Indonesia

"Of course not. We don't have such luxuries here as you have in Kupang. But I know he had died. Then I prayed aloud all night and in the morning he breathed again. The Holy Spirit resurrected him. Isn't that wonderful?"

Such interviews were later discussed by the students, and most of them agreed that one needed to be more sceptical in evaluating these stories. Another 'miracle' was also followed up by the students. It had been claimed, that the SoE church did not need to buy any wine for communion. They just filled a large jug with water, have long prayers over it, and when it is drawn for Holy Communion, the Holy Spirit had turned the water into wine.

Our sceptical students wanted to find out more about this. "Where is the jug with water kept?"

"In a special room. No one has access to it." "How do you know that no one can get into it?" "It is locked."

"And who keeps the key?" "Ibu Nalle", we were told. At the next opportunity, one of our students went by himself to visit Ibu Nalle. He was a distant relative of hers, and had her confidence. They talked about other things, without ever mentioning the miracle story. She started telling him by herself and showed him the room where the jug with water stood. He then asked her quite casually, how this water could turn into wine? She said that she didn't know herself. "It's the Holy Spirit's doing," she said. All she did was squash a few bananas into the water and add some banana leaves to it. When she came back after a couple of days to fetch the jug, the water had turned into wine.

This was all reported during our evaluation sessions. I left the students to draw their own conclusions, but one thing was certain that the people of SoE genuinely believed in these miracles, and that their lives had changed because of them. People were uncritical and uneducated, especially in the outer villages, and once they accepted that miracles happened in SoE, these multiplied almost daily.

The students were left with the task to evaluate the good sides of this movement, and also the negative sides. Many families had split up, when one partner disagreed with it. Some women had gone out with a team, leaving their husbands and children to look after themselves. Teenagers too just left their home and opened themselves to exploitation and manipulation. I hoped that our students, who would be in charge of their own congregations the following year, would be better prepared to deal with such situations.

The talk with the Roman Catholic priest also opened up new avenues of co-operation. Some of the students commented that they had never before spoken to a priest. They realised that they would have much in common with their own ministry.

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