My dear readers,

This week we have an excellent article from Dr Wieland, Creation Ministries International (CMI) Australia.

CMI advance into Indonesia

By Dr Carl Wieland, Managing Director, Creation Ministries International

The story of CMI-Australia speaker Dr David Catchpoole’s two-month intensive ministry tour of Indonesia (July/August 2010), really started about five years ago, when I first asked him if he would consider going on a ministry tour to Indonesia, given that he spoke the language and had lived there for some years. David was interested, but a tour would have to wait at least a couple of years to “brush up and improve” his Indonesian.

Dr Catchpoole with the Brisbane pastor of his Indonesian-language church, Jerry Sanger
I didn’t know that in the Lord’s timing his own pastor (David and his Indonesian-born wife Esther attend an Indonesian-language church in Brisbane), after hearing David present on creation, said, “This is a message for Indonesia!” and was urging David to go.

For David, the story really begins with his conversion in 1985, which itself relates to his going to Indonesia in 1983 for three-and-a-half years, as part of an Australian Government agricultural science assistance program. David sums it up: “I went to the world’s most populous Muslim country as an atheist, and came back a Christian. What does that tell you?”

In fact, it was Indonesia’s Christian community that unknowingly played a huge part in challenging his evolutionary presuppositions—e.g., about religion. (Although Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, nearly one-tenth of the population is officially Christian, which means there are more Christians in Indonesia than Australia’s entire population!) Confronted during 1983 and 1984 with the stark contrasts provided by the meek and gentle way that Christians lived their lives in an overwhelmingly Islamic nation, David was forced to rethink the atheist ideas he previously held, that “all religions are equally valid—and equally wrong”. (And there was also plenty of evidence contradicting the previously-promoted evolutionary notion that brown-skinned peoples are less evolved than ‘whites’.) There were amazing acts of kindness and generosity shown to him by people who had little material goods. At a time of personal struggle, recalling such factors contributed to David’s conversion and commitment to follow Jesus.

David and Esther were married on their last day in Indonesia in 1986 before moving to Australia. They lived in Townsville in 1997, raising their four children, when my CMI speaker colleague Dr Don Batten and I presented a weekend seminar to the churches there. When I went to Townsville the following year to do CMI ministry, David excitedly told me of the hugely positive impact that our 1997 presentations had had on his life. We stayed in contact, and David joined the ministry full-time in 1999.

About three years ago, I again approached David, whose fluency in Bahasa Indonesia was increasing, about going to Indonesia. He replied, “For sure. But to be more effective, we’ll need “The Creation Answers Book” translated into Indonesian—so people are equipped with the info well above and beyond what they might remember from a limited speaker presentation in a funny foreign accent.”

About ten months ago, starting with a call from an Indonesian from Western Australia about the possibility of CMI sending a speaker to Indonesia, the Lord assembled a team of volunteer translators, enabling the timeframe of the tour to be finalized.

CMI’s booklet “Stones and Bones” was translated into Indonesian just in time to have both books ready for David’s tour, which will involve two months of intensive speaking across many widespread locations in that country.

An unexpected provision

With the Indonesian version of both books (“The Creation Answers Book” and “Stones and Bones”) at hand, and little time left, we thought we would have to skip the normal “final final” stage of proofreading and editing, especially with David heavily tied up with his pre-trip preparations on top of normal duties. But I had forgotten that CMI’s Russell Grigg, had spent 12 years in Indonesia where he had thousands of hours of experience proofreading manuscripts in Indonesian! Russell often briefed and consulted with David as to significant changes he felt were needed to the manuscripts. So, one could hardly wish for God to have raised up a better-qualified final-layout editor than someone with Russell’s long experience editing and writing about creationist topics for CMI, together with his considerable theological knowledge and his talent for editing texts in Indonesian!

This was only one of the many indicators, beyond anything that we might have imagined, which convinced us that God’s hand was on this venture in a special way. David’s wife Esther will be travelling with him, assisting him throughout the tour.

Note added 7 July: After only a few days in the country, David has addressed over 3,000 people already, with many excitedly approaching him and the book table volunteers to tell of their joy. On Sunday night, a well-educated young man newly embarking on a diplomatic career summed it up with one English word, exclaiming, “Inspiring!!” The wife of a pastor who attended David’s presentation to over a hundred pastors on Monday morning and purchased the Indonesian-language “The Creation Answers Book”, came back for the evening public meeting and told the book table volunteers that she’d already read the first 169 pages—she “couldn’t put it down”! One young lady said (translated from the Indonesian):

“I remember asking my teachers, and even my pastor, questions like ‘Which came first … Adam, or the age of dinosaurs?’

“They didn’t know, and, even worse, one teacher said: ‘Science is science. The Bible is the Bible. Don’t try to join them—they’re separate.’
“But today, because of your presentation and these two books, now I have the answers!” (So much for this week. To be continued.)

Faithfully in the Lord,
Dr SH Tow