Acts of the Green Apples

Christmas shopping in Jakarta --

Well, we called it Christmas shopping. We bought a ball for Suzy, a Chinese-style bathrobe for Rick which soon fell apart because the material was ancient, and a red bath towel for me -- which still fades when it is used. But it was better than what we had been planning to have -- which was nothing. We traveled luxuriously (as opposed to the style to which we were becoming accustomed) by economy class on the Bima to Surabaya. When we arrived (by various means) in Malang, Ik Wan informed us Spence and Amy had left the city and would be back for Christmas, and that we were to stay with him.

Ik Wan and his family lived in the house where he had lived as a child. It was large, with a court in the rear. Rooms were built off the court. His daughter, son-in-law, and baby lived in an apartment which had been appended. There were numerous servants, and life had a certain carelessness which one seldom finds in America. Lunch was cooked by a number of servants during the morning and was put on the table when ready, although it might not be eaten until three o'clock in the afternoon. Whether it was hot or cold was of no concern. Dinner was the remains of lunch, although a dish or two might be added. Breakfast was what remained and was not heated. The first day we were there, something special was served for lunch: octopus cooked in its own black ink and served with rice. It didn't turn me on, as it was rubbery and tasteless and the idea was not too appetizing. But the next morning at breakfast, cold, it was even harder to face. We just couldn't quite make it, so we pleaded to omit breakfast as we were too fat anyway. We lost ten pounds that week.

However, the Tans are very intelligent, and I think they caught on that breakfast wasn't appealing to us, so they had bread and Kraft cheese a few days later, which was kind of them. Breakfast isn't much fun in Indonesia anyway because Javanese coffee isn't what one has been led to believe. It is really foul. The only excuse I can find is that they ship all of the good coffee somewhere else, but in those days they were not exporting so it is difficult to explain.

Christmas came and seemed very strange. There were no carols or decorations in the shops and houses, and no one mentioned Christmas. We celebrated with the DeJongs and an awful imitation tree someone had unearthed and some worse looking artificial flowers for trimming. Our gifts were pretty bad: stale and slightly wormy Hershey bars, colored pencils in a box, and ten-cent sharpener. To demonstrate the lack of goods to buy, we discovered Christmas morning that Suzy and I had each bought the other one a handkerchief -- and they were exactly alike! Surprisingly enough, Suzy was a good sport about our unusual Christmas -- outstanding, in fact. It was difficult to recognize the spoiled little daughter who used to turn up her nose at her clothing unless it was purchased at I Magnin's. December 28 was our Christmas -- twenty-four boxes came from home. Many of them were things we had ordered for friends, so we had a ball giving and receiving.

We continued to speak in churches and to other groups. We met the Indonesian who had been Corrie ten Boom's interpreter and she received the Spirit. Our next trip was by train to Semarang to fulfill the speaking engagements Ik Wan had arranged. The first stop was Surabaya, where we were to speak in a church. There we stayed with a family who owned a restaurant. The living quarters were behind the restaurant. The heat in Surabaya is impossible, day or night, the mosquitos bit incessantly, and the cockroaches were astonishing -- they seemed to me to be as large as golf balls, and they were everywhere.

We were tired and hot and dirty when we arrived. Our bites itched and hurt, and when we poured cold water over ourselves we immediately began to perspire again until we were once more soaked. It was a bad night all round. A seamstress in Malang had made me a new cotton dress from some material Amy had given me, and I was wearing it for the first time. As we waited outside, our host backed up so we could enter his automobile. Grease from the rear shot out in a stream as though it were an oil slick from a James Bond car, and I emerged sprayed with black oil from head to foot. Even my face was black. I went back to the room and cried! It was all too much: the heat, the dirt, the bugs, the exhaustion, the lack of normal facilities. I sobbed vehemently, "I've had enough. I'm not going to Semarang. I'm going to take my ticket and go home tomorrow." I expected Rick to say something pious, but he said, "Not without me, you're not!" It struck me so funny that I burst out laughing and everything was all right again. However, I didn't have time to dress again and arrive at church on time, so Rick went without me. After I had cleaned up, I wandered out to the restaurant. Our host offered me something cold to drink and we talked. He hadn't gone to church because he didn't want the baptism in the Spirit. By the time Rick arrived home with our hostess, who had received the gift of the Spirit at church, our host was speaking in tongues. It makes me wonder about that grease --

In Semarang we stayed in the home of a dentist. I was melting from the heat, and as I lay on the bed and prayed to be cool again, my eyes fell from the ceiling to an enormous wardrobe. There, obviously unused, was a large electric fan -- and this house had electricity! Things were looking up.

Our hosts were charming and we enjoyed them. I was to speak Sunday morning in their church -- a very large one by Indonesian standards. When we arrived, we were led to the platform in front of the congregation. As I sat quietly listening to the preliminaries, which were held in Indonesian, I suddenly realized that I was about to rise and address hundreds of people in a white nylon jersey dress and in my hurry I had forgotten to put on a petticoat! I must have looked like an Egyptian dancer. I sat and thought about making Rick speak -- but how would I explain it? I toyed with exiting, fainting, refusing to move -- nothing seemed practical. Eventually after a whispered conference with Rick, my hostess drove me home for my petticoat. Despite the inauspicious beginning, a hundred people were baptized with the Holy Spirit in the three days we were guests of the church, and it was there we had our first real confrontation with white magic and black magic.

Among the many who stayed after church to be prayed with were two men who distressed us. There was something very wrong. When we talked to them about Christ they appeared to become very nervous. However, either of them could look us in the eye and say he was a Christian. But after a lengthy session with one I finally said, "Does the blood of Jesus cover you?" This doesn't sound very sophisticated for the twentieth century, but it worked. He cringed and wouldn't look at me and began to shake and finally muttered, "Not yet." The same thing occurred with the other man when Richard talked to him. The story was that one man was in black magic: he had worshipped Satan and knew it. The other man was in white magic: he carried "charms" and made "spells" and did not live a moral life. The results were the same: they were wretched specimens of humanity: nervous, frightened, sick and heard voices. After three sessions Richard commanded the man in black magic to look him in the eye, and for less than a second he did. But then his lids fell over his eyes, and he couldn't seem to raise them. Richard said, "Release him in the name of Jesus!" The man repeated, "Dalan nama Jesus," and his face relaxed and he smiled. When Richard left him, he seemed to be another man. But the man in white magic had refused to part with his charms and his sin, and he stayed in the misery he had made for himself. One had escaped by grace.

Exhausted after a week of engagements in the intense heat, we went on a five-day vacation to Jogjakarta. This was the home of the former sultan and center of Indonesian culture. One of the three luxury hotels in Indonesia is in Jogja, as it is familiarly called. Fortunately for us, this one was not doing too well and so they accepted Indonesian money -- which is the only kind we had. The hotel was marvelous: clean and elegant. Sunday we attended a Baptist church. The minister and his wife offered to show us the sights of Jogja: temple rubbings, silver factory, sultan's palace, etc. But somehow or other we began talking before we got started and we spent the entire day telling them about the baptism in the Spirit and our trip to Asia. At the end of the day they told us it had been the most exciting day of their lives. Several years later a Baptist minister in Hong Kong told me that after we left there had been an outpouring of the Holy Spirit among Baptists in that area, and we were delighted to learn it had begun with that family.

Back to Semarang where we spoke to the faculty of a college. The president of the college had an unusual sense of humor for an Indonesian. Most Indonesians find life a grim, serious business -- with reason. I mentioned that our first indtroduction to anything Indonesian had been in the airport in Bandung where we had met one of his faculty who had been very friendly. Now Indonesians, at that time, were noted for being cold and suspicious toward foreigners. The president with a twinkle in his eye said, "But now you have discovered that all Indonesians are friendly." Deadpan, I replied, "Oh yes, and particularly to foreigners," and he roared with laughter.

A small dinner party for us was served at the president's house. The backyard was alive with frogs of all sizes and descriptions. Frog in Indonesian is kodok. As Richard listened to them he said, "It sounds as though they are saying, 'kodok -- kodokkodok.'" The president commented, "Yes, and in America they say, 'Frog -- frog -- frog'"

Indonesians eat a lot of food called tempe. It is made by fermenting soy beans, making them into a cake, then slicing and frying. At a dinner at the dentist's house I mentioned how much I enjoyed tempe. The dentist said, "When you return to the United States you must start a tempe factory and make a lot of money." A guest replied, quite seriously, "You could not make tempe i America -- it is too sanitary there."

By the time our latest trek was completed we were nearly out of money again. Thinking of the bugs in the woven seats on the train we very much wanted to fly back, but since we were hundreds of miles away we realized we couldn't afford it. Nevertheless, we went to the airport to check. Our tickets cost us two US dollars apiece. We haven't figured that out yet. Of course we had prayed first!

The plane was fascinating. I've never been on anything even faintly resembling it. It even had canvas bucket seats. We were served some peculiar food which we didn't eat, but otherwise the trip was uneventful. Years before I remembered flying on an airline in Montana. It was so wild I thought we had lost an engine and were about to crash. Determined to be calm and brave I mentally asked forgiveness for all the sins and shortcomings I could think of and prepared to die like a lady. Imagine the state of my mind when from behind me came a voice, "Well, if it doesn't get any rougher than this we've had a pretty good trip." After that anything an Indonesian airplane did would necessarily be anticlimactic.

We were asked to teach in a seminary in East Java. We prayed a lot about it because we didn't know whether to stay there and teach or not. In a way we wanted to, because of the security of having a regular job, a place to live, etc. In a way we didn't want to, because we saw so many missionaries that were just living -- as comfortably as they could -- but they taught school or worked in a hospital and made a home for themselves. There was very little really effective preaching of the Good News -- that God became man to redeem mankind, and that He, ina very real way, is the answer to sin, sickness and death which is what war and drug addiction and sexual aberrations and all of the other problems of our society stem from. We simply could not make up our minds what was right for us to do. ANd then one day the dean of the seminary came to persuade us to accept his offer. We talked at length and he came to an understanding of what his relationship with God meant and how to teach redemption in the seminary. At last we knew what we were to do; so that night we made plans and two weeks later departed Jakarta via airplane.

According to an Indonesian legend, after God made people he put them all into a great oven. The first batch was not left to bake for a sufficient period, and they are the Caucasians. The second batch had been forgotten and emerged burnt and are now known as Negroes. But supposedly the third lot was baked to a golden brown perfection, and they are the Indonesians.

During our stay many Indonesians had become followers of Christ. Perhaps the dreams the three of us had the night before leaving Hong Kong had been symbolic. The three dreams had all pictured newly hatched golden chickens. Now, four months later, many golden Indonesians had been born into the Kingdom, and four hundred more had been baptized with the Holy Spirit. But we felt the primary purpose of our sojourn in Indonesia had been a little job for God that we can't even write about.

As our plane ascended over Jakarta I had a sensation of release and joy. It was almost as though I were coming out of a dark cloud into the sunlight.

Then Singapore, which was like a little bit of home. The people spoke English and there were regular bathrooms and air conditioning and taxis with meters -- all sorts of exciting things. One time in Malang we had gone to a restaurant where we were presented with a menu with a long list of elegant dishes and delicious-sounding sandwiches -- only to find there was nothing available but rice with several peculiar local specialities. But Singapore -- ah, that was another cup of tea. We even splurged and had dinner at the Raffles Hotel. We simply had to -- just once. Everything Somerset Maugham had written about Singapore appeared to be true -- and more. And the shops were full of goods for sale, and the restaurants were full of food, and nobody acted as though they hated us because we were foreign. After two days we reluctantly departed for Hong Kong. While we were still in the air we sudddenly knew we had to continue on to Taiwan -- but we didn't know why --

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