Indonesia

chicken, even though a few hours later it might become 'fried chicken'.
(K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist p.5-6) The students enjoyed the talk by Kosuke Koyama very much. He started with something familiar, and then led them to a new insight. He was able to make complex things simple, the mark of a great theologian.

Agabus, who also had chickens, told me when I visited him at his congregation, that he crossed the hens he had from me with a village rooster. The offspring were more resistant to diseases, and the eggs were still a fairly large size. I thought this was quite an exciting development, as I had to give an injection against Newcastle disease each year to all the chickens from Surabaya before the wet season. The ministers in the villages could not obtain the vaccine.

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In May 1971 we expected about 40 young people from Australia to come to a work camp for the church. Peter had done all the preparatory work for it. The Australians were to mix with 40 young people from GMIT for three weeks and their main task was to erect three windmills in designated areas for village water supply and irrigation. Unfortunately, there were a couple of glitches, none due to the organisation. The problem was, as usual, the air lines. GARUDA was not flying to Kupang, and MERPATI had only a most irregular service. At first the whole party got stranded in Bali. On 4 May 1971 the first twenty arrived, including the leader Vern Prowse and Denis Towner. On 11 May some more arrived, on 15 another group, and on 17 May the last group arrived with GARUDA. This was GARUDA's first flight into Kupang since February. On 25 May the first group from Australia had to leave again. The material for the windmills had arrived so late that Bill Gresham, an engineer, had to stay back to finish the job. But we organised other jobs for the work party, such as a basket ball court each in Tarus and Oesapa, duck-breeding pens and runs in Tarus, and some repair work on some Synod buildings. A lot of lasting friendships developed, and Bill Gresham started courting Thien Lahallo while he was staying with us to finish the wind mills. We became good friends with them both.

One incident from the work party stands out in my memory. The group of 80, together with a village congregation, had a sing-along in the church. We had a bilingual song book published for that purpose, and the groups were learning each others folksongs. The Australians sang with gusto some Australian folk songs, such as 'click go the shears' or 'tie me kangaroo down, sport' and so on. When the turn came to learn some of the Indonesian folk songs, the minister came running to me and told me to stop the singing. He would not have them sing such secular songs inside his church! It took quite some explaining that they had been

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