GUNUNGSITOLI, INDONESIA — A mangled, rusty bicycle stands as a memorial exterior the Nias Heritage Museum. Behind it, two colourful concrete indicators bear two horrible dates within the island’s historical past.
The primary, painted with brilliant blue, white-capped waves, reads Dec. 26, 2004, the day after Christmas. That’s when an undersea earthquake created waves 100 ft excessive and claimed the lives of greater than 227,000 individuals throughout 14 nations — most of them in Indonesia.
Concrete indicators behind a mass of metallic and vines notice the dates of the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami in 2004 and the Indonesian earthquake that adopted three months later.
The second signal depicts a brown-and-red mudslide flowing from the hills. Its date: March 28, 2005, the day after Easter. That’s when a magnitude 8.7 earthquake, maybe an aftershock of the undersea quake three months earlier, struck Nias.
“Every thing was rocking forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards,” mentioned Faatulo Telambanua, who preaches for the Bawolato Church of Christ on the island. The quake woke him from his sleep at about 11 p.m.
“It was horrible,” he mentioned. “Individuals had been operating to the hills.”
Faatulo Telambanua heads out on his bike after an interview on the Bawolato Church of Christ’s constructing on the island of Nias. The church constructing is one among many homes of worship constructed or repaired after the March 2005 earthquake.
However whereas the tsunami had spared buildings on the island’s greater floor, the earthquake didn’t.
Dennis Cady was on the second flooring of the hillside Wisma Soliga Lodge when the quake began. The stairway collapsed, after which the ground beneath him disappeared.
“We dropped about 19 ft,” he recalled, “and the second flooring turned the primary flooring.”
Cady, a longtime missionary to Southeast Asia, had come to Nias to help in restoration after the primary pure catastrophe.
Now he was in a single.
Miraculously, he escaped from the resort with solely a sprained foot. Earlier than catching a medevac flight a number of days later, he hobbled across the island, surveying the harm.
“I noticed our bodies lined up on the sidewalks,” he mentioned. “I noticed individuals digging to rescue these nonetheless trapped beneath rubble. Some locations I used to be acquainted with weren’t recognizable.”
Greater than 800 individuals died, tons of extra had been wounded, and hundreds had been immediately made homeless. The earthquake, the second-most highly effective ever recorded in Indonesia, reshaped the island itself. In some areas, the coast moved 160 ft inland. Components of Nias rose 9½ ft.
Fishing boats dot the horizon on the Indian Ocean off the coast of Gunungsitoli.
Twenty years after the twin disasters, Nias is reshaped once more. Church buildings of Christ have devoted hundreds of {dollars} and hours to reduction efforts and medical missions. Christians launched Jochebed’s Hope, a ministry that oversees a youngsters’s dwelling and applications to assist islanders get an excellent training.
Now Nias is dwelling to 60-plus Church buildings of Christ, greater than triple the quantity that existed previous to 2004. When requested for attainable causes behind the expansion, Telambanua put it merely.
“We supplied assist to individuals,” he mentioned, “so that they needed to know extra concerning the folks that helped them.”
Headhunters, slavers, believers
Black-and-white photos of males with metallic mustaches adorn the partitions of the Nias Heritage Museum.
A photograph of a Niasian nobleman hangs within the island’s Heritage Museum.
They had been the island’s noblemen. The museum shows their regal trappings and sophisticated structure because it traces their historical past. Raids by slavers in northern Sumatra created a warrior tradition. The islanders turned headhunters, and the arrival of the Dutch East India Firm intensified the slave commerce. Then got here Protestant missionary E.L. Denninger. Headhunting and slavery had been banned.
Now, whereas Indonesia has the most important Muslim inhabitants on this planet, the vast majority of Nias’ 930,000 individuals declare Christianity as their religion.
Daniel Setiabudi and his spouse, Naomi, stroll by means of displays of elaborate helmets, weapons and Christian crosses. They’ve come right here from Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, the place their home, which doubles as a church constructing and kids’s dwelling, is surrounded by mosques.
Right here, they’re surrounded by youngsters.
Associated: Surrounded by mosques
After the museum, they go to the Jochebed’s Hope youngsters’s dwelling. Naomi will get hugs from kids whereas Daniel greets the house’s supervisors, Lingaaro Halawa and Mardianus Hulu.
Suma Goelo, left, and Daniel Setiabudi go to with youngsters on the Jochebed’s Hope youngsters’s dwelling on the island of Nias.
Halawa proudly exhibits off his baseball cap, which reads “Higher. Sooner. First.” It was a present from James Karl, an elder of the Lake Jackson Church of Christ in Texas and president of Tsunami Earthquake American Reduction Providers (TEARS) who helped present reduction and rebuilding on Nias.
Karl died in early 2024, however his legacy and his hat dwell on, mentioned Hulu who describes himself as “the man who will get meals for the children” on the youngsters’s dwelling.
Lingaaro Halawa exhibits off the baseball cap he bought from tsunami reduction employee James Karl.
He does much more than that, mentioned Scott Cate, govt director of Jochebed’s Hope. Hulu and his spouse by no means had been capable of have youngsters of their very own. Now they’ve 34.
“You’d be hard-pressed to discover a tougher employee who cares extra concerning the youngsters than he does,” Cate mentioned of Hulu.
Mardianus Hulu stands subsequent to a laundry drying rack on the Jochebed’s Hope youngsters’s dwelling. A number of years in the past, the house relocated from a facility close to the Nias airport to at least one subsequent to the assembly place of a Church of Christ.
Who was Jochebed?
