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Indonesia
On another occasion we went again to Baun, in two cars this time, with the family of Walt and Bev Snowa, American missionaries to GMIT, the Evangelical Church of Timor. During the service we suddenly felt the church swaying backwards and forwards. The congregation was just standing for prayer, and the minister kept praying. My first thought was that our children were up to some mischief, pushing and shaking the building, but then I realised that it was an earthquake. How fortunate to be in a bebak church, I thought. Had we been in a brick church, the walls and roof would surely have come tumbling down.
After church we left our cars at the spring and went further down the river for a walk in a beautiful dense forest. When we came back I discovered that I had a flat tyre. I started changing it, when I saw that a second tyre was also flat. My heart sank, as I knew I didn't bring a repair kit with me, nor a pump. I asked Walt, but he didn't have any either. To our great consternation we discovered that he also had two flat tyres on his car. We then knew that some hooligans had been at work letting air out of our tyres. We thought that somebody in the village would have a pump, but there was none in all the village. We had to do something, as we couldn't just wait there for some miracle to happen. We put both our spare tyres on Walt's car, who would go back to Kupang, about an hour and a half's drive, and bring a pump and a repair kit, just in case. Our family had to wait for four hours before we could set out on our homeward journey. By then it was already dark. Reflecting on this episode I realised, how much we depended on one another, particularly in these more isolated areas.
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