History

The vision for Connecting Families started with a visit to the slums near Kelapa Gading in North Jakarta in April 2013. Connecting Families founder, Rev. Dr. Timothy Conkling led a group of his eight seminary students to visit the slum-dwellers of North Jakarta and to make friends with them. One of the residents of the slum was a 12-year-old girl named Katy who lost her mother when she was only 5 years-old. The reason? When Katy’s mom got food poisoning and became dehydrated, she could not afford the 10 US dollar emergency room bill that would have resulted if she went to the local hospital to be rehydrated. So Katy’s mom died. Katy lost her mother because she could not afford a 10 US dollar hospital ER bill. When Dr. Conkling’s students recounted the story to him during their debriefing session, Dr. Conkling was profoundly moved. At that moment during the debrief, the idea for Connecting Families was born. “How many people could we save if we could connect families with needs to people who care?” That was the question that led Dr. Conkling to share the vision for Connecting Families with his missionary supporters back in the United States in April 2013. After recruiting a team of three Indonesian friends who shared the same vision and enlisting the financial support of his regular missionary supporter donors, plans were already in place to launch Connecting Families in the Fall of 2013 when tragedy struck. The slum where Dr. Conkling had taken his students to make friends burned up on one tragic night in September 2013. All 5155 residents of the slum lost their housing, what few possessions they had and the closeness of friends around them that helped to transform poverty into community.

The former slum residents now with no money for food, no clothes to spare and no place to stay didn’t know where to turn. By the grace of God, the Connecting Families Team was in place and with the click of a mouse, Dr. Conkling sent out an appeal for funds to help not one but ALL of the residents of the slum. Overnight, support gifts poured in and the Connecting Families Team was able to feed the entire displaced community for three days and to buy clothing and basic supplies for all who had need. Working in partnership with the Muslim mayor of the slum district and other churches, a plan to resettle the families was worked out and relief supplies distributed to each of the families over a period of ten days.

From September 2013-January 2020, Connecting Families provided medical relief to Indonesian families in dire need, paying the medical expenses for chemotherapy patients, traffic accident victims, typhoid patients and other life-threatening conditions. Working in partnership with their full-time Indonesian assistant, Mr. Asep, the medical needs of the villagers outside Jakarta were shared with families who cared and who gave generously to meet their needs.

Then Covid-19 struck. In late January and early February of 2020, Connecting Families heard and responded to the desperate plight of friends in Thailand who lost their jobs when Thailand closed off their borders to tourists and foreigners. After hearing of one friend who sent his wife to work as a prostitute in order to feed their family of four after the husband lost his job as an airport taxi driver and his wife lost her job as a cook in a tourist restaurant that catered to Chinese tourists, Dr. Conkling shared the need with his supporters in the US. Within three days, enough funds were raised under the Connecting Families special project fund with their mission board, Asia Mission Partners, to allow Dr. Conkling to text his friend and tell him to go rescue his wife. Enough money had been raised or pledged to cover their family’s expenses until the end of 2020.

Indonesia followed Thailand in March 2020, closing its borders to foreigners and tourists and sending workers across the country into indefinite furlough or unemployment. In Bali alone, where 55 percent of the island’s economy comes from tourists, 77,000 workers in the tourist industry lost their jobs. This massive layoff and severe economic recession has left many families in Bali and around Indonesia without the funds necessary to buy food for their families. Since March 2020 the Connecting Families fund has assisted between 25 to 66 families on a given month, providing money for food, rent, internet pulsa and medical relief.

Connecting Families has fed 25 horse owners and their 75 horses on the island of Gili Air between Bali and Lombok. Gili Air, along with nearby Gili Trawangan and Gili Meno are islands which are 100 percent dependent on foreign tourists. When the Indonesian borders closed, the residents and horses of the three Gili Islands literally began to starve. In addition to helping those in severe economic hardship, Connecting Families has assisted two women facing crisis pregnancies out of wedlock, providing them with the funds necessary so they did not have to abort their babies. For another pregnant woman, already with three teenaged children, who lost her husband to Covid-19 in April, Connecting Families paid all the medical expenses when her daughter was born in August and is committed to continuing to support her family on a monthly basis. Connecting Families has also been there when families lost loved ones, paying off their medical bills and funeral expenses and providing continuing monthly support to the widows and families left behind.