Cate’s father, Steve, served as a missionary in Medan, Indonesia, together with Colin McKee. In 1972, they baptized a person from Nias, Talisokhi Laiya, who invited Steve Cate to go to his village.
Steve Cate and his spouse, Jean.
The journey concerned a ferry experience and three days of climbing. It additionally resulted within the island’s first two Church buildings of Christ. Within the subsequent 20 years, that quantity grew to 10.
Dennis Cady first visited Nias in 1995, additionally at Laiya’s invitation, and made common journeys to coach church leaders till the tsunami, when he and Steve Cate turned their consideration to reduction work.
In 2017, Scott Cate and his spouse, Tracey, took over his father’s work. That features Connor’s Home, a youngsters’s dwelling in Jakarta overseen by Daniel and Naomi Setiabudi. That very same 12 months, in Africa, South Sudan turned an unbiased nation and Cady started to focus his ministry, the Starfish Basis, on efforts there.
Dennis Cady speaks with youngsters on the island of Nias throughout one among his many visits after the 2005 earthquake.
In 2016, Cady invited the Cates to take over Jochebed’s Hope. The couple agreed and appointed Daniel Setiabudi as overseer and Suma Goelo, a Christian who lives on Nias, as coordinator for ministries on Nias.
Initially, a number of the youngsters helped by Jochebed’s Hope had been orphans of the pure disasters. Many, nonetheless, had dwelling mother and father who had been pressured by poverty to surrender their youngsters.
The ministry’s identify is a little bit of a thriller, Cady mentioned. “I’ve requested many church teams who Moses’ mom was, and few have recognized. It was Jochebed.”
The second chapter of Exodus tells the story of Jochebed, who made the determined selection to cover the toddler Moses in a basket within the Nile to avoid wasting him from the slaughter of Hebrew youngsters by the Egyptians.
A portray of “The Final Supper” adorns the wall of the Bawolato Church of Christ on the island of Nias. Dennis Cady helped to coordinate reduction work and assemble the church constructing after the 2005 earthquake.
“She didn’t hand over her son as a result of she didn’t love him however as a result of she did love him,” Cady mentioned. “I advised the early Nias youngsters that story many instances … that their mother and father didn’t carry them to us as a result of they don’t love them however as a result of they do love them.”
Reshaping futures — in Indonesia and America
After some ultimate hugs on the youngsters’s dwelling, the Setiabudis and Gulo go to two dormitories in downtown Gunungsitoli. The buildings home about 60 youths who come from rural areas throughout the island to attend college within the capital metropolis.
Cady launched this system after talking with church leaders about their largest wants. Usually, village youngsters lack entry to high quality training or should go away college early to offer for his or her households, the leaders advised him. This system provides college students meals and housing as they examine.
College students line the partitions on the boys’ dormitory in Gunungsitoli.
On the boys’ dormitory, college students smile and giggle as they line up in opposition to the wall, eagerly introducing themselves and speaking about their goals. They need to be lecturers, legal professionals, cops.
One pupil mentioned he simply desires to be well-known.
College students sit exterior the women’ dormitory and share their goals for the longer term.
A number of blocks away, on the women’ dormitory, the scholars specific comparable goals — to change into psychologists, docs, nurses, businesswomen. Some say they miss their dwelling villages, however they get pleasure from being collectively as they examine, cook dinner and lead devotionals.
Jhonni Laiya, the caretaker on the boys’ dorm, is a graduate of this system. He was one among 12 youngsters in his household. Since finishing his diploma, he’s returned to his village and served as a preacher.
Jhonni Laiya and his household discuss with the scholars they supervise on the boys’ dormitory in Gunungsitoli.
This system makes a distinction, mentioned Hutton Cate, the son of Scott and Tracey and grandson of Steve Cate. Hutton first visited Nias in 2019 and has made a number of journeys again.
He’s gotten to know the scholars. He’s even sat in on a number of parent-teacher conferences.
Hutton Cate (entrance row, proper) visits with youngsters on the island of Nias in 2023. Click on the photograph to learn his report from the mission journey.
“I bought to listen to lecturers inform me firsthand how nicely our youngsters do,” he mentioned. “They all the time had these presents, however shifting into town at such an important time of their growth has afforded them so many alternatives to train and develop of their presents that they wouldn’t in any other case have had.”
Hutton additionally spends time on the youngsters’s dwelling, the place the bell for breakfast rings at 6:15 a.m., “and if I’m not out inside 5 minutes, then I’ll have three center schoolers knocking on my door shouting, ‘Brother! Brother! Makan!’ (the phrase for ‘eat’),” he mentioned.
There’s a nightly prayer gathering on the youngsters’s dwelling. Kids take turns studying Scripture, praying for the group and main hymns. It’s “a window into the non secular progress and management of every of the children,” Hutton Cate mentioned.
Two disasters, twenty years in the past — and the church’s response — reshaped the island of Nias.
Now, the island is reshaping lives, together with Hutton’s. An English main at Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tenn., he had no plans to pursue ministry.
Hutton Cate stands subsequent to Niman, a pupil in Jochebed’s Hope’s training program who has since graduated and returned to her village. “Of us downtown are all the time to see a 6’7” white man strolling round,” he mentioned, “and it results in a variety of attention-grabbing conversations and quite a lot of photoshoots.”
“Spending two months on Nias, mixed with studying, prayer and conversations with trusted mentors, led me right into a conviction that I used to be referred to as to ministry,” he mentioned. “After my return dwelling, I instantly utilized to seminary and by no means appeared again. Every thing since then has flowed by means of that sense of calling.”
ERIK TRYGGESTAD is President and CEO of The Christian Chronicle. Contact [email protected]. Observe him on X @eriktryggestad.
