The rainbow never sets

Indonesian is 'Allah', both for Muslims and for Christians.

This encounter with a representative from the Muslim faith brought about a lively theological discussion, which our students found most enlightening. I hoped it would also help them later on, when they were ministers, to take up contact with their Muslim counterparts and have a good relation with them.

Another point of interest was the church's involvement with agricultural training for their lay pastors. Apart from bringing the Gospel to the villages, they brought with them more modern and better ways of farming, from which the whole village benefited. The whole concept came from a programme instigated by the United Nations, where 'Motivators' were trained and sent into villages as the agent of change. In Alor the church trained their lay pastors to become such 'motivators' in their villages. We visited their school and were most impressed by their agricultural programme, which was compulsory for all. Whilst Tarus had some land to grow rice, here the students were involved in a full programme of agriculture and were taught how to motivate others. Our students could see the advantage of this training.

To my surprise, Filus, who was now a minister on the neighbouring island of Pantar, came to visit us. It was great to see him again. He looked slimmer, though, and the tough time as a new minister in a parish so far away from any of his friends, had caused him a great deal of anxiety and suffering, as if church people were saying: 'Jesus had to suffer, so we are going to make you suffer too.' We gave him the opportunity to share some of his experiences with the other students, and during the ensuing discussions we tried to offer some solutions for Filus' problems. They were mainly connected with the withholding of pay and sustenance for their minister. No doubt the others would encounter similar problems when their turn came to go out into the parishes. Meanwhile, we were looking for some ship to take us back home again, but there was none, and none was expected in the near future. What were we to do? There was no phone connection, a weekly plane from the Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) was the only contact with the outside world. We certainly wouldn't all fit in the four-seater plane, so we were stuck in Kalabahi. Eventually a former pleasure yacht with a built-in motor turned up in the harbour. It was available for hire, but it was tiny. Maybe four would have been very comfortable there, but we were seventeen. But in good Indonesian fashion, the owner assured us that he could take us all. We looked at each other and I could see some anxious faces. Mintje decided that she would fly with the MAF plane, which was expected to go next morning. The others, well, there was no alternative. We resigned ourselves to go on the SILAWATI.

After an extended stay of ten days in Alor we were farewelled next morning with plenty of prayers and an enormous crowd of well wishers. It appeared that the church had very much enjoyed our visit, and so had our

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