A Visit to a Village

Friday, Lindsay, a couple that Lindsay works with, and me headed out to a village past Tabanan to visit a friend of theirs. It was about a two hour drive. Their friend, 'Pak', grew up in this village, and has an amazing story:

Pak's older brother had gone to school on Sumatra, another Indonesian island, and hadd become a Chr'stian there. When he came back he shared about his beliefs to his family, and his brothers also became C's. (I guess to understand this story you have to know that cnverting like that is a really big deal, especially in a village. The other families believe that it will displease the gods and that bad things will happen from the village, and other things like that, so its not exactly an accepted change.) This was about the time of the attempted Communist coup in Indonesia, and anyone who was suspected of being a Communist was killed. Apparently about 100,000 people on Bali were killed. Some leaders in Pak's village (Pak was away at school) used this as an opportunity to get rid of Pak's two C brothers, and they were murdered.

Pak went to school in New Zealand after High School, and did some other things, lived in other places in Indonesia, and then got a job with World Vision because he has incredibly innovative ways of pumping water to remote villages and stuff like that.

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Eventually, with full knowledge of who murdered his brothers and what was awaiting him, Pak returned to his village, and was told that if there was an opportunity, he would also be killed. But, Pak stayed and has transformed this village- paved roads, helped give opportunities to the kids, built water pumps and invented easier ways to thresh rice and other things like those that have greatly aided this and surrounding villages. Now, after maybe 10-15 years Pak is a respected member of the community. He travels all over the world (has been to Winnipeg and he couldn't believe how cold it was there) and aids alot of villages in getting access to clean water. Its such a beautiful story of forgiveness and mercy, and I feel privelged for being able to meet him.

We spent the night there, and got the chance to eat some amazing village food, meet some beautiful people (who work harder than I ever will for $4 a day- seriously, women carrying buckets of dirt and also rocks on their heads) and look around at the absolutely stunning landscape. My pictures do not do justice to this place and the things I saw there.



The afternoon we got there, there was a flash flood in the river:




This is the next morning, after the flood was done: