Indonesia

they lived in. From there his power was acknowledged in all water, which was so necessary for life and for the harvest. He was prayed to as the highest spirit in their pantheon. I then explained, had Paul come to Timor today, he would have probably told the Timorese, that the God whom he proclaimed is the same as their creator spirit, Uis Neno.

There were also other aspects of their traditional beliefs which I could link with Christian theology. I could see in the faces of the students that something had clicked. They had always considered the old stories and their old tradition as something pagan and to be left behind. With this new interpretation, they could embrace their old tradition and give it a Christian content. They were feeling that Christ had become incarnate in Timor, or Rote, or wherever they came from. It helped them to understand in a new light what Christ really means to us. I found this approach most exciting. It grew quite naturally out of our reflections on the stories and experiences we had during that study tour.

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In 1972 I kept up the tradition of again taking our final year students on a study tour. The students wanted to go to the island of Alor, to the north of Kupang. The new moderator of GMIT, Jos Adang, came from Alor, and so did our only female student in that class, Mintje Matabei, and a couple of others. There were 16 of them all together. The TIRTAKARYA was a large cattle ship, going straight to Kalabahi, the capital of Alor. There was plenty of space on deck for the one night across. We came through some strong tidal currents between the island of Alor and Pantar, but with the large ship we hardly noticed. It did delay our arrival in Kalabahi, though. We were expected to arrive for lunch, but instead we arrived almost at dusk. Jos Adang, the Moderator, greeted us at the wharf and the reception by the people was warm and almost overwhelming. The main church put on a real feast for us, a fine worship service, and showed us to our communal accommodation. They would have preferred to billet us with church families, but our students voted for communal accommodation, except for Mintje. She was allowed to stay the night with her family.

As with the previous study tours, we had a full programme. There was a strong Muslim presence in Alor. We had made an appointment with the local imam or priest. Never before had our students, nor I for that matter, talked to an imam, and they found this session most useful. We were reminded of the Indonesian pancasila, or five principles, which are underpinning the Indonesian constitution. As the first principle says that "all Indonesians believe in the one God," there must be no competition between the God of the Muslims, the Christians or the Hindus. Both Muslims and Christians worship the same God. The word for 'God' in

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