders of the education system that I work for, as well as many other organizations such as the major Christian university in Indonesia, Universitas Pelita Harapan. He is the current deputy chairman of the Lippo Group which is a major conglomorate and world player. So again, it was quite a surprise.
Not knowing why I would receive such an invitation, since I am just one of thousands of employees, I sent an email to my mentor at Corban, Dr. Matt Lucas to see if he was behind this. It was through Dr. Matt, the current Provost at Corban that I heard of the possibility of teaching in Indonesia. And it was through him that UPH and Corban have formed a relationship to cooporate as they work to shaire the Gospel through education. The current President at UPH is a fellow Western Baptist/Corban College graduate, Dr. Sheldon Nord.
Because Dr. Matt was going to be in country this week meeting with people at the University, it only makes sense that he was the catalyst for the dinner. And I was correct. The dinner at the Riady’s was to honor the Corban representatives, as well as to bring together many of the different players from all the different levels in the Yayasan Pendikan Pelita Harapan Foundation, which is who began the school that I work for.
Since this was such an honor to receive an invitation, I checked in with my Head of School, Eric Semler, both to let him know (if I were in his position, I would want to know if one of my employees was invited to such a dinner) but also to get his advice, as he had been to such dinners several times in the past.
Eric gave me some great advice on what to expect. He advised me on the best thing to wear (however, I unfortunately do not own a traditional Javanese batik shirt just yet) and let me know that I would need to prepare a speech. At first I thought he was joking. However, he was very serious. I would need to prepare a speech. I guess that Pak James likes to ask about half of the guests to speak for a few minutes about whatever it is that they would like to. So if I were smart, I would prepare something.
To be continued…
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Oh… this makes a lot of sense to me right now. I have twins in my English class that told me their mom (who took Matt’s old job before he upgraded) was going to be in Indonesia for something to do with Corban. Anyways… you will probably meet a Mrs. Allen then at that dinner. LOL
Funny to connect the dots through your blog! Have fun at the dinner!
[...] heard from several of you that you are looking forward to the next part to my previous post where I was able to share a dinner with Pak James Riady (a billionaire Christian businessman, [...]