Breakfast consisted of small fried balls of bread and that delicious coffee. Close by was a partially built new church. Village women wore visible old-fashioned corsets and beautiful long batik skirts called kebyas. The men were in their dress pants and batik shirts. The liturgy reflected the German Lutheran and Reformed traditions and was mostly singing hymns, praying, reading Scripture and preaching.
Communion is celebrated only two or three times a year.
My sermon was the simple gospel about Jesus. The congregation was so proud that their village interpreter and seminarian son, wearing a shirt and tie as signs of education, was by my side. In a formal presentation of an ulas , I was symbolically made part of the village family. Then it was time for celebration. To my astonishment, the men all pulled out cigarettes and lit up while the older women chewed napuran, a mixture of tobacco, red leaf and clove or mint that reddened their lips.