Christian & Muslim Cooperation in ‘Work of Love’ Restaurant: Guest Post by Fr Charlie Burrows

This blog recently reported on the 50th Jubilee of Irish priest Fr Charlie Burrows, who is based in Cilacap, Indonesia.

I’ve profiled his work previously as exemplary of the ‘church without walls’ theme of this blog.

Fr Burrows has contributed another guest post, this time describing the opening of a new restaurant, a joint venture between Christians and Muslims. It is hoped that this enterprise will continue to help local people out of poverty. He also mentions the work of their ‘child fund’ unit.

Guest Post by Fr Charlie Burrows: ‘Work of Love’ Restaurant

On November 19th we had the opening of a restaurant on the main road between Gandrung and Sidareja which is owned and run by our “key person” of the Kampung Laut area and financed by our “People Bank”. Many of the products of the land reclamation and livestock projects will be marketed here and also fruits and products from our reforestation program on the prison Island. Indonesian “sate” (meat skewered on a stick) is one of the basic menu items – as is chicken, duck, fish, sea foods, rice, vegetables, fruits etc.

One of the big problems is marketing produce and now we have a direct connection to the consumer.

At the moment the Restaurant has two freezers – taking 1,5 ton of produce. Farm door prices vary greatly e.g. peppers can be Rp.80,000 per kg, in the wet season, and only Rp.2,000 in the dry season, when plentiful.

The Restaurant uses two sheep every day- hence ± 750 every year –also 100 chickens and ducks per day – hence ± 35,000 per year and so on with fish etc. Our key person pays 15% more for produce – raising incomes of the locals involved in our programs.

 

This is another step in taking people out of poverty.

The key person is a devout Muslim and agrees whole-heartedly with me in that the only way to “be happy” is ”to make other people happy”. The name of the Restaurant is “Karya Kasih” meaning “Work of Love”.

Yesterday we had the report of our “Child Fund” unit making this world become a “Child friendly world” and they reported on the behavioral change of parents in the program begun ten years ago in the sea villages with questioners to children reporting serious verbal abuse, physical abuse and emotional abuse and parents admitting their mistakes and changing behavior.

This is the Kingdom values approach to Mission and “the way to go”.

Images: fruit and veg store adjacent to restaurant; lotus style seating in the restaurant

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