Our volunteers at HCBN Indonesia, Ivon and Tabitha, had the opportunity to be away for a month this past June 2018 at their hometown, Kupang, at Nusa Tenggara Timur. Their holidays coincided with the moslem’s holy month of Ramadhan, the fasting month, during which home-coming is a major phenomena in Indonesia and everyone gets to be home to celebrate victory at the end of fasting season.
There in Kupang, while visiting friends and families, Ivon and Tabitha met some of our satellite television viewers. Some of these viewers had been faithfully following our programs for few years and so familiar with HCBN personnel. When they met Ivon and Tabitha in person, outside their regular hours at morning and evening doing devotionals and daily Sabbath School on television, they were so excited.
One of the local viewers they met is named Yeni, a lady who has been watching our television since 2014. Her family is here in the following short video, airing in HCBN Indonesia’s segment where satellite viewers greeting other viewers.
Yeni was convicted by the Holy Spirit and surrendered her life to Jesus through baptism at the end of the same year. She has been coming to church faithfully ever since. Petrus her husband was reluctant in the beginning, but seeing her conversion and new life after a while, he finally accepted Christ himself, and together now they are actively even teaching others.
The Pastor from their previous church agreed to have them go to a new church on Saturdays as long as they would still attend also his church on Sundays. The couple saw this opportunity as God’s way of making them disciples, to teach others what they now understood, what it really meant to become a Christian, what it really meant to walk with Jesus and waiting for His second coming.
With some literatures in their hands, videos they downloaded and notes they took while watching HCBN Indonesia, they have been leading meetings with non-SDA’s in their communities. The meetings are conducted only once or twice a month, in a building owned by a wealthy individual. The attendees of the meeting are majority Christians of business and commerce backgrounds. Every single meet starts after dinner and it lasts until dawn and even sunrise. The attendees are always actively asking questions and excited in learning the things they never realized were in the Bible.
Yeni and Petrus are always fearful before meetings start as they never feel prepared. Everytime Yeni speaks she strongly feels the moving of the Holy Spirit and she is humbled by the facts that her words are not the kinds that could have been prepared by herself. She wonders what power could sustain those people to be awake in the hours they should be asleep.
This year some Bible experts with doctoral degrees started to join the meeting. They challenged Yeni and Petrus with the knowledge that they thought came from a humble human beings. Some of the questions thrown at Yeni and Petrus were really hard but all have been answered. The couple consulted with their SDA pastor to join them in meetings and support them answering the experts. The pastor, wisely advised that unless the group requested his presence, he should still be excluded and allowed to pray from distance. He convinced Yeni and Petrus that the work of laymen would be equally blessed by God and would maintain better neutrality in the group. The meetings are still going forward in favor to have Yeni and Petrus maintain the lead. The attendees are seeing the arrogance exhibited by the learned individuals with higher degrees of bible education are not founded upon the Holy Spirit, and these bible experts have stopped coming to the meetings.
Yeni and Petrus are simple and cheerful couple. In their daily work they supply food to the markets and everytime they have the chance they are happy to study their bibles to discover something new and to share with others. We are praying that someday soon we will meet them again here in HCBN Indonesia to study together in intensive class, or there in Kupang, NTT.
Your prayers and supports have sustained the work of this couple and others in different parts of Indonesia. God bless, maranatha!
HCBN INDONESIA
