July 2008

Dear Friends,

Are you an “American Idol” fan? Even if you aren’t, you can’t help but be aware of its popularity. It’s just as popular in Indonesia, where they also have a version for youth titled “Little Indonesian Idol.” Last Sunday was the final round of that competition between two girls from the eastern part of Indonesia: one from the Moluccan islands and one from north Sulawesi. Imagine that two girls from North Carolina and South Carolina were up against each other and you’ll have an idea of the fervor of their respective fans in efforts to send as many text messages as possible in support of their local heroine.

Coincidentally I was in north Sulawesi last weekend with a group of Moluccans and north Sulawesi folks. There was continuous lively conversation about who should win. Angel, from the Moluccas, is quite talented and adorable. But the odds were on 12-year-old Kiki of north Sulawesi, partly due to her life story. As an infant her father suffered a severe electrical shock, losing most of his face and his right arm and making him unable to support his family. As soon as she was old enough to understand what had happened, Kiki decided to assist her parents financially by singing in contests. Before entering the Idol competition, she had earned enough to get her father a prosthetic arm. With the money from the Idol competition, she hopes to buy her parents a new home (an Indonesian house costs about $5,000).

Rebecca Young, Marthen Sumual, and Lilly Danes at a post-wedding reception at the bride's house in Manado, North Sulawesi, 20 July 2008.

The group of enthusiastic Idol watchers accompanying me on this journey had come to attend the wedding of a colleague of ours at an Indonesian disaster agency. The bride, Lilly Danes, is a pastor of the North Sulawesi Protestant Church. Lilly serves as the staff member for church relations at the disaster agency. Her groom, Marthen Sumual, is a pastor with the same denomination and teaches in Jakarta.

The wedding was a fascinating combination of Western and Eastern traditions. The bride was elegantly dressed in white and the groom in a dapper black tuxedo. Before the ceremony, the groom’s family processed to the bride’s house where, with much fanfare, including a local bamboo flute band, a family representative knocked on the front door and asked permission to enter. The bride’s family was waiting inside and the father of the bride opened the door and welcomed them in. Then they processed together to the church.

Inside the church, a youth choir serenaded the couple, then the congregation joined in singing a hymn in the local language. The bride’s older sister, a medical doctor, sang an Indonesian hymn. After the confession of sins, the congregation sang “Amazing Grace” first in Norwegian (the groom’s brother-in-law is from Oslo) and then in Indonesian. A local dance troupe offered a traditional Sulawesi dance at the front of the church, following which the bride and groom exchanged vows and rings. Together they sang “Panis Angelicus” in Latin.

The reception that evening was in a huge reception hall seating over a thousand people. The bride and groom occupied a stage surrounded by sprays of lovely flowers, with their parents seated on either side. The district government leader gave a speech in honor of the couple, as did the executive director of the disaster agency and the chair of the Indonesian Bible Society. I was asked to give the blessing for the meal.

After we ate, the dance troupe rejoined us for more traditional dances. Then much to my surprise, the men donned cowboy hats and the women dresses made of an array of brightly colored bandanas. They danced a Spanish dance then invited us to join them. One of the cowboys managed to pull me onto the dance floor for a few fun moments, during which we did a square dance step in which couples made a bridge and other partners paraded under their arms. Whether we were eating, dancing, or simply observing the mingling crowd, our night was filled with lots of love and laughter as family and friends gathered in celebration of the joining of this much-beloved pair.

While attending the wedding for the weekend, I learned much about the couple’s birthplace of north Sulawesi. Sulawesi itself is a sprawling island that covers a roughly square area 500 miles north to south and 500 miles east to west, but with so many peninsulas it boasts more coastline than the continental U.S. The peninsula of North Sulawesi is considered the Bible belt of Indonesia because 85 to 90 percent of the population is Christian, mostly Reformed, and thus cousins to us as Presbyterians. Their appearance is distinct from other Indonesians because their ancestors came from Mongolia to settle in this distant corner of the tropics. The Dutch converted them to Christianity in the eighteenth century. Traces of their pre-Christian heritage remain, however, including the presence of aboveground tombs where the bodies were buried in the fetal position to prepare them for rebirth.

Perhaps the most fascinating ancient belief is the northern Sulawesi creation story, which tells that human beings originated from an original female-male pair named Lumimuut and Toar. According to the story, Lumimuut was created first, then came the man Toar, a detail that brings great pride to the women of Sulawesi. The story describes the couple setting out on journeys in opposite directions to traverse the globe, then reuniting many years later on the far side to mate and populate the earth. Thus their ancestors knew the world was round long before Copernicus and Galileo came to enlighten Westerners.

Lumimuut and Toar, "Bukit Kasih" (Hill of Love), Kanonang, North Sulawesi, 26 July 2008. The steam comes from hot springs emerging from the mountainside just below the carvings.

After the wedding I visited the site of a hot springs that is believed to be the home of the Lumimuut and Toar, featuring Mount Rushmore-sized carvings of their faces in the cliffs above. At this oft-visited tourist site, the local people have built a monument not only to their ancestral couple but also to religious unity. Because they believe we all descended from this one couple, we are therefore one family with varying ways of worshipping God. At the site are worship centers including a Buddhist temple, a Catholic chapel, a Hindu temple, a Protestant chapel, and a Islamic mosque, in the middle of which is a gathering place for people of every faith.

Besides this chance to celebrate my friend’s wedding and learn a bit about northern Sulawesi, I also shared in one more happy development that weekend. On Saturday afternoon, between the wedding service and the reception, my traveling companions could hardly wait to turn their cell phones back on to contact friends back home who were busy watching “Little Indonesian Idol” as it was being broadcasted live across the country. The winner? Kiki, who will now be able to realize her dream of building her parents a new home.

Rebecca Young

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 94