Thinking About Indonesia

Over the weekend I’ve been thinking a lot about Indonesia.

Last year about this time (see May 26^th and June 21^st blog archives) a company in Indonesia published a translation of a little book I wrote on prayer.

The Indonesian publisher’s website is http://www.perkantas.org/literatur_nasional/

Before I got word about this translation, I could hardly find Indonesia on a map.

It’s about as far away from where I live as you can get and still be on this earth. Since the publisher first contacted me I have followed the fate of the people of this beautiful country daily in Google news and on tv.

The news has seldom been good.

In January, 2005, the tsunami struck killing 200,000 people in Indonesia.

In February, another earthquake killed another 9,000. Humanitarian relief workers have been shot as they tried to help.

An outbreak of polio killed over 50 children and crippled scores of others. A car bomb set off in a Christian market place killed 25 and mangled many others. Churches have been burned and Christians live in daily jeopardy.

Five teenaged Christian girls on their way to school were beheaded by a Muslim mob.

Another earthquake on March 28^th, 2005 killed another 900 people.

In East Timor civil war erupted. What began as a schism within the military spilled over to the general population, which is divided on geographical lines of east and west, or those perceived to have been pro-Indonesian against those who wanted independence.

Rival gangs torched homes and battled with machetes for a third day yesterday. Fire across the city filled the sky with smoke, and the streets were strewn with smoldering debris while Black Hawk helicopters roared overhead. The United Nations evacuated personnel over the weekend.

Also, over this past weekend another seven people in a single family died of bird flu. All had earlier tested positive for the H5N1 virus in a local laboratory. Bird flu has now infected 48 people in Indonesia, 36 of whom died.

This morning’s news says another five people in Indonesia have tested positive.

Some of the bird flu victims avoided hospitals and sought help from alternative medical sources which news reports call witchdoctors. \

Indonesia has had three major bomb attacks in the past two years. Bombings at a Bali nightclub killed 202 people in 2002, a bombing outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in September killed nine people and a blast at the Marriott Hotel in the October left a dozen people dead.

All three attacks were blamed on an arm of al Qaeda.

This past Saturday morning another massive earthquake hit Indonesia. At least 5,000 people died instantly and over 20,000 injured people overran hospitals. Doctors and nurses flattened cardboard boxes on the ground in parking lots to use as hospital beds.

According to Google News, Rani Indrawati, from the village of Bagulon Kulon, said, “We’ve got no clean water, no food. No one has come to help us so we’re going to eat air to survive.”

Another survivor said, “We’re short of everything—clothes, food, water, all are gone. We are poor people, but our lives matter.”

In the midst of all that anguish and turmoil, I question how my little book fits.

The title of my book in Indonesian is Mengapa Doaku Tidak Dikabulkan.

I have no idea how to pronounce that.

In English, the title of the book is: Why Don’t I Get What I Pray For? Or, in a more recent edition, I’m Confused About Prayer. It is a frivolous religious humor book with hardly any redeeming social value.

Yet the translators and folks who produced the book over there have been through Hell to bring this bit of froth into print.

Over the years a number of bits and pieces of my work has been translated into various languages but none of the others have captured my attention as this one in Indonesian. Indonesia is, I think, the most populous Moslem nation on earth.

I’m not so vain as to think that people over there are sitting in the rubble reading copies of my book on prayer, but I do hope that my books is of some comfort to somebody there and that it may act as a protoevangelium to some person thinking about becoming a Christian.

I think about Indonesia a lot.

If you’re interested in buying a copy of the English edition of this book, I’m Confused About Prayer, go to www.lulu.com/bluefish ;-- If you can’t afford to buy a copy, look in the left-hand column of my website, http://www.cowart.info/ under the title Why Don’t I Get What I Pray For? And you can read it on line for free. --- Same book, different editions.

And, if you are inclined to pray for the troubled land of Indonesia, please ask the Lord to use this little book to honor Himself and to help troubled folks in pain